The International Cessna^® 170 Association

George, you are a never-ending fountain of information. Thank you for being here and doing what you do!

I have a Gieger counter I'll loan you if you pay the freight and return it to me.

I appreciate the offer but think I'd rather use the excuse to make a trip down your way. Would you care to elaborate as to why you HAVE a Geiger Counter??
JJH55

Well, ...I could tell you....































































.....but then I'd have to kill you.

gahorn wrote:New and replacement FAA certificates always have the latest "issue" date printed on them. That later date is what goes on record as cancelling the earlier certificate. It has nothing to do with when you originally earned your license and it makes more sense when you consider that.
What really gripes me is the waste of money the new certificates represent. If you recall, a suggestion that was make several years ago was for the FAA to issue new certificates that would include photo's of the holder and also magnetic strips and/or IBM bar-code strips on the reverse so the certificates could be used for universal airport security badges. But the FAA said that would cost too much and that only paper certificates were affordable as certificate material.
So now we have nice, new, expensive, plastic certificates that do absolutely nothing the cheaper paper certificates could and did do.

I gently dissagree George! Any terrorist could easily duplicate the old paper certificate. These nice new ones would be much more difficult to forge. You are probably upset because the new ones don't have any red on them. Or, maybe you haven't changed that climbing thru molasses prop of yours yet. It's nice to have a license that better represents the effort and cost it takes to achieve it, vs something that is even less in appearance than a drivers license.

I disagree, Joe. The duplication of paper certificates was never a problem because pilot certificates are not legitimately used for identification. The AOPA was very proud of the fact they'd prevailed upon the FAA to allow the old certificates to remain in force, and simply satisfy the Gestapo (Homeland Security) rules calling for photo I.D. by simply using state-issued driver's licenses.
AOPA proudly announced how much money they'd saved us by talking the FAA into keeping the paper certificates. Wrong. The FAA intended to spend a bunch of money on new equipment from their politically connected friends in order to produce new licenses ...and by golly they were not going to be deterred by any sensible ideas from AOPA.
I agree that paper certs. have little appearance of legitimacy, but so what? I've flown around various areas of the world for years and have enjoyed the brightly colorful worthless paper currency of third-world govt's who seem to be focused on attempts to lend legitimacy to their worthless money by making it highly colorful. Now our govt has done the same thing with our currency, and in less than a week counterfeit copies were on the street anyway. So much for legitimacy, ...and how much do you think that cost you and me?
The private companies who make/sell the equipment made a fortune at the expense of you and me. All I'm saying is, if they were going to make the new credit-card licenses, then why didn't they at least add true utility and security to them? (Credit-card type duplications are incredibly easy if anyone wants to counterfeit pilot licenses. The only way they can be made even remotely counterfeit-proof would have been if they'd added your picture and magnetic or bar-coding. You and I've paid for it, ...we just didn't get any value for our money,....and the airports are no safer for the money spent.)

I think they look great but are a pain in the BUTT...LITERALY! For those of us with three certificates: pilot, CFI and mecahanic, they significantly increase the size of the ol' wallett. I wish they would put all the certificates on one license!

The fact is the bad guys already have machines to make fake drivers licenses with bar codes and pictures. They have had all of that weeks after the states changed the way they made their DLs. And by the way, our money is made of cloth, not paper! The US currency has always been one of the hardest to counterfiet and not be detected as such. Even the marker pens don't work on all of the bills. The red and green fibers you see in the bills are not round fibers, they have microscopic shapes to them, which are very hard to reproduce. If the problem is counterfieting, why not just use the cloth we use to make our currency? As much money as we are spending on Home Land Security, we should be able to make an airmans license compatible with detection systems in place at the airports now. I tend to like the idea of a hard card as oppossed to the paper certificate we get, but with a little technology mixed in for added security.

I think your comments prove the point, Jon. If the bad guys already can counterfeit things so easily, then why did we spend so much money issuing new certificates? Just so we could feel better about how impressive our licenses look? The licenses no one but FAA guys and other pilots ever ask for anyway? Except for applying for a new job, rental, or FAA man, I've had to display my license -- never,...in over 35 years.
Somebody made off with a ton of our money and I'm not happy about it.

I seem to recall that at the time of the Korean misunderstanding pilots had to have an ID card. But I sure can't remember what it looked like- does anyone have such a recollection ?
Many countries pilot licenses are like passports, with a photograph. My Jamaican CPL is like that ( license #7).
Rudy

Yeah, and look what happened! No one has any recollection of the Korean thing, and they ran you out of Jamaica, Rudy!
(Neither my British nor my Bermuda licenses have photos.)