One thing I did when I was going through training was to go to what was called “Low Pressure Training.” The class was just one day long and it was designed to teach air crews how to recognize when their oxygen was too low while in flight. There was initially a class lecture about what to expect and then we all climbed into this huge tank. It was a heavy steel cylinder about 8 feet wide and perhaps 30 feet long, with several portholes along the sides. I think back on it and I’m surprised that no one felt claustrophobic in there. It was a small contained space that would have given some people a fit. It was all too exciting for me to think about the confinement. There were two hospital corpsmen inside with us and they had oxygen masks to keep them from going goofy, while the rest of us had nothing to start with.
Once everyone was seated the medical personnel outside the cylinder began to lower the oxygen level inside the tank and drop the pressurization. We were instructed to do different tasks; some played cards, some played patty cake and others wrote on white marker boards. It didn’t take long for us to feel very happy and be unable to think how to play a hand of cards, connect hands during patty cake, or write anything on the marker board. It was weird feeling, like being very intoxicated and unable to function at all.
The idea was to show us the symptoms of oxygen deprivation and hopefully be able to recover from the situation. I don’t know how effective the training was, because by the time a person would realize what was happening, it seemed almost too late. We were allowed to grab an oxygen mask once everyone was suffering from low oxygen and the recovery was fast enough if you could get the mask on properly. Several needed assistance from the hospital corpsmen. One can only assume those guys would have been dead on their own in a plane flying through the friendly skies.
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.
Once everyone was seated the medical personnel outside the cylinder began to lower the oxygen level inside the tank and drop the pressurization. We were instructed to do different tasks; some played cards, some played patty cake and others wrote on white marker boards. It didn’t take long for us to feel very happy and be unable to think how to play a hand of cards, connect hands during patty cake, or write anything on the marker board. It was weird feeling, like being very intoxicated and unable to function at all.
The idea was to show us the symptoms of oxygen deprivation and hopefully be able to recover from the situation. I don’t know how effective the training was, because by the time a person would realize what was happening, it seemed almost too late. We were allowed to grab an oxygen mask once everyone was suffering from low oxygen and the recovery was fast enough if you could get the mask on properly. Several needed assistance from the hospital corpsmen. One can only assume those guys would have been dead on their own in a plane flying through the friendly skies.
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.
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