[Nomad63]

TC, I use similar for trail riding so I can read a gps but dont use them flying as they break the ear-seal on my headset, those look no better, but how do you find them in that respect?

[Korenwolf]

You don't need reading glasses, just longer arms.....gaffer tape the map to one of the wingtips and you'll be fine

[tomshep]

Quarter mil on the Aware and Braille one for IFR.

[johnm]

I have a 1:500000 somewhere in my flight bag, I'm also so short sighted a really annoy my friends by taking off my glasses to read tiny writing

[rats404]

1:500000 as a third option after SD on a Nexus tablet and iPhone. I use 1.25 reading glasses (half moon). I'm well over 50!

[Smaragd]

I would go to Specsavers.

1:250000 and bifocals which have just a small segment (around 20% of the total area) for reading it. Made to my requirements by Specsavers.

[TopCat]

TC, I use similar for trail riding so I can read a gps but dont use them flying as they break the ear-seal on my headset, those look no better, but how do you find them in that respect?

All sunglasses do that to some extent in my experience. The additional noise isn't ideal but I find it livable with, and as I can't fly at all without sunglasses, I've had 26 years to get used to it! These are no worse than anything else, and I find being able to read the map and the instruments quite a bonus

[Human Factor]

... or stick earplugs in under your headset.

Age nearly 45 with 6:4 vision.

Just as well as I’m deaf as a post.

[davef77]

I use RunwayHD rather than SkyDemon and I print a paper copy of my route as a backup. I have never had to use it yet,

I also have an old paper chart in the cockpit. Never use that either.

[Huntj86]

I found an optician (dispenser) who is a pilot. I now have varifocals (which take a little bit of time to get used to, so give it a couple of weeks before going flying) and they are amazing. He's carefully set the gradient line in the lens so it's best suited for flying. If you have it wrongly positioned in the lens, you'll probably find you'll have to tilt your head up and down to look out of the window.

[Cowshed]

This has been an interesting topic for me (thanks moOg for starting it ). I’m 51 and have been very short sighted since my teens. It put paid to my childhood dream of flying professionally. I always hoped that when presbyopia kicked in it would cancel out the short sight to some extent, but in my case it hasn’t. In fact my short sight has got marginally worse and in the last year the prescription for my contact lenses has been increased by another 0.5 dioptres. This has sharpened up my distance vision, but now I can no longer focus comfortably at anything on my lap. Reading flight instrument is fine, but looking at the chart or fine detail on SkyDemon on my knee is nigh on impossible.

I’ve come across Nooz reading specs (https://www.nooz-optics.com/en/) which don’t have arms and just pop on the nose (my daughter thinks they are hysterical and nearly dies laughing when she sees me using them). To my mind the perfect solution would be if Nooz did half-rims!

TopCat: thanks for your link. I didn’t know such things existed and I’m going to give some a try.

Ultimately though I think I need to talk to my optician about getting some suitable glasses made up properly to wear when I'm wearing contacts, but which deal with my presbyopia.

[Rob P]

It is no great hassle to get one of the online spectacle suppliers to knock you up a pair of uncorrected sunnies with a magnifying inserts and skinny arms. I have two such.

Rob P

[PeteSpencer]

Varifocals are the D's Bs if you don't have a huge correction: I've used 'em for years and took precisely zero minutes to get used to them.

The only mistake with my last pair was to get photochromic lenses as well: Useless for driving and flying and I look a real dip turning up to pick up my grand daughter from school on a bright December day wearing 'sunglasses'.

The problem with a huge correction is judging the height of, for example , kerbs when crossing the road and one former forumite famously tripped headlong into a carriage on the London Underground to the merriment of the commuters.
So Horses for courses: I'm gonna get varifocal sunglasses next time for driving and flying

I did have a brief flirtation in the early 90s with bifocal glasses even taking my half mil in to eye test so the Optician could see my need to read a chart on my lap, set the QNH and still have good peripheral/distance vision. He did it by reducing the 'D' to minute size: but I never got used to the 'lens 'step'

This was fine for flying for 50 hours of the year, the rest of the time they were pretty useless, with the need to tilt my head so far back my neck ached to be able to read the top of the Telegraph.

I know, I know, but I don't do red tops.

Peter

[mo0g]

My eye test is due any time, I have a free boots option. I need to do some more research on here as I know it has been discussed in length, regarding the varifocal type and layout recommended for flying (looking outside, panel and lap), but a quick question here as I'm sure some of you will know - do I need to say or do anything at my eye test to indicate I am interested in varifocals? ie Will my prescription have anything extra on it specific to varifocals, and if so do I need to have the aforementioned flying specific layout to give them?

My intention here is to get the eye test, and then use the prescription to order some sunglasses online.

I have a couple of pairs of sunglasses (V:one and Serengeti) I use for flying, no prescription, in an ideal world I could send one of these off somewhere to have varifocal lenses fitted, at a reasonable cost of course.

[Paul_Sengupta]

If you don't need the distance correction, you can get stick on reading bits which you could stick onto your aviation sunglasses.

e.g. These.