Relative to your anecdote, I have a question: Why not simply close your
eyes, turn on your landing light for five seconds, turn it off, open your
eyes? This would have given tower their visual ID without impacting your
night vision.

If you're flying an ILS and in a cloud it could be safely assumed you are on
an IFR flight plan, in which case tower would have been providing
separation.

If you're in a cloud, you would not be able to maintain separation yourself
as you wouldn't be able to see much of anything, especially at night.

If your aircraft is properly trimmed, five seconds away from the panel and
controls should not have a serious impact on aircraft stability.

It sounds like the situation described earlier on this thread where your
entire focus was on your wants and needs, with no consideration for the
larger picture.



"AJW" wrote in message
...

As an aside, a long tiome ago I was making an ILS into BED after dark, and
tower asked me for a landing light so they could see where I was (this was
a
long time ago). Now that was a time when I did not comply with tower -- a
landing light in the clouds is a good way to really screw up night vision.
I
told them the landing light would have to wait until I had the runway in
sight.


Sorry, but in the circumstances I cited, I told the tower They'd get no light
until I was out of the clouds, and they didn't complain. WhenI'm flying an
approach in clouds at night I turn off strobes, too. I do NOT fly with my eyes
shut, not even for 5 seconds.

Re traffic avoidance, it was solid IFR, I think the ceiling had to have been
about 300 feet or so. I don't remember if there was someone at the threshold
waiting to go, although it's likely with approach painting me a ciouple of
miles out that they'd have realeased someone for take off.

I think in this case I made the right decision, but it'll be interesting to see
what others here will say.