I’ve had several landings well after sunset, but during what would be considered Twilight. This latest was at KCLS in Charleston. The landing was at 1748 local, which is considered Civil Twilight for today’s date. (See link below.) Even though it was quite dark, I still didn’t get credit for a night landing. So my question is this - just how deep into “night” do you have to be in order to get credit for an actual night landing?
1 hour after sunset.
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I don’t know about the sim but the FAA has three definitions of when night begins:
- end of civil twilight
- sunset
- 1h after sunset
The last is used for night currency. For example, in order to take passengers at night you must have at least 3x takeoffs and landings logged 1h after sunset in the preceding 90 days.
Position lights have to be on from sunset to sunrise, so that’s using the other definition.
Night flights can be logged after the end of civil twilight, which is the standard night definition. So I would assume that’s what the simulator does as well?
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I’ve had it been hokey at times, when doing early morning flights/dusk to do something like fully enjoy a sunrise down the Florida coast and it tags it as a night takeoff(day landing) and other times landing pitch black when it tags it as a day landing(day takeoff). I don’t really care either way but have been surprised on occasion. The logbook is far from accurate anyway, I’ve lost at least 300 hours to it over time, not registering landings even though it was by the book down to parking, etc, or goofing around and having a log with 1 takeoff and 10+ landings. If I cared enough I would keep an actual physical log.
I’ll have to look back in my log and compare the date/location with the data from the site I posted. Thanks for the info.
Yes, as a newcomer to this version of MSFS, I’m discovering that fact, too. 
In the UK when I was flying IRL “night” was between 30 mins after sunset to 30 mins before sunrise i.e. when the sun was below the horizon at sea level. Not sure if it’s still the same now.
Never really gone into checking in the sim, I just use the times in my sim logbook.
ICAO defines night as “The hours between the end of evening civil twilight and the beginning of morning civil twilight or such other period between sunset and sunrise, as may be prescribed by the appropriate authority.”
Each country’s authority has their own requirement as what they classify as night flying. UK CAA recognises as “the time from half an hour after sunset until half an hour before sunrise, sunset and sunrise being determined at surface level”
When the sun is fully set and there’s no more remaining daylight is the US Coast guard regulations for their flag rules
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There is a simvar named “Time Of Day” It returns a number 0 - 3.
0 = dawn
1 = day
2 = dusk
3 = night
It would be interesting to monitor it during a flight to see if it works correctly.
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1 hour after sunset and 1 hour sunrise is for logging night currency. The end of evening civil twilight and beginning of morning civil twilight is when night hours can be logged. This is for the US FAA regulations and what their definition of night is. It can vary in other countries on how they define and one can log night time flight.
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Specifically tho, you can only log a night landing one hour after the published sunset. That’s how the simulator is probably set up to log night landings. Irl, I log night flight as you state, but the landings have to be one hour after sunset per the FAA. I’m going up Wednesday night in my Cardinal to get current again.