I absolutely love night flying too, whether VFR or IFR, and did a lot of that when I lived in the SFO Bay Area, taking off from KOAK in the evening to go for dinner at some airfield diner. Clear Lake was one of our favorite destinations.
I am not worried about flying at night, at least not because of the potential dead stick landing at night. VFR I am more worried about terrain (obstacle) clearance, weather, visibility, ceilings. I am therefore very conservative with weather minima at night and may not be comfortable with a 2000 foot ceiling enroute, depending on the route.
Funny enough, I too remember a takeoff from Santa Barbara. Not at night, but at dusk. There was no horizon because the sea and the sky had the same color and blended, and with the nose up attitude at takeoff we would almost see only sky anyway. You can sometimes run in to similar conditions aver water during daytime, for example when crossing the Channel,
As others have mentioned, it is great for sharpening up your nav planning – cuts out all the feature crawling rubbish and makes you properly plan with radio aids, GPS and doing route study – and I think generally improves your sortie management and handling. I generally find people fly far more accurately and smoothly at night!
I’ve flown 5 hours at night, altogether. My airport has no night flying. The 5 hours I did in one night when i was preparing for the IR, because “NVFR” is required in Germany for the IR.
That night we flew through all of Germany, in the 172RG Iand did a touch and go at Tegel Airport in Berlin and practiced in the pattern of a former east german military airfield close to the Polish border. It was a pitch black night without a moon and all i saw was the runway lights. I remember how unreal it felt, just ike in a simulator, and i did have some problems landing on that very wide runway in the dark first.
You can’t do it all i guess, …
Monday night was an excellent night to go NVFR – took one of the club machines, positioned it at EDDG and then flew across Germany to EDDP, landing around 2030Z, refuelling there and returning. If you’ve never been night flying, especially in such weather as I was fortunate to have on Monday, the views were phenomenal, especially when flying over the “fluffy cotton wool clouds” over the Harz Mountains… Also it was pretty much a full moon…..
In case you’re interested, here’s a video of the final approaches of the flight, unfortunately the GoPro isn’t too good at night, next time I go I’ll take a decent video camera with me..
Looks like Peter is picking up on night flying!
I did the Night Rating primarily to extend my options and due to the combination of slot and opening hours of my homebase LSZH. Without it, in Winter your day ends practically at 4pm due to the fact that there is no slot available for landing until after dark. So here it is very useful, even though I only used it a few times since I have it.
Primarily, it will extend your options. You will not have to fly balls to the wall if you see sunset approaching but your airport is open until 8pm but can simply continue NVFR rather than having to divert or hurry up to meet the SR/SS limit. Additionally, it will add to your skills, whether you use it or not. I certainly do not regret doing it.
Yes; that’s me, EGKA-LFBE and most of it at night.
Lucca tomorrow… here
I had a lot of fun getting out of Bergerac airport. The only sign of life turned out to be two firemen. Everything else dark and locked up. Luckily I had a taxi number in my phone, from a previous visit.
But this was IFR, not VFR.
The only sign of life turned out to be two firemen.
That’s the way it should be, innit?
Yes, but it helps to be able to get out of airside 
There is actually a gate with a button to unlock it but the timing is a bit tricky.
