I have a pilots licence and during trianing my c.f.i. had me make a couple of landings at night at the local general aviation airport with no lights on.
I told him what the hell, I'm not going to run drugs or anything, why this?
He told me so that if I lost electricity in the craft I knew I could still land if I'd practiced.
Never know when your high tech stuff will be disabled and you have to make a go of your more basic equipment.
Thanks
All well and good. In fact I liked the practice landings without landing lights better than with LL. I generally 'greased' them - something about the video-game Zen of just relying on the perspective of the runway lights and small control inputs as you transition from the 'looking down' perspective to the 'looking out' perspective with the runway lights forming a 'vanishing point' illusion.
That said, if you've lost power, you've probably lost comms. and if you've lost comms, how do you activate the runway lights??? (I'm talking most airports with pilot-controlled lighting.)
No landing lights? Not a problem! No runway lights? Big problem!
Moral: Always carry a handheld radio, with known good batteries in it!