We will probably have to agree to disagree about this.
I too have used nightsun in some of the roles mentioned by ST, but let's not turn this into a 'my dad's bigger than your dad' type argument. In fact we probably would do well to disregard the nightsun arguments (yes, I know that I first mentioned it). But just to clarify things, my point was that I would prefer to have sufficient illumination to be able to see and avoid any obstacles on my departure path. I don't find that night vision is of much use. How many of us prepare for a night flight by sitting open-eyed in a dark room? Personally, I walk from a well lit briefing room to a well lit heli-pad and then depart from there using the landing light. I have even been known to use the storm light to complete paperwork. For a VMC departure I would like as much light outside as possible; in the event that I was blinded by the landing light/nightsun reflecting off fog, then that makes the go/no go decision easy. Once IMC I'm not interested in having night vision, as however good it is you can't see anything anyway. I now require adequately lit instruments.
Mention is made of a departure using min IMC speed and max power.
Why would you comply with the min IMC speed and yet still put yourself outside the IMC envelope by using an excessive ROC? This would still lead to reduced stability and an increased risk of loss of control. Could this ring any bells? And could you see pylons, let alone wires using only your night vision and/or a landing light. You are still going to be moving forwards into the unknown.
OK, it's time to make a confession...
I'm not an expert on night-time departures from unsurveyed sites/helipads. In fact I've never done one yet. I've spent a lot of hours low level using nightsun but I've never landed or taken off from an off-arifield site at night that I was not familiar with. I'm surprised that this is apparently considered normal in the corporate night-flying world. Having said that, I recently spoke to a friend flying corporate that informed me that they routinely let down in IMC to 300' AGL to private landing sites.
No thanks!
Respect to you guys. If I'd managed to get into the situation described I wouldn't have had the bottle to do anything other than to use my degraded night vision to gropingly tie down and call it a night.
