Night flight legally begins after twilight (not sunset). I wasn't
talking about final glides, I was talking about making long flights in
the dark using wave or ridge. Frankly, I think this would not be worth
the substantially increased risk, and we should not encourage it by
giving recognition for this. We dropped endurance records for gliding
when the records were measured in days for the same reason.

So assuming most people agree that Night X/C in gliders is not wise,
then we need to look at whether we want to encourage people to install
position lights so they can fly for a few extra minutes between sunset
and twilight. Or should we discourage this so they can spend their
money installing transponders, or other safety equipment.

Marc Ramsey wrote:
Doug Haluza wrote:
I agree that night flight withing gliding distance of a lighted airport
is not that dangerous(I would probably do it if I could). That is why I
commented specifically about night cross-country flight in gliders.
Night VFR in airplanes has been shown to be many times more dangerous
than Day VFR in the accident record. I would only expect the situation
to be worse without an engine running.

The vast majority of landings after legal sunset are the result of long
final glides that started before sunset. These are not "night
cross-country flight", except in the legal sense, and would likely have
aborted much earlier if there was doubt about reaching the destination
airport. Legally, they absolutely should be equipped with position
lights, but it is hardly dangerous (and I know of a few people who have
installed lights for precisely this reason). In fact there are a few
places (Tonopah comes to mind) where it would be more dangerous to abort
the final glide at sunset, and try to find someplace else to land, than
it would be to just continue...

Marc