"Neil Gould" wrote in message
. ..
I think that Peter Duniho's response casts doubt on your perspective.

I don't. My response was intended only to agree with Gary's statement, and
to provide some additional insight into the situation. Nothing I wrote was
intended to dispute what Gary wrote, nor do I see anything that does.

The way I see it, "I" and "V" indicate the mode used for control of the
aircraft;

They do with respect to IFR versus VFR. They do not with respect to logging
instrument conditions (which requires only control of the aircraft solely
with reference to instruments, not a particular set of rules or
meterological conditions).

"MC" describes the conditions which require a particular mode of
control.

"meteorological conditions" by itself describes nothing. You need the "I"
or "V" to make the phrase meaningful.

IMC versus VMC describe weather conditions (specifically, visibility and
clouds). IFR versus VFR describe a set of flight rules, only one of which
permits one to fly in or near clouds. Neither of those pairs has direct
control over logging instrument flight time (though there is, of course, a
strong correlation between IMC and instrument flight time).

I suspect that we can make these things far more convoluted than
they need to be.

One might even suggest you're demonstrating that now.

Remember, VMC and IMC are defined primarily for purposes of
*separation* rather than aviation or navigation. You may still
need instruments to keep the plane right side up, but that's a
different matter.

How would this be a different matter? Far more accidents are due to
colliding with fixed obstacles and terrain than with other aircraft.

It's a different matter because VMC and IMC don't have anything to do with
whether you log flight time as "instrument flight time", from a regulatory
standpoint.

Pete