Instead of progressive lenses, go for normal, old style bifocal lenses. The
progressive style means there is no nasty line to be seen by your friends in
your face, but you loose an area in the lens that has no useful vision for
flying as the lens changes from near to far vision in a gradual change.

See your eye doctor to check your current script and get a set made to suit
the aircraft you like to fly, so you can see the dash and out the window
without turning your head. Measure the distance from your eyes to the dash
to allow your doc to get the distance set right for you. A good eye doc will
do a second check using his test lenses with your eyes set to this distance
rather than just calculating a standard adjustment to the main script. He
will also allow for different positions of the lens for close work and
distance work, for example for me the distance between the centre of the
lens for distance is 64 mm and for close work is 62 mm. Just due to
different angles to the subject. When fitting the new frames they can mark,
with a felt pen, the centre of your eyes on the dummy lens they put in the
display glasses so the prescription lens can be accurately placed when
making them. This method is better than just measuring "inter-ocular
distance", and a decent glasses provider will do this for you.

You want to have normal vision of the outside world and your ASI and Tacho
and so on when you want it without having to change focus with your eyes.
You want to be able to see both without thinking about it so you can easily
control your plane's speed, revs and where it is on landing.

You may want to draw a rough outline of where the dash is on your old pair
of glasses with a whiteboard marker pen which can be rubbed off later. Sit
in your plane and then walk round looking like an idiot with black lines on
your specs. I know I got few funny looks, but the end result has been worth
it. The final glasses were made to suit me and have a small area of close
correction focussed perfectly at the dash and plenty of look outside at the
real world vision.

I also have a pair of close work glasses made for computer work as a full
screen view without any distance correction. Allows me to work the computer
and read the paper easily. I tend to use these for pre-flight planning when
doing lots of map work etc..

A cheap framed second pair of glasses for the cockpit is cheap insurance for
those moments that a screw falls out......

I have the modern antireflection coating and find it helps, and also suggest
you spend the extra $5.00 per lens to have the edges polished as this
reduces the glare around the edge of your vision.

Transition tint lenses that change with the available light help me, but if
you fly a high wing plane (or other with a roof) you won't have as much UV
light that causes the tint to darken, so just like when driving the car,
they won't go to full darkness.

I changed eye docs on a pilot friend's recommendation, and the new one gives
a better script with all his fancy modern gear compared to the previous one
with his fingerprint and dust covered test lenses.

Hope this helps,
Pete

"skyfish" wrote in message
0...
I want to get current on my VFR Single Engine Land license but my eyes
are not what they used to be. The strength I need for good far vision
makes it so I can't read charts in the cockpit without taking them off.

I figured I would try a progressive lens because I thought it would
eliminate the extra task of taking my glasses off to look at a chart
(less work load is good right?), but I'm concerned about a few things:

1) the distortion of my peripheral vision for the top part of the lens,
let alone the bottom part.

2) the narrowness of the "corridor" that forces me to turn my head for
every single thing I want to look at... flight instruments and radios
are far enough apart to require a head turn.

3) can't view the entire width of a 81/2 piece of paper. I can only get
good focus on about 1/3 of it. The beginning and ends of the sentence
will be out of focus.

4) how much of my attention will be on getting my glasses to work vs.
looking out the window or at my instruments.

Any thoughts, ideas or personal experience you would care to relate
would be very much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.