Search Results for: oxygen

Weve all been through enough ground school to know and understand that high ambient outside temperatures adversely impact aircraft performance. The relationship between temperature and altitude, of course, is termed density altitude, which describes a locations pressure altitude adjusted for temperature. To put it another way, density altitude is your elevation when measured in terms of the density of the air rather than height above sea level. It can be higher or lower than your actual altitude above sea level.

Cirrus Aircraft was first with an integrated whole aircraft parachute system, and continues the tradition of safety innovation with the introduction on Monday of its Perspective ESP flight stability augmentation system. Available on all SR-series aircraft for delivery this fall, the system ensures the aircraft will remain within a safe operating envelope even when the […]

Absolutely excellent article (“Extreme-Altitude Hazards”) by Jim Lockridge in the May issue summarizing issues that confront pilots in the high-altitude environment. I cant recall ever seeing a better or more thorough summary of the topic, and Ive been reading aviation publications for a long time. This subject has been of particular interest to me for over 30 years, after I flew a sailplane to 41,000 feet in a mountain wave west of Boulder, Colo.

JUNE 2010 — ON A COLD WINTER’S DAY, an elegant Boeing 737-700 painted a subdued gray flew low toward the east over a very rural portion of Delaware, arched its back and turned to the north, then reversed course to land on the just barely 5,000-foot runway at Georgetown (KGED). With a spirited roar of […]

We leveled off at 5,500 feet, I set the power, and we watched the Texas Hill Country slide by below us. The three of us, Tom Canavera and Gary Buchanan from Sierra Industries and I, were heading over to Gillespie County Airport in Fredericksburg to grab a bite to eat at the regionally famous and […]

Many piston singles have much of the avionics capability of turbine-powered airplanes, but the Piper Matrix now has it all. Late last year Piper certified the same Garmin G1000 flat-glass avionics system in the unpressurized Matrix, and its pressurized sibling, the Mirage, that had been offered earlier in the turboprop Meridian. The claim that the […]

Most of my flying career was spent with an oxygen mask either five seconds away, or with it on and breathing 100-percent oxygen. After many sessions of lectures, altitude chambers and flight missions, oxygen education became a kind of gray thing. While the essentials stayed in the back of my mind, the details faded. That is, until my best friend died at the hands of the hypoxia monster. I learned and re-learned a lot during those next few weeks. One of the things I learned (or re-learned) is just how hostile is the high-altitude environment when were not prepared for it. Often, unfortunately, even if we are prepared, it can still rear up and bite us. Of course, the big problem with high-altitude flight operations is it can be a long way down to a safer level, where the air is denser. As well discover, an inability to breathe without some kind of assistance is just one of the problems.

Certain universal questions pop up over and over, like “Why is there something, when there could be nothing?” or “Can a jet fly faster than its own exhaust velocity?” Let’s look at the second one; I’ll get back to the first in a future column. Reciprocating engines inhale about 15 pounds of air for every […]

The controls felt like a Citation CJ, but the numbers on the new Collins Pro Line 21 displays didn’t belong to any CJ I had ever flown. Level at 45,000 feet, the true airspeed was 425 knots. And it had taken only 23 minutes to reach that rarified altitude after a near-maximum weight takeoff. How […]

In my 45-year flying career I have been fortunate to experience many of the different ways to earn money as a pilot. Occasionally I am asked what the best flying job is. I have to answer, “That depends. … It depends on the kind of person you are, what kind of flying you like to […]