Light Sport Pilot Refresher?

Saw this in the news today? http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/07/03/small-plane-lands-on-busy-minnesota-interstate.html

Bad enough running out of fuel in daylight, but way worse at night. It doesn?t say how 79 YO pilot was certified ? hopefully not Light Sport Pilot flying at night. Reminder that LSP must fly in daylight hours ? 30 min after sunrise to 30 min before sunset.

night times

The word ?night? is defined in the FAR's in Section 1.1.That section states that night ?means the time between the end of evening civil twilight and the beginning of morning civil twilight, as published in the American Air Almanac, converted to local time. ?The Almanac contains tables that show evening civil twilight and morning civil twilight for different latitudes. From these tables, you can determine when evening civil twilight ends and morning civil twilight begins, convert these figures into local time, and calculate the time spent in night flight accordingly. Flight time after evening civil twilight ends and before morning civil twilight begins can be properly logged as night flight time.

I think we get more than 30 minutes before sunset

Also agree. Can fly under sport pilot privledges from civil dawn to civil dusk. (Sun in both cases is 6 degrees below the horizon.)

Jim, you're depriving yourself of one to two hours a day of flying time!

If the guy in Minnesota was flying with Sport Pilot privileges, he may have been out too late (but news outlets seldom get details right). The USNO says evening civil twilight ended in the MSP area at 9:40 PM Friday.

You're required to have lights on before sunrise and after sunset. You're allowed to fly (as Sport Pilot) from beginning of morning civil twilight to end of evening civil twilight. I was always told this was half an hour before sunrise to half an hour after sunset. I found out today that it differs depending on your location and the time of year. After checking a few dates and locations, though, it seems that half an hour is a fairly close approximation. The USNO has a page that will calculate it for you for one day here, or a table with the whole year here.

You guys are splitting hairs. At some point you have to ask yourself: do I feel safe? If not, don't do it. I remember one of my first solo X-countries when I had no night training and through shear cluelessness ended up chasing the sun back to my home field landing about 15 minutes before I would have been a statistic. Like they say: experience comes from surviving a screw up.