But on the unknown sites bit, it depends where you are and which service you are in whether they are recce'd by day first. The Navy/Marines are a bit more up for it than the RAF and Army to go in blind. Plus sometimes you can't recce everything within the last 7 days and it isn't exactly realistic training to go to a recce'd site all the time.
Mmm, interesting! I wonder what the flying regs have to say on that. Do they say a night field landing site,
must be,
should be or
needn't be recce'd?
Then again, if the site is recced by someone else (OC night?), surely that realism is still there, all you have given the site is a clearance that goes as far as; 'There
shouldn't be any gotchas in here'.
But in the middle of a city center, solo pilot NVG or mortal that would be pretty taxing.
I think there might be some confusion as to what type of NVG/Mortal flights are involved here. I get the feeling it's more of a case of comfortably completing the last light HEMS tasks (without the 'why so many night flights during the month' interview without coffee), ground recce'd/lit ad hocs, known site to known site, or transfer taskings ... rather than the daytime type ad hoc landings, but in the dark, scenario.
To the HEMS chaps & chapesses, any idea how many elevated pads are night cleared?