Search Results for: oxygen

I could feel my mind going deeper and deeper into a fog. No matter how hard I tried to focus, I couldn’t seem to make sense of the basic problems that I had been tasked with. What is the sum of 15 plus 4? The question wasn’t hard, but it took all of my brainpower […]

During 18 months in 2003 and 2004, SpaceShipOne, Scaled Composites’ original air-launched spaceplane, made 14 free flights of which six were powered, the rest glides. Although SS1 was a novel design with an untried type of motor and was venturing into inhospitable territory last visited by the X-15 almost 50 years earlier, the privately funded […]

I reached over to the left of my seat and squeezed the red tabs of the oxygen mask. The mask hissed as the inflatable straps began to fill with air. I pulled the device out of its holder and placed it over my face. Immediately after I released the red tabs, the cup and goggle […]

The maintenance delay in Baltimore, the frenetic jostle of Atlanta’s crowded ramps, the low drizzly ceiling in Minneapolis, the myriad little challenges and rewards of the day — all these things have faded with last light, and only the dusky shadows of the day remain. The flickering gas flares of the Bakken Oilfield fade astern […]

It was a growing cumulus cloud, cauliflower-shaped with distinct edges. Our IFR route was taking us right through it. “You’re not going to fly through that, are you? That’s a thunderstorm,” said Martha, clearly alarmed. “Well, yeah. But that’s not a thunderstorm. It’s not tall enough. We’re only at 17,000 feet. Besides, it’s right in […]

A 17-year, 26,000-hour A320 captain, who was a check airman for his airline as well as a certified airframe and power plant mechanic, called a friend to say he would fly over his house later that day to show him the Aerostar 601P he had bought. At a quarter to five the friend, a retired […]

Especially if we include Experimental aircraft, there are many different makes and models from which owners and operation may choose, each of them having their own set of features. Whether we want an aircraft to perform aerobatics, do aerial application, conduct training or even engage in cargo operations, theres a model out there, somewhere, optimized for the mission. But all aircraft embody compromises: none literally can do everything.

In the thin air above 20,000 feet, with German fighters bearing down from all directions, the inside of an unpressurized American bomber in World War II was an altogether foreign world. Freezing cold, oxygen-deprived and hundreds of miles from the nearest friendly fighter escort, the bombers faced desperate odds with each mission deep into enemy […]

I read with interest and obvious necessity for possible future application, your article on hypoxia, Get Your Mask On, in December, 2014.I fly a Malibu Mirage PA 46. Ive had several decompressions in the low 20s that were attributed to squat switch/pressure switch failures. Ive now added another immediate action to pressurization problems:

Today’s flight instructors are coming to terms with a new presence in the cockpit of their training aircraft: the Apple iPad. Students are bringing iPads with them to run one of a few apps that give them unprecedented situational awareness, a level of situational awareness, in fact, that makes old-school aviators wonder how in the […]