"Mike the Strike" wrote in message
oups.com...
Thanks Jean-Marie for your interesting contribution. I hope that you
agree that you have to be a little bit crazy to want to fly a glider at
night! I have flown single-engine at night and find it hard to believe
that VFR night is permissible - if you have no visual frame of
reference, you're flying IFR in my book.

Mike


Yep!

I remember a night VFR leg from Kansas City to Denver. It was past midnight
and a young CFII was flying from the left seat. I often took folks like him
along on long business flights to let them build hours for a possible
airline job while reducing my workload. I was in the right seat getting a
little shut-eye which ANR headsets make possible by reducing the engine roar
to a distant hum.

I awoke for no particular reason and looked up from my reclined position and
saw nothing - no stars at all. When I sat up and looked down, there was
nothing there either. In fact, there were no lights at all in any
direction. Now western Kansas is sparsely populated but not that vacant. A
faint halo around the position lights confirmed it. We had flown into a
cloud deck without realizing it.

"Uh, seen any lights lately?" I asked my pilot. "Hmm, now that you mention
it..., think we should air-file? he answered. A sleepy sounding controller
got us legal again.

On a clear, moonlit night, clouds are visible but on a dark night you don't
have a chance. Had we not been instrument rated, properly equipped and
current, no doubt we would have become yet another statistic.. IFR skills
are realistically part of night flight even if the FAR's don't require it.
When the sun drops below the horizon the gloom of night comes quickly and
familiar visual references disappear. The sky becomes a dark and dangerous
place with deadly traps for the unwary pilot.

Consider for a moment what it would be like in a glider with no visible
references outside and a dark cockipt with unreadable instruments inside.
Add a fogged over canopy you can't keep clear without heat from the sun.
Parachuting from a perfectly good glider becomes the only option. That's
terrifying.

This is not to say that night flight in a glider can't be done with
reasonable safety but glider-only flight training, at least in the USA,
doesn't prepare a pilot for it by a long shot.

Bill Daniels