Hey folks, first time posting here!
Fairly similar story to a lot of people on here, I went to City Uni to complete their colour assessments in hope that I could pass the CAD test to get a class 1 medical. As it turns out, it didn't go to plan, however I will give a bit more detail of what to expect in case anyone is going there soon...
The whole assessment includes the Ishihara plates, AO-HRR pseudoisochromatic plates, City University (2 ed.), Farnsworth D15, Nagel Anomaloscope, and the CAD test. It's worth noting that the CAD test (the only one that can help you get your class 1 after the Ishihara plates) is last in the assessment - more about that in a moment.
Once taken to a small office, they will begin with the Ishihara plates. I, as expected, failed these miserably, but this is why I'm here, right? The AO-HRR pseudoisochromatic plates were quite interesting and I seemed to do alright on them, there were a few plates where I couldn't see anything, but most of them I saw something. The City University test was also not too bad, in the end I scored 7/10. I had very little hopes for the Farnsworth D15 as I have never been able to do these, and have always been amazed at how effortlessly my girlfriend can do them. When the colours are in the correct order on the Farnsworth, it looks right and makes sense. It's just that my attempts can also look correct but actually be all over the place.
Next up came the test which seemed to take forever to complete, the Nagel Anomaloscope. I don't know if I didn't understand properly what was going on or not, or whether I was just getting them wrong quite often, but we seemed to spend about half an hour just on this test. At the end, the assessor told me that this test was suggesting protanomaly rather than protanopia, which is quite interesting. NB. if anyone wants some more information about how these individual tests work, just drop me a PM.
Finally came the CAD test. At this point I felt my eyes were tired and strained, especially from the Nagel, which I had one eye covered for the majority of and therefore it took a while to 're-boot' properly for the CAD test. First up is a tutorial-type test, where you should get 10/10. Then it's a short blue-yellow colour test, which I was told I scored a lot better than the mean. The final section was the longer red-green test. In hindsight, and after reading through various forum posts, I feel like I rushed this a lot more than I should have, and in fact I should have had several pauses or breaks. I kick myself now because there were moments in the test where I felt quite disoriented and dizzy and felt myself just guessing the directions where I might have been able to actually get if I was fully concentrated. Overall, it's a real drain on the eyes and like many people have suggested, I would be concerned if a pilot ever saw anything remotely similar in a real flight.
My threshold for the CAD test was 21, way above the 12 needed for the CAA. Again, reading online, various people seem to believe that this test is not 100% accurate, and have managed to drop their average after repeated goes. I just wonder how I might've performed on it if it was just the CAD test I was taking, not all the others.
My question is, where should I go from here? Am I too far deficient to ever consider a career in commercial aviation, or is there still some hope out there somewhere? I can't really see myself ever doing anything else, but it just doesn't look possible at the moment to meet the CAA's requirements.
Looking forward to hear y'all thoughts! Cheers!