I am a one-eyed pilot, and there are many others, including the late
great Wiley Post. Loss of vision in one eye doesn't disqualify an
airline pilot either.


Well Dan, it sure as hell grounded this one, whether wrongly is
another question though, one thing that it does of course is
narrows your peripheral vision on the blind side.

I am sorry to hear it. (In my case, I do have peripheral vision, but
as you suggest below, the FAA guy didn't really grasp the difficulties
posed by having good vision in only one eye.)

I did have to take a "medical flight check" with an FAA examiner, who
asked me how high the cloud layer was and what was that stuff on the
athletic field below us, then said: "I'm going to give you a SODA."

And by that test he demonstrated his lack of knowledge about
'depth of vision'. I tried to find the data but haven't yet but
I'm pretty sure that the maximum 'depth of vision' for a human is
something like 18 feet so you didn't need your 'depth of vision'
to judge the height of the clouds.

He was still at it after we landed: "How tall is that flag pole?"

Where my lack of binocular vision really hurts is when I'm running the
Cub into a tie-down slot. I can't tell how far my wing-tip is from the
next guy's wing-tip.

Getting through life with just one eye is really a job of working
experience into habit. It took me a number of years to learn to
parallel-park a car.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: www.danford.net/letters.htm#9

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com