10,500 feet is way the heck up there!

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message news:DS_ib.770859$Ho3.201262@sccrnsc03...
Don't your ears bother you?

One thing I noticed when I started flying was that my ears stopped popping
after about 20 hours. I thought it was normal to get acclimated, but when
I mentioned it to some other local pilots they said they all still have
to clear their ears.

Benefits of a big head, I guess. ;-)

You routinely descent at 3500 feet per minute, Ben?

My ears never bother me in normal flight, but dropping *that* fast might
cause someone some pretty severe discomfort.


Couple of things; You think 10.5 seems high? Try spending 300 hours
or so not getting above 600 agl, then going up to the "high" altitude
of 1200'! When I looked at the altimeter, it hit me that, hey, I used
to think this was LOW altitude. And this was just from a summer
towing banners. I can only imagine what those Ag pilots think!

Two, a friend of mine used to fly jumpers in a King Air. Surface to
14,000 and back in about 10 minutes, most of it in a climb. He had to
be going down over 6000 fpm. After a few hundered hours of that, his
ear drums had so much scar tissue on them that they wouldn't 'seal'
enough to cause pain. Don't know how true it was, but that's what he
told me, only way I can think of he could manage to do that day after
day.

--
Mike