Mooney_Driver wrote:
It is simply infuriating to see how many of us can see “favours” when we are treated like garbage. The Stockholm Syndrome is really rampant within pilots.
Very well said.
@gallois. I was actually appalled when I read your post and the circumstances you described. However, I closed my MAC, and put the kettle on.
It is your decision and obviously various circumstances led you to it. So all the best for the future. 
However my note on this is never let a doctor dictate either your medication, lifestyle, or your attitude to life and pursuits. You self determine and where possible manage your choices yourself.
It is my decision. I could easily get a scan and have a carotid doppler for next year should I so wish . I do not wish.
I am comfortable with my decision.
Hence, the thread title.
When anyone else is faced with a similar decision, they can decide for themselves whether or not they wish to fight it or not.
gallois wrote:
But the knowledge I have gained has made me suspect that much of EASA Part Med, the DGAC Pôle Medical and AME’s are engaging in a “Cover your axse exercise”.
It looks that way. I am thankful that not all AME’s jump onto this bandwagon hook line and sinker though. I am very happy with mine.
Clearly, if you are moving into the UL cathegory anyway there is nothing wrong with telling the AME’s to shove it. However, if you are “forced” into it by the fact that the med exam becomes too much of an aggravation, I find this totally inappropriate.
And, as we have seen with the airspace saga in the UK, it will lead people to cheat, lie and try to go around them. This kind of behaviour does not encourage trust which is an essential part of a doc-patient relationship.
gallois wrote:
When anyone else is faced with a similar decision, they can decide for themselves whether or not they wish to fight it or not.
But that is the whole point, we should not have to FIGHT someone for what should be a human right, to be treated as paying customers for a service we need? Someone like you, who has perfect health figures after a precautionary surgery, this kind of hassle should not happen.
Apart, it puts the whole UL vs Certified story in a very bad light too: UL pilots are not necessarily people who have health problems, but the way people are treated puts more and more people with a health history into UL’s, with predictable consequences. Does the UL community really want to become a refugee camp for medical refugees?
IMHO the whole thing is going totally in the wrong direction. The fact that UL’s and their medicals, certification and what not are essentially a regulation free space vs a more and more strangled conventional aviation scene is another “me and them” story of “divide and conquer”. Clearly, politicians wish conventional GA done, so they try to force more and more people into ULs. But in my mind, UL’s will be next, once conventional GA is gone. Or do you really think these people will tolerate a relatively regulation free aviation community? No way.
I am sorry that your balanced and honest posts has triggered such a negative reaction in myself, but personally I find what happened to you highly offensive and a totally unnecessary discrimination of a pilot who has not done anything wrong other than getting a precautionary cardiac op.
@Mooney_Driver I cannot disagree with what you are saying about the aviation medical situation in France. I cannot speak for other countries. IMO the aviation medical for leisure pilots is strangling class 2 for, I would say, mostly those past a certain age.
Unless seeing aeronautics as a career, younger people aren’t coming into GA due to costs of which the medical is one, but more importantly for the young they just can’t be bothered to go to an AME when there are so many other things to do with their time.
For the more mature (whom as Peter often points out) have both the money and the time, they too cannot be bothered with all this nonsense. Whether it’s AMEs as in my case, airport costs, maintenance retrictions and costs and fuel availability, people want to enjoy their hobby. They want to fly, not spend their lives waiting for appointments with AMEs and other medical specialities or aircraft parts because they are only available in one place and that is often the USA.
ULM and gliding are the 2 ways which are still attracting those interested in aviation as a pastime. To call ULMs toys is a bit disingenuous and if I may say so a little elitist. That is unless you are referring to everything that is fun being a toy. Like an RV 6 or RV7 some have a range with 2 people on board of between 1000km and 1500km. Most will take off and land in less than 200m and climb at 1000ft a minute or more. I would agree that they can’t carry the useful load of the RV6 and RV7 and don’t have the speed, but pretty much everything else is very comparable.
Although there was a pick up in new members for the PPL (many of whom were young) following Covid things have now basically come to a halt and the number of pilots flying certified aircraft, here, is on the decline.
Gliding seems to be the pastime soaking up the youth and the gliding club here is incredibly dynamic. I wish the aeroclub could be more like that.
Although some younger people are getting their ULM licences the majority by far of the FFPLUM membership still consists of those either belonging to or about to belong to the troisième age (the French term and one which I prefer to pensioners) From the FFPLUM report for 2021 to 2022 membership increased by around 400 pilots and student pilots. The average age of pilots in FFPLUM is now 54. One good sign is that the number of female ULM pilots has risen dramatically over the last 6 years.
There is no lack of interest in aviation by the young. The number of Lycée students doing the BIA (Brevet of Initiation Aéronautique) has risen from 12352 in 2017 to 18941 in 2022.
IMO it is not the associations discouraging young people taking aviation further.
The place to start might be existing pilots being more positive about what one can get from aviation. But if one looks at GA as revolving around the certified world, then there are major problems in attracting and more importantly keeping new entrants.
Me; I have decided not to take on the establishment and just fly. For me its not so much a change of lifestyle and I am gaining IMO so much more than I am losing.🙂
My understanding is that colour vision is for life.
My understanding is that colour vision is for life.
I agree but evidently there is some level of (authorised or unauthorised) country dependency. France and Germany seem to do it annually, in some cases at least, but the authorisation (relative to their national CAA) is unknown. Link posted above.
When anyone else is faced with a similar decision, they can decide for themselves whether or not they wish to fight it or not.
You have done the French version of what loads of UK pilots do: when they can’t get a Class 2 anymore, or just have no need to fly abroad, they move to the PMD and accept the limitations (UK only, France added if amateur built aircraft) and AFAIK about 50% of UK GA is now flying on the PMD! That’s a staggering loss of UK AME income, BTW.
One can then discuss the relative limitations of
You will now say “one cannot change French culture” And that is true, but fairly obviously to any observer of European GA, #1 is a lot less limiting than #2, (although with most of France being on a 24/48hr PN for Brits, France is nowadays much less accessible). So to a French pilot, dumping the AME as you describe and flying only within France, potentially in a nice €200k UL, is a pretty good deal. Frankly, he/she was prob99 doing only that anyway.
ULs deliver good value flying but I believe that regarding this as a satisfactory approach is wrong, because as MD says above it just leads to the GA community shrinking into irrelevance. People will obviously say I would say that because I fly certified stuff, and IFR, but I am seeing Europe as a whole and look at what has happened to GA in say Spain and Italy. Check the altitude limits on ULs in Spain for example…
It works OK in France because you have a highly self-contained GA scene and a club community which is also self-contained inside a specific national culture. But it will still go the way of Spain and Italy if the Certified stuff is taken out. From there there is just one way to go, and most won’t see it because they will be fully Stockholm Syndrome absorbed Your ~40k pilots will shrink to a few k. Once the critical mass of infrastructure goes, it will all go…
ULs deliver good value flying but I believe that regarding this as a satisfactory approach is wrong, because as MD says above it just leads to the GA community shrinking into irrelevance. People will obviously say I would say that because I fly certified stuff, and IFR, but I am seeing Europe as a whole and look at what has happened to GA in say Spain and Italy. Check the altitude limits on ULs in Spain for example…
I don’t know about “shrinking into irrelevance” here in Spain. It used to be a country with some certified GA and some UL activity, and is growing into a country with little certified GA and quite a lot of UL (including experimental) activity. The UL ecosystem consists of tens and tens of airfields and continues to grow. I would say that overall, there must be a lot more activity in private aviation now than 20 years ago. Altitude limits? No, they have recently been relaxed to a workable level. Along with some very convenient other issues like 100% self-declared maintenance, the ability to enter into CAS (in the process of being approved, and requires a radiotelephony license and proper avionics of course) and other goodies which are being discussed between the sector and the authorities. All this means that a lot of people who could never afford certified GA can now live their dream, be it mostly flying in their own country. And doing their Flying with the F of Freedom, like in France. I’ve described many times here the fantastic welcoming atmosphere of these privately-owned fields. If anyone wishes to talk about the ‘Stockholm Syndome’, think again and objectively look at what you put yourself up to by going to bigger, not privately-run fields in certified aviation, not to mention CTOTs, handling or spending effort trying to avoid handling, maintenance burocracy, the list goes on.
We’ve also discussed here many times that flying Annex 1 aircraft does have limitations in terms of automatic cross border travel, but this should not be exaggerated either. And the sector is constantly trying to improve it.
There is a shift going on in private GA and obviously it is very person-dependent whether that is favorable or not. I personally like the idea of making it accesible to a lot more people through Annex 1 aircraft.
Yes I believe our 40K club pilot members of the FFA will start to go down. Especially as the vast majority (anecdotally) speaking of club pilots are of the, shall I say, older variety.
But, many of them are transferring to the ULM and FFPLUM.
Whilst Spain does require a class2 for a ULM, I believe the altitude and possibly the CAS restrictions have been relaxed to some degree.
IIUC Italy, Croatia, Greece, Belgium and possibly Germany do not require a Class2 medical. But this is just something I have heard from ULM pilots. Italy I believe has 2 standards for ULM one for below 1500ft AGL and the other for above. Again these are just things I have read and have not.researched.
Yes you are right flying in France in a ULM is a good deal and you don’t have to pay anywhere near 200k for a new one. You can start for under a few thousand euros and several new 3 axis ULMs start at less than 50000€. You can also build your own either through a kit or plans or your own design and there seems to be no mention of the 51% rule in French ULM regs.
You are also right when you say that many Club pilots already never fly themselves out of the hexagon.
Yes there will be times when I will miss my twin engines and there are times when I will miss my IR. But I have taken this all into account, I have balanced what I am losing with what I am gaining and am happy with my decision.
I think I was already edging towards the ULM scene anyway for the freedom it offers. I might well have just kept my medical and SEP out of habit, for years to come.
I would have no problem getting a doppler on the carotid artery every year or getting a scan.
All cardiologists, doctors and even the AME, say I am in excellent health. They don’t even add the dreaded.words “for your age”🙂
I just thought, on balance that I can not be bothered. I have a year now to change my mind if I find I am wrong..
Even with an IR I tended to fly in the clearer air on top and planned my flights accordingly.
I can still fly on top I just need to be a bit more careful if and how I get there and back down again at my destination.
I would have no problem getting a doppler on the carotid artery every year or getting a scan.
That, however, will probably cost about €500-1k, every year. Same with an ECG treadmill. Empirically, most pilots, even those with lots of money, give up the Class 2 at that point.
UL specific privileges moved here
gallois wrote:
The CV test has always been a book containing pages of coloured dots with the numbers standing out because they arebinz different colour. If you can’t see the number you are blind to that particular colour.
But why do you need to redo it every time? Part-MED says that CV tests need be repeated only on “clinical indication”.
VML means you have to carry a spare pair of glasses with exactly the same prescription as the ones you wear,
I didn’t know this before, but Part-MED even says that your spare pair of glasses have to be approved by your AME. None of the three AMEs I’ve had ever bothered or even mentioned the spare pair.
