Posted for "Chuck Jensen" <cjensen@dts9000.com>:

 Steve,
 You cite your training, experience and skill as though its protection
 against bad things happening to good people at night.  Granted, those
 skills come in handy if you inadvertently fly into weather and you
 likely know enough to respect MEAs and on really dark nights you fly a
 full instrument approach while respecting altitude limits so a bump in
 the terra firma doesn't reach up and snatch you...which seems to be a
 big bugaboo for night flying.
 
 Given those factors, night time flying is really a mechanical risk.  A
 few things I wouldn't do when flying at night, VFR or IFR; fly any
 experimental with less than 100 trouble free hours on it, fly anyone
 else's plane, fly any plane that had any intermittent mechanical
 problem, fly any plane that had any electrical issues of any sort, fly
 any plane that didn't have solid maintenance performed by solid
 mechanical-types.  'm sure others can add to the 'don't do' list but
 that's a start.
 
 We all know that the odds of a serious mechanical problem are low on any
 given flight, but at night, particularly over rough terrain, the
 consequences are so dire that we want everything tilted in our favor.  I
 love flying at night, but I'm not enthused about flying at night over
 the mountains in a single...heck, I don't even like it over the
 mountains all that much during day VFR.
 
 Chuck Jensen
 Knoxville, TN  37931