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fun and scary day at FL210


Austintatious

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10 hours ago, cliffy said:

Got another question or two-

For those planning on "pushing the button:" and letting the autopilot handle everything are you really thinking that you will accept passing out (by descending slowly) and hoping that the autopilot does the trick and saves you IF you wake up  at a lower altitude?

Just thinking about the thought process instead of pulling power all the way off and descending at red line to get your butt down while fully conscious. 

We can do that in the big iron (push the button and spin the dial) but we have good O2 masks on and working and we spin the dial a lot higher than 800 FPM and we hit red line. 

Does anyone go high with passengers?  If you do have you ever investigated your passengers personal health (pulmonary, heart issues) before you go up? Maybe you could handle it medically but can they? How about rear seat passengers having their O2 shut off in flight. How will you know they are hypoxic and not just sleeping? How will THEY know they have a problem? Might be  life or death situation.

Pushing the button is, for me, the last line of defense. If all else fails, I hope I can push the button and yes, hope to regain lucidity in thicker air. It's better, if only just, than letting the autopilot keep cruising along at FL260 while I try to muster enough consciousness to start a descent. But it is the very last line of defense. 

I have twice had issue above FL200 that required an immediate descent. Both times I recognized the problem and managed the descent myself, including telling (not asking) ATC what I was doing.  Neither time was an emergency descent required, but rather a well organized descent worked just fine. 

My wife has been above 20K with me once and twice I've had other pilots with me at FL230. It's not a normal thing for me with passengers.

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10 minutes ago, Austintatious said:

Holding your breath during a decompression.

Right.

What is going on that would cause a ruptured lung if you try that?  Can I presume this is a non equilibrium effect due to a fast decompression of cabin pressure.  In other words, if I were in a non pressurized cabin at 45,000 ft and with a mask, (not our wimpy mask - like a fighter pilot mask - its just a thought experiment - I don't plan to do this) then removing the mask I could at least not suffer a ruptured lung by holding my breath?

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I'm pretty sure there's no chance of rupturing a lung in our relatively slow climbing, unpressurized Mooneys. This can happen with SCUBA because of the rapid changes in pressure under water. It can also happen in the case of explosive decompression in a pressurized cabin. 

In our case, you'd have to hold your breath for the duration of a 10,000 ft climb or more. I can't hold my breath that long. And if you held your breath and jumped out of the plane at FL280, it might be a collapsed lung, not ruptured, as you fell into thicker air.

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22 hours ago, aviatoreb said:

Right.

What is going on that would cause a ruptured lung if you try that?  Can I presume this is a non equilibrium effect due to a fast decompression of cabin pressure.  In other words, if I were in a non pressurized cabin at 45,000 ft and with a mask, (not our wimpy mask - like a fighter pilot mask - its just a thought experiment - I don't plan to do this) then removing the mask I could at least not suffer a ruptured lung by holding my breath?

No... not in an unpressurized aircraft. 

The way the question was written, I assumed we had drifted to pressurized cabins as no one is flying at 410 and higher in non pressurized aircraft.  So how would one get to 410 cabin alt other than a depressurization?

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