Alright, so looking for some thoughts on this. I am currently in the military (non-pilot) with my Commercial, Instrument, and Multi-Engine ratings. Right now I'm studying for the CFI writtens and setting aside some cash to cover CFI training.. I have a buddy at my current base that is a PPL, working on his instrument right now with plans to do the same as me and get commercial, multi, and CFI eventually.
We both are looking for ways to build extra flight time. At the flying club I rent from frequently there are Light Sport aircraft that have some very nice Garmin avionics and pretty affordable rental rates. Since the safety pilot/sim instrument is the best way to split time, my question is: is it perfectly fine to have him act as my safety pilot, and I fly a VFR cross country by solely reference to the instruments? There would be no instrument approaches done, we would be on flight following, and my own personal preference would have me take the foggles off within 5-10 miles from the airport to have two sets of eyes looking for traffic.
My initial assumption is yes since you log sim instrument during your PPL training and the regulation says, "(1) A person may log instrument time only for that flight time when the person operates the aircraft solely by reference to instruments under actual or simulated instrument flight conditions."
But I just want to double check. We're both looking for affordable ways to build extra flight time.