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Flying at night with Starbursts after PRK

JoeLight

Active Member
Hey all,

2 years after getting PRK, I have slight starbursts at night. I was wondering if anyone else has the same issue?

Would this effectively be a blocker from flying?

If so, is there anything that can be done to fix the problem?
 

JoeLight

Active Member
What did your OR say? Did you get a MEPS physical yet?
I haven't mentioned this to my OR. I have not gotten a MEPS physical yet either. I believe however this is a subjective issue. I don't believe there's a test that will pick up the starbursts / halos
 

pourts

former Marine F/A-18 pilot & FAC, current MBA stud
pilot
I haven't mentioned this to my OR. I have not gotten a MEPS physical yet either. I believe however this is a subjective issue. I don't believe there's a test that will pick up the starbursts / halos

You are right. There is no test so it is up to you to figure out how bad it is.

I freaked out about my starbursts after PRK for a while in flight school. Usually blinking or scanning back and forth helped a little. In the back of my mind I was always a little worried about it. It was no factor in the initial night flying, and flying the ball at night at at the field seemed to work out OK. By the time I was flying at the boat at night everything worked out. Either the halos got better, or they weren't really that bad after all. You aren't supposed to stare at the ball anyways, but scan across.

Be mature. Its up to you to decide how bad they are and if its going to impact your flying. Can you still drive at night and read signs if there are lights nearby? That's a good indicator I think.
 

JoeLight

Active Member
You are right. There is no test so it is up to you to figure out how bad it is.

I freaked out about my starbursts after PRK for a while in flight school. Usually blinking or scanning back and forth helped a little. In the back of my mind I was always a little worried about it. It was no factor in the initial night flying, and flying the ball at night at at the field seemed to work out OK. By the time I was flying at the boat at night everything worked out. Either the halos got better, or they weren't really that bad after all. You aren't supposed to stare at the ball anyways, but scan across.

Be mature. Its up to you to decide how bad they are and if its going to impact your flying. Can you still drive at night and read signs if there are lights nearby? That's a good indicator I think.
Thank you for sharing your experience. Yes, I can still drive / read at night.

I'm thinking I should schedule a night flight in a cessna during a pitch black night and see how it goes. So far, it's been a challenge to find such a thing.

Do you happen to know how I could schedule / get a landing in at the airport from a cockpit point of view? I have no prior flying experience, well except for hanggliding.
 

Gatordev

Well-Known Member
pilot
Site Admin
Contributor
Go down to one of your local airports and look for one of the flight schools. When you find one, ask for a one-time orientation night flight. You can explain why you're looking for this, if you'd like. Depending on where you are, I wouldn't pay more than $100-ish for this.

There used to be a much easier way to get a first-time orientation flight done through AOPA, but I can't seem to find it on the Google machine right now. Either way, they don't normally do those at night, so going to a flight school is probably the quickest way to do it.

As an aside, I don't have any bionic vision, but thanks to an astigmatism but strong eyes, I get crazy star bursts when I drive with my full prescription. It's annoying, but not the end of the world. When I fly, I fly with a weaker prescription, which pretty much eliminates the starbursts. Flying on goggles would probably be much more painful if I had them, so doing an orientation flight would probably be a good thing to do to test where you're at.
 

JoeLight

Active Member
Go down to one of your local airports and look for one of the flight schools. When you find one, ask for a one-time orientation night flight. You can explain why you're looking for this, if you'd like. Depending on where you are, I wouldn't pay more than $100-ish for this.

There used to be a much easier way to get a first-time orientation flight done through AOPA, but I can't seem to find it on the Google machine right now. Either way, they don't normally do those at night, so going to a flight school is probably the quickest way to do it.

As an aside, I don't have any bionic vision, but thanks to an astigmatism but strong eyes, I get crazy star bursts when I drive with my full prescription. It's annoying, but not the end of the world. When I fly, I fly with a weaker prescription, which pretty much eliminates the starbursts. Flying on goggles would probably be much more painful if I had them, so doing an orientation flight would probably be a good thing to do to test where you're at.

Thank you for your advise!

For the orientation flight, could anyone please recommend looking for anything specific? Perhaps paying extra attention to certain lights or signals at the airport or in the air to guage the severity of the starbursts? Thanks!
 
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