Once upon at time, everyone's medical expired on the last day of the month they did their examination in plus 12 months. It was great as the expiry date never changed. If you expired at the end of March and did the medical sometime during the previous month it would stay at the end of the month. When they changed the rules to comply with ICAO they lost the ability to issue what was in effect a 13 month medical validation.
The CAA (pre CASA) of the day also failed to conduct a risk analysis on this change process as at the same time they stopped sending out reminder notices. There were many pilots without medicals for some time after that.
Trouble is the system is one that is designed to suit CASA and not the customer (!!)
My understanding is that your medical is valid from the day of your examination. If you do it early you loose that time. If you have special tests etc to undertake, make sure you do those first and they are available to the DAME on the day.
I really cant see why they can't make the process easier.... (like it used to be for example?)
