But then you make about a 30 degree right to go out to Block Island or the Vineyard, and all of a sudden, all, and I mean all of he lights disappear under your low wing aircraft, and you had better be on the guages, with your scan going for about 5 minutes before it happens or you are SOL.
...
Few people know he safely completed 90% of the flight. My question is whether he could have taken a route closer to land or did he take a shortcut for the last part of the flight?
He shouldn’t have gone out over the water at night like that. Unless you have flown over open water or some very remote parts of the world on a dark night, it is hard to fathom exactly how dark it is. It isn’t really VFR.
Don’t know, but that flight must transit significant portions of over-water.
My personal feelings are that there are times when VFR is perfectly legal, but you really need to be ok on the gauges.
Anywhere west of Amarillo at night.
Anywhere over extended water at night, especially if you are coming from a well lit, defined horizon area such as a coast line with a lot of lights.
Even daytimes up sun in a very hazy area, like over Long Island in August, westbound between 1800 and 2030, anywhere over 3000 AGL until you get up and over the haze layer, the horizon is basically gone.
The trick was knowing it was coming, and be ready for it. It’s especially a problem for someone, like me who trained in 150s, then 172s, then shifted to Pipers. With a Cessna, the horizon defined by lights would disappear gradually as the nose covered the lights, but with low wing Pipers, it all disappeared at once.
Have a good weekend.