I agree with Gary that this is the main issue with bifocals or
progressive lenses: when looking over the nose during taxiing and take
off (monowheel) and flaring (Monowheel and Trigear) you have no choice
but to look through the reading portion of the lenses while you need to
focus on "infinity". I do not think there is any 100% satisfactory
solution to that problem. When I started to use reading glasses (I was
not flying the Europa at this time) my only solution was to remove my
glasses just before landing. A few years later I had to change my
glasses again and I asked my optician to position the reading portion as
low as possible. It is a lot better but again not 100% satisfactory .
BTW I have been told that some airline pilots are using multifocals with
two reading portions: the low one as usual and another one at the top of
the lense for seeing the overhead panel! The distance portion of the
lense is therefore reduced, but do they often need to see outside?
Remi Guerner
F-PGKL
<<<<I'm not so keen on progressive lenses. I had some made a few years
back and
took them up for a flight. Not being very tall I have to stretch my
neck to
see over the glare shield. Everything went fine until I got into the
landing flare. As the nose of the plane went up to flare, I had to tip
my
head back to see straight ahead. In so doing I was now looking through
the
bottom of the lenses.......the "reading/magnifying" portion, which
caused
everything to look blurry and fuzzy on the runway. Needless to say my
landing was more of an arrival than a landing. Thankfully I didn't
break
anything. I took the glasses and threw them in the trash can.
Garry Stout, N4220S>>>>>>>>>>
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