Posts Tagged medical
I See Trees of Green, Red Roses Too
A few days ago I received my new medical and licence in the mail. If you read my post from a few weeks ago, you’ll know that I was marked as failing my colour vision test on my last medical examination. As far as I’m aware, I can tell the difference between red and green, so I had to take a different test (which I passed) and send in the results. I was restricted to day VFR flight only which you can see in my other post on the pictures of the medical/licence I posted.
We recently switched to a passport type aviation booklet that holds all of our licences in Canada. It has pages for renewals and type/rating endorsements. When you get your licence/medical renewed, Transport Canada sends you a little sticker that you can place in the next blank spot. Along with those little stickers, they send you a bill for $55, which if you don’t pay, they turn your debts over to the Canada Revenue Agency (our taxation authority). Right now I work for CRA on internship, so I have to admit it was a little tempting to try and let the invoice lapse. Obviously I would never do that, but you can’t blame a guy for not wanting to pay those ridiculous fees.
Lately I’ve been flying smaller cross country flights in order to build my XC hours. You need 20 PIC XC hours as a requirement for your CPL here in Canada. As of last weekend, I’m at 19.8 hours. There are a few small uncontrolled airports within about 50NM of CYXU, so they make for the perfect 1.2 hour XC flight. No need to make a double booking at my flight school in order to go somewhere. Last weekend I got to fly both Saturday and Sunday. I can count the number of times that has happened on one hand.
Winter is fast approaching so the cancellation rate on my flight bookings is going to go up over the next month. Our first snowfall came two days ago when Southern Ontario was blanketed by a huge storm. A Colorado Low swept through bringing that lovely green, orange, and red pixelated radar screen that I’ve come to loathe over the years. The winds aloft at 3000′ were 57 knots. The low stratus was whizzing by above our heads at a pretty mighty clip.
My logbook just went over 120 hours total time. To be honest, that number is low for someone who has been flying for 27 months or so. If you’ve got the money and time, you can be fully licensed and working as a pilot in that time frame, but I’m not one of those people. I’m a full time student, albeit on internship right now which has given me some extra time/money before I graduate. Ideally, I’d like to have my instructor rating and be teaching by the time I graduate university. I need 100 PIC hours, amongst other requirements, before I can obtain my CPL. As of today, I’m halfway there with 50.1 hours in command. I can’t wait to get this flight test out of the way!
On a side note, I wanted to plug a new aviation blog that I’ve recently started following. Ian is a B777 pilot for British Airways and has started writing about his experiences. The great thing about the aviation community is that most people genuinely love sharing their passion for flying. It’s even better when pilots in such a senior position in the industry reach out and motivate the up and coming students. Getting advice from someone like Ian or Doug is invaluable in what is arguably one of the toughest industries to establish yourself in. So, I just wanted to welcome Ian to the blogosphere, and you should definitely be reading his posts if you’re interested in aviation or are an aspiring aviator yourself. Both Ian (The Flying Scotsman) and Doug (From The Flight Deck) are listed in my blogroll in the right sidebar, along with my other recommendations.
Cat. I Screw Up
I got my category III medical back in 2007 when I was working on my PPL, but now that I’m working towards my CPL, I needed to go and get my category I medical. There aren’t many differences between the two categories. For starters, the cat I needs to be renewed yearly whereas the cat III can be renewed every five years. Since this was my first time getting a cat I, I also needed to get an audiogram (hearing) and EKG (heart).
As far as I was aware, I had passed all of the tests I was given and my doctor said I would be receiving my new medical sticker in the mail within a month, depending on how busy Transport Canada was. Within two weeks, I got a little brown envelope in the mail with TC’s return address on it. I opened it up to find a letter and no renewal stickers. To my surprise, the letter said that I had failed my colour vision test and I was being issued a restricted medical and licence.
This was news to me. My doc told me there were no concerns and I should expect my medical in a months time. Weird. So I call my doctor’s office and explain the letter (which he also got a copy of) and he is just as confused as me. He tells me to come in and take a different colour vision test that is more accurate.
When I get there, he explains that there was a mixup on my chart and I was marked as having incorrectly guessed that last four Ishihara tests in his book. If you’ve never seen what an Ishihara test looks like, here’s a link to one.
I was under the impression that each page in his book contained a number within the coloured circles. The reality was that each of the last four pages contained no number. I noticeably struggled to find a number with those last four tests, so I just guessed a number that I thought I might have seen. The doc usually gives people a second chance if they didn’t know about the “no number” possibility but I was administered this test by the nurse, so I never got that chance. I was marked as having four mistakes out of 21, which is above the threshold. The doctor never double checked this before he sent in the medical form so I was marked as a fail.
My new licence restriction limits me to day VFR only with two way radio communication into and out of control zones. With winter fast approaching and daylight hours virtually gone by 17:00, this severely restricts the available time I can fly – I worked until 16:00 every day.
We sent in a new Farnsworth colour vision test about three weeks ago, so I should hopefully be receiving an unrestricted licence and medical in the mail by early December. I’ve attached pictures of my restricted licence and medical. They’re stickers that you place in the new booklet type licences.
My instructor said it took him 6 months to get a”corrective lenses required” restriction removed from his licence when he was still in training. I really hope my problem doesn’t take that long to fix.
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