That's right...horses for courses.
During the development of the Oz regs, the industry body studied all the NVG ops they could. The comment that most stood out from the Poms was
"5000m viz?, we would never be able to get airborne!"
At the end, the International standard recommended no variation to existing NVMC for NVG, thus we ended up with 5000m. As I said previously, I think there is a case to reduce that to 3000m with system maturity. That is 3000m of terrain viz, not meterological viz.
We also mix NVG with IFR as some of our outbound or return legs are conducted IFR. With the NVG properly set up, it is no issue to transition fully onto the clocks. Having conducted instrument approaches with NVG I can attest to the reduced heart rate when breaking visual and circling at night.
We also believe in the mapping point you make crab. Again, in the Norweigian system post a 2002ish Dauphin accident (wires in fjiord at night) they convened an industry meeting with players, regulators and human factors types. Outcomes were three elements:
HEMS must:
1. have two pilots or pilot and appropriately trained crewie for all HEMS missions
2. have a moving map system, and
3. use NVD for all night missions.
The result of our study tour was that the organisation I work for would embrace these principles, and obviously I think they would be sound principles world wide for HEMS, including the US.
Our rapid response system does not function with out the mapping system - it is MEL. We use it for primary Nav and we also use it to "google earth" (with survey quality photos) the intended HLS before we get there so that we can have a good daytime view of the HLS and surrounds before arrival.
PS: wish we had a FLIR turret, but I am very intrested in fitting and using EVS if ever we can afford to do so.