Safety of homebuild Helicopters

clear of clouds, 1 mile at night in Class G, unless the aircraft is
higher than 1200 feet AGL.

Especially with the new NVGs, I would personally choose to fly with the
NVGs down, even if I was told that I couldn't. As a tool at night, even
if you are just confirming what you see with the Mark 1 Mod 0 eyeball,
flying without NVGs, especially if you have them with you, is like
flying the helicopter with one hand tied behind your back. And the
aircraft is a lot better with the GPS than with the AHRS.

Linc

boB wrote:

snip

considered VFR for helicopters. And for helicopters the cloud clearance
requirement is different in Class G airspace - Clear of clouds. The
visibility of 3 miles was for fixed wing only under the Army AR95-1.
Helicopters can fly with less than 3 but I can't find it in the FAR's yet.

But even with 3 miles visibility at night it is a scary situation since
you are continuously looking for those invisible power lines and finding
your way to the accident site and 3 miles vis isn't as good as it
sounds. Flying OH58D's out of Stuttgart International south to our
training area we were not allowed to use the NVG's until out of the
Stuttgart controlled airspace so many nights we had very low visibility
which with NVG's was plenty but without NVG's was quite a trip. NVG's
can see through a lot of haze and fog. It wasn't unusual in Germany to
flip the goggles up inbound to land and find ourselves IMC.

With GPS now I'm sure it's a lot safer but still a heart pounder.

snip

boB
copter.six