Malibuflyer wrote:
Just out of curiosity: What are the situations in which you can legally fly VFR in IMC?
Legal but if you don’t have IFR skills, it can be very dangerous. John Kennedy Jr was on a VFR flight towards night, over water with no discernable horizon and lost control of the airplane with fatal consequences.
Indeed, but one could make the same argument for needing an instrument capability – not to say “qualification” – for flying at night 
That’s one of several sleeping dogs in the regulatory sphere which I am sure nobody wants to wake up.
A proper night is not like the bit of the “early evening” during which most European pilots log their “night time” (sunset + 30 mins*). It is totally black and you cannot see anything from seconds after lifting off the runway. It is like departing into OVC000. If you don’t transition to instruments within seconds you will crash.
* FAA requires sunset + 60 mins, for night passenger carriage. It is a helluva lot darker then than sunset + 30 mins 
Peter wrote:
Indeed, but one could make the same argument for needing an instrument capability – not to say “qualification” – for flying at night
Indeed such a qualification is what you need if you have an EASA license.
A proper night is not like the bit of the “early evening” during which most European pilots log their “night time” (sunset + 30 mins*). It is totally black and you cannot see anything from seconds after lifting off the runway. It is like departing into OVC000. If you don’t transition to instruments within seconds you will crash.
“EASA night” doesn’t begin at SS+30, it begins at the end of civil twilight. That period may be both shorter or longer than 30 minutes. I don’t know the theoretical shortest civil twilight period in Europe, but I know it can’t be much shorter (I know it can be 25 minutes). So generally it is not dark in a regulatory sense at SS+30. At the other end it can be several hours long!
Indeed, but one could make the same argument for needing an instrument capability – not to say “qualification” – for flying at night
Indeed such a qualification is what you need if you have an EASA license.
No; you need just the NQ, which is traditionally done in really easy conditions, departing immediately after SS+30. This is just “night VFR”. No instrument flying involved.
Same with FAA, although (with some exceptions) the NQ is mandatory for an FAA PPL. Also the night X/C flight of 100nm is obviously hard if not totally impossible to do with lots of light still around. It was pretty hard to organise in the UK…
Peter wrote:
No; you need just the NQ, which is traditionally done in really easy conditions, departing immediately after SS+30. This is just “night VFR”.
As I pointed out above, SS+30 is generally not night VFR.
No instrument flying involved.
You get basic instrument flying in PPL training. If you have a LAPL — which doesn’t include instrument flying — you do have to take instrument flying training to get the NQ.
