Why nitrogen?

"Morgans" wrote in message
...

"Peter Dohm" wrote

It appears that they were lucky and the oxygen was'nt needed; but it does
remind me of some of the speculation surrunding the Paine Stewart case.
Two hypotheses around my local airport were that 1) the tank was
inadvertantly filled with nitrogen or 2) that someone misread the
labeling on the regulator on/off handle--which is counterintuitively
labeled with "on" or "off" and arrows pointing which direction to turn
the knob for the desired result. I don't recall whether the case was
ever fully resolved; but a lot of pilots found a couple of areas worthy
of their maximum vigilance!

Learjets don't use bottled oxygen; they have pressurized air from the
engines.

--
Jim in NC

Learjets do indeed use bottled oxygen and it is found in the nose bay area.
There is a thin capillary that runs into the cockpit to a pressure gauge.
The pressure gauge displays the pressure in the tank regardless of whether
the valve is turned on or off. The pressure in the tank can read full on
the ground but at low temperature at altitude will read several hundred
pounds less.

--

*H. Allen Smith*
WACO - We are all here, because we are not all there.