Brad: A RARE complaint from me:
For me its about the "we gotta make this look right" attitude @ FAA Brad. since the addition of the "50 hours rule for like type" we've lost a lot of DPEs. Tough now to book a student's training when you can't get a DPE lined up.
FAA did the same thing to medical branch but in a different way: The 3 mgbyte limit to uploads per airman per exam. That means those of us that survived are scanning everything minimal legible resolution, compressing it with Adobe Pro, and uploading. A lot of AMEs decied, "Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor!" and hung it up. 3Mbytes-(!) YGMSM. How do I get 180 pages into 3 MBytes? IDDM Frist class- each Time-inRage month is 6 color sheets.
I get that times are tight, but with each branch continuing to do what "looks right to them" it compromises overall system safety. Myopia = No Bueno. The ranks in the field are getting decimated.