yeah this sucks for the OP. Got leg-swept from a multi-million dollar RPA career because of some non-standarized CCT mickey mouse test on a best buy laptop, in a regular office room with the most uncalibrated lighting environment imaginable. It's ridiculous. You guys should see how amateurish these setups are, and they're ruining careers with this thing before they're even started.
We can't keep RPAs staffed to save our life and the pilots universally hate the damn assignment. If I were king, people would be getting waivers for missing fingers, to go push buttons at the RPA as long at they can demonstrate ability with their toes
Just so the OP understands the history of this boondoggle: the USAF got it in their head that people were supposedly memorizing those dated colorblind bubbles-mosaic number booklets, so they paid too much (government standard) to buy the letters-on-the-laptop-screen flash n click thing the OP got hooked by. In the days of the book, they didn't even test for the blue spectrum, since it's the green and red that are of concern for the military. Well, there I was in the middle of T-38 IP school, tired as hell double turning since o-dark thirty, and decide to go in for my flight physical (because God forbid those shoes stay in past 1500, never mind I land at 1800 plus another 2 hours debrief, you know some of us work for a living). Sit down in front of that stupid monitor and they come back and tell me I'm "slightly blue colorblind, one eye only". 8 years in mind you. So flight doc says its an auto waiver for blue (since it isn't needed) and what have you, I'm like ok you do what you need to do. Come back rested the next morning to pick up my referral paperwork to the optometrist and I tell the flight doc, "hey give me a hack at that machine again". Wouldn't you know it, passed it. Paperwork shredded, medical form issued, see ya next year. What a clusterf....
So these days I prep for the thing at home before going in, and I've figured out ways to cycle my eyeball in a diamond pattern around the place where the letter sits so my peripheral vision gives me "flash glances" at the coloration, allowing me to guess it before it cycles. If you aint cheating you ain't trying.
Moral of the story? It's all smoke and mirrors, but life and ain't fair and it's all about timing and luck. I tell you what I would do if I was in the OPs shoes. I'd tell the AF to flock themselves, and go rub elbows with the ARMY WOFT guys, if they won't take ya on the commissioned side. Get some helo stink on ya, and weasel your way into fixed wing aviation via the fixed wing qual program in the AF. ARMY Guard would be the perfect setup for that. Great experience, a hell of a lot more combat street cred as an Army guy than a zoomie (and I say that as a current T-38 instructor, T-6 instructor and B-52 Aircraft Commander in a prior life), plus I have close friends of mine who did exactly just that: army scout to army helo school, to silver wings in the air force via fixed wing qual with the AF Reserve (my branch). And flying -60s for your troubles beats RPAs imo, any day. Good luck. Where there's a will there's a way.
A shoeclerk stint in the Air Force, though temporarily more lucrative, will simply get in the way of the backup plan of time building as a civilian. So if no military flying is available to you, and the RPA is out, then I'd simply take that offer of cheap training financing and get through the time building slog. Buy yourself a little cherokee 140 and fly my friend. Beats the desk life if that's what you want to do.
