High-altitude training
This is a guest post from Jason Schappert, the Certified Flight Instructor behind www.m0a.com, sharing about his high-altitude training. I learned from this and I hope you will as well. Vincent.
I’ll never forget my high altitude training. Watching through a window as the first batch of students went into the hyperbaric chamber I was honestly a bit nervous. Yet my nervousness quickly turned to laughter as they brought the students up through the flight levels.
Upon reaching 18,000 feet they asked the students to remove their oxygen masks, as they passed out simple toys and things for the students to do.
The gentleman nearest to the window I was looking through was given a cube with shape cut outs in it. A toy that we’re all familiar with and understand that you put the proper shape into the proper hole and it falls into the cube.
The gentleman picked up the cube along with the square shape and preceded to jam it into the circle hole over and over wondering why it wouldn’t work.
Across from him a lady was asked to write her name on a piece of paper. After much scribbling and writing mindless jargon. She passed out and the attendants quickly put her oxygen mask on her.
Watching this made me think. What if this really happened in an airplane? These pilots couldn’t even align shapes or write their names let alone fly an airplane!
If you have the chance I highly recommend taking a visit to a hyperbaric chamber. A little know fact, hypoxia occurs the same way to the same person every time. In other words if you get dizzy, then get a headache, then you notice your fingertips turn blue (cyanosis) this onset of hypoxia will occur the same way every time. Going into a chamber will help you realize your symptoms as hypoxia begins to set in.
Think about adding your high altitude endorsement to your flight training agenda. A good pilot is always learning!
Read more from Jason on www.m0a.com and read about my own experience with hypoxia.
8 Comments, Comment or Ping
Andrew
Hey Vincent, do you know whether there is a hyperbaric chamber in Switzerland where one go and see for himself?
Nov 21st, 2009
Julien
I spent some time in a hyperbaric chamber a few years ago with my dive club. This was at the Wesley Hospital in Brisbane, Australia. They take dive groups in from time to time to experience high depth, it’s a fundraiser for the hospital.
We went “down” to about 5 or 6 atmospheres as far as I remember. Of course you need to constantly pop your ears as you go down. The air gets thicker (which you can experience simply by waving your hand in front of you, it takes more muscular effort to move the air away), the air gets more humid and everyone starts speaking with Donald Duck’s voice since air that is more dense carries sound frequencies differently.
This is different from what Jason describes, since in this case the pressure goes up, not down, so there is always enough oxygen. Euphoria and loss of cognitive capacities may happen though, as far as I remember that’s because of too much nitrogen in the blood, but don’t quote me on that.
The reason why hospitals have hyperbaric chambers chambers is not so much to treat dive accidents, but because some medical treatments work better under high pressure (see hyperbaric medecine).
Nov 24th, 2009
Patrick Flannigan
Back in college I heard about a hypoxia study that the aerospace department was putting on , so I quickly signed up. They stuck me in a flight simulator with an oxygen mask that would pump some other gas to reduce the amount of oxygen that I would be breathing.
They had me fly a simple IFR flight with vectors to the ILS – both healthy and hypoxic. The researchers told me that I was probably an outlier – as I did surprisingly well under the influence of hypoxia, but I noticed that my thought process was unusually sluggish. It seemed as though I was continuously battling the threat of instrument fixation and poor decision making.
A great experience: I’d recommend it to any pilot as it was an eye-opener.
Nov 24th, 2009
Sylvia
I was writing about this recently and thinking about the videos I’ve seen of people trying to force shapes into the wrong holes and similar tests. I’d quite like to experience it for myself (in a chamber, not in flight!)
Nov 27th, 2009
Max Trescott
The chamber experience sounds extremely valuable. I did my high altitude training by climbing to FL260 in a Cessna 421. Since it was pressurized, we there was no opportunity to practice getting groggy.
Dec 21st, 2009
Julien
Amazing story about hypoxia with ATC recordings of transmissions at machnoneflying.com.
Feb 11th, 2010
Sylvia
Good lord. It’s amazing he kept control of the plane. That’s an unbelieveable audio.
Feb 11th, 2010
Julien
I know.. At the start of the recording the pilot sounds absolutely drunk, it’s borderline funny.
Feb 11th, 2010
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