Night VFR Simulator
 

I mentioned in my Intro thread that I'm red/green color blind and have a restriction against night flight on my medical. It's not going to go away. I've had most of the color vision tests and flunked them all, and the opinion of the eye docs I've talked to is that I have the severe form of red/green.

I want to become a CFI one day--a CFI who doesn't fly at night. I've talked to a couple of local flight schools and they've said they'd have no problem hiring a CFI who can't teach the night portion of the PPL. So there's a market.

The problem is that, in order to become a CFI you first have to get the Commercial ticket, and the Comm requires 5 hours of solo night flight. Well, I'm prohibited from flying solo at night.

You can, however, log 50 of the 250 total hours you need for a Comm in a simulator or training device. So does anyone know of an available sim that does night VFR that won't cost thousands of dollars to rent?

I'm not certain that the rules allow that...maybe, maybe not. It's not clearly defined. You should talk to your local FSDO and see if you can get the OK for something like that before you do it. If you just show up for a checkride with night sim time, I doubt any DPE would perform the checkride without federal clarification.

Another thought...the FAR's actually have provisions for earning certificates without night flying time. This is because it doesn't get dark in northern alaska in the summer! I don't have a FAR/AIM handy but look that up. IIRC you get a ticket that is limited to daytime-only until you accomplish the night stuff (which you would probably just never get around to). You would have to go to Alaska though.

Well there's something I hadn't thought of....:eek:

Actually, I read that part ("Why they hell do the Alaskans get a break on this?!") and you have to satisfy the night thing within a year (I think) of getting the comm license. Maybe if I trained in Alaska, then moved to Sweden they'd never catch up with me.

Seriously, good advice on going to the FSDO. I've about given up on the medical route. Everybody keeps telling me to take the light gun test and I tell them I did and flunked and they go, "Ohhhhh.....". Oklahoma City included.

The sim thing is a long shot and probably won't work. I agree with you that they probably won't allow it. But I've gotta work any angle I can think of. My best bet is probably to get AOPA on it. But they went all Light Gun on me when I called them so I dropped it.

Oh well, there's always ground instructing. Not that anyone wants to hire a ground instructor.