In January, I asked the listers what they knew about these lenses for pilots.

Well, I have been wearing gas permeable multi-foculs now for about a month.  They are also available in soft and extended wear contacts, but not for me (see below).  Mine have both corrections ground into the front surface, which I am told is more sophisticated to create.  Learning to use them has been very easy.

In good  light they work great.  At night, they suck (so far) due to bright lights appearing to "flare" and not getting very good distant vision.  This occurrence is sort of like f stop in a camera.  With the pupil opened widely, the distant and near segments are both in use too much.  I experimented with this by shining a small flashlight in my eyes while viewing night lights, at a distance.   The flaring goes away and the focus is normal in this circumstance.  So for now, of course, I won't be night flying with them.  For night flying, I will wear the standard gas permeables that I have been wearing for years and then readers for up close.  I still feel comfortable wearing them at night while on the ground however.

I have had them re-ground 3 times already (no extra cost) and we still aren't finished tweaking.  They get significantly better each time.  I am 56 years old and right now I am very close to 20/20 in both eyes at 16" and already get 20/20 at 32" and at 20'  The final tweak will reduce the diameter of the left lens and try to squeeze out the last improvement for the 16" distance while not degrading the other distances.  BTW without any correction, my left eye is about 20/200 with astigmatism (reason for the gas permeable lenses) and the right  eye is  about  20/70.

When I  entered  AF pilot training in 1972, I was better than 20/15 in both eyes but I had a left eye retinal detachment in 1973.  This was surgically repaired that year and the left eye has been stable since, while the right slowly deteriorated over the years.  As you can imagine there is a huge difference in the correction between left and right eyes.  This solution is much better in giving me good stereo vision (image convergence) than any contacts I have previously worn.  In the past, the size of the images produced by each eye were significantly different.  Your brain corrects for this, but your depth perception is not as good as when both images can fuze.

The implications of these for the medical are very small.  You take the standard physical, answer the question yes that you wear contacts for near vision and your AME explains that these are multi-focal lenses.  If you pass the vision tests with them, that is it.  The bifocal contacts and mono-vision are still prohibited.

Needless to say, I am thrilled with not wearing readers any more.  I will report again if there is any improvement in the night vision.

Tom Thibault