Archives: flyingtheory

Airmanship – Having a plan for every “What if?”. Knowing the limitation of yourself and your aircraft. Awareness of the big picture. Comfortable in the environment you are going to fly

Decompression Sickness – The nitrogen contained in the air we breathe dissolves into our blood, if the pressure surrounding us reduces too rapidly this nitrogen escapes the liquid and  becomes bubbles in our blood and body tissue.

Boyle’s law – The pressure of a given mass of a gas is inversely proportional to its volume at a constant temperature.

If the air pressure surrounding a balloon decreases, the balloon will expand.

In the climb – Expanding trapped gasses in the body can cause abdominal pain or in rare cases teeth pain. Burping or flatulence can be used to relieve these conditions.

In a decent – Compressing trapped gasses in the body can cause middle ear pain or sinus pain. The Valsama maneuver can be used to relieve these conditions.

Hyperventilation – Over breathing causing high oxygen levels and low carbon dioxide levels in the blood. Stress and panic during the episode will further aggravate the condition. Calmly breathing will restore blood levels back to normal

Hyperventilation – more common at high altitude, when suffering a physical injury, high levels of stress or sleep deprivation.

Hyperventilation – Shortness of breath, dizzy, chest or abdomen pain, fainting.

When rapidly decompressed, air can fog up as the air’s moisture condensates.

Hypoxia – Normal Functions quickly become difficult as blood oxygen saturation drops. Euphoria, Pale face, tingling and struggling to preform simple tasks. Recovery is rapid once oxygen is taken.

When flying at night, if the runway or surrounding lights start to disappear during the approach. You are likely descending into high terrain between the aircraft and the runway.

Motion sickness occurs when traveling in a vehicle. Most likely because signals received by the eye do not match the signals received by the organs in the ear.

Historically, this was only likely to happen when the body is poisoned, causing vomiting.

• Checklists are used to prevent accidents.  Following a checklist reduces the chance of making mistakes