Oximeter's

Longworth wrote:
He thought that if we needed to fly at high altitude
(over 10,000'), we would just use oxygen

Nice thing about the pulse oximeters is that they tell you exactly how
much oxygen you need...

Darrel,
Yeah, it's a nice thing to have but not essential to the pilot's
health or safety except the extreme cases. Not sure how expensive is
an oxygen system integrated with an oximeter (on-demand system) but
unless one is concerned about running out of oxygen, there is no point
of messing around manually with the regulator while flying. I'd be
curious to see how many pilots use the oximeter while using oxygen.

Hai Longworth

Longworth wrote:
Darrel,
Yeah, it's a nice thing to have but not essential to the pilot's
health or safety except the extreme cases. Not sure how expensive is
an oxygen system integrated with an oximeter (on-demand system) but
unless one is concerned about running out of oxygen, there is no point
of messing around manually with the regulator while flying. I'd be
curious to see how many pilots use the oximeter while using oxygen.

We do in the Lancair...

I'd be curious to see how many pilots use the oximeter while using
oxygen.

I don't. I may look at my nails periodically.

Ron Lee

I'd be curious to see how many pilots use the oximeter while
using oxygen.

100% of the time.
---
Ken Reed
N960CM

100% of the time.

Ditto. Used it yesterday when above 10,000. When cleared to 15,000 w/ a
70kt tailwind, I went without worry.

And FWIW, I'd rather use it often and find the oximeter isn't working when
it isn't critical then get it repaired.
--

Thx, {|;-)

Victor J. (Jim) Osborne, Jr.

"Ken Reed" wrote in message
...
I'd be curious to see how many pilots use the oximeter while
using oxygen.

100% of the time.
---
Ken Reed
N960CM

Hai Longworth wrote:

Yeah, it's a nice thing to have but not essential to the pilot's
health or safety except the extreme cases.

I'll disagree about "only in extreme cases". For a long time, I was
willing to fly at 12.5K ft without using O2. Every once in a while I'd
turn it on if I was feeling very tired, or was yawning a lot, and once
at 13.5K ft I THOUGHT I had turned it on, but hadn't, for a 2 hour leg.
I now think that having a pulse oximeter is an extremely useful tool to
tell you how well YOU'RE performing - we monitor the heck out of the
planes, but don't do a very good job of monitoring ourselves. The SpO2
monitor is a way of doing just that.

At any rate, here's a message I posted to the COZY mailing list
regarding an experiment (not controlled, but interesting nontheless) I
did earlier in the week:


We had previously had a discussion about SpO2 levels vs. time at
altitude.

So I flew to Las Vegas from Mojave today to pick up my wife, coming home
commercial. I took a different route - through the "Trona" gap, over
L72, and just south of China Lake. It's faster (more direct), but I had
to go higher to avoid mountains. On the way there, I decided to use my
SpO2 sensor to watch my O2 levels as I climbed without supplemental O2.

As I passed through 8K ft., I put on the gizmo. My SpO2 levels were in
the low 90's, and when I leveled out at 9500 ft., within a couple of
minutes at the most my SPO2 levels evened out at about 87%. Not great,
but OK for a while. After about 1/2 hour there, I climbed up to 11.5K
ft. for radar coverage, and within a minute my SpO2 levels were down to
78%. I did NOT put O2 on, but monitored my levels, which stayed at 78%.
I was yawning a bit, and deep breathing could raise the levels for a
short period, but when I went back to regular breathing, it would drop
back to 78%. After about 15 minutes at that level, I was cleared to
descend into LAS, and by the time I got down to about 6K ft, my SpO2
levels were back in the low 90's.

It seems clear that it takes very little time for the SpO2 levels to
change and stabilize when climbing and/or descending - a minute or so at
the most, at least for me.

On the way back, I set up the O2 system for both my wife and myself (she
gets headaches at 9K - 10K ft and above, it seems) and we headed out.
At 10.5K ft going west, with the O2 set to one liter/min for both of us,
our SpO2 levels were in the mid 90's - 96% for my wife, and 95% for me.
Personally, I didn't _feel_ much different, although I was definitely
yawning a lot less. I do know that I'm a lot less fatigued after O2
use.

It seems that _I_ should use O2 anytime above 10.5K ft, no matter what
the regs say - for my wife, it's about 9.5K ft for comfort reasons. It
also seems clear that there's no "reservoir" of O2 that's used up as you
climb - your SpO2 levels are dependent upon altitude, and not really on
the time at that altitude - a minute isn't very long.

--
Marc J. Zeitlin
http://www.cozybuilders.org/
Copyright (c) 2005

Marc,
Your experiment appears to confirm our thinking that we should be
oxygen when flying above 10K. In our last several long cross-country
trips, we flew at 9K and 10K approximately 3-4hrs stretches and did not
feel tired or any differences from flying at lower altitudes. Others
may need oxygen at lower elevation. I knew few heavy smokers with
limited lung capacity having to drag oxygen bottles along all day. Of
course the oximeter is a very useful device but oxygen supply is the
key to our health and safety. I'm not at all against the use of
oximeter but would certainly get O2 bottles before buying an oximeter.
Come to think of it, yawning is a pretty good oximeter too ;-)

Hai Longworth

I'm not at all against the use of
oximeter but would certainly get O2 bottles before buying an oximeter.

I'd get the meter before buying the bottles. You may find by using the
meter that you don't need oxygen at the altitudes you do fly, and you
may find that you need more oxygen than you thought (because you need it
lower) and that would influence whether and what size oxygen to get.

And it just bugs me that the thread title is in the possessive.

Jose
--
He who laughs, lasts.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Just Deleteting the (') from the thread name.
:-)

"Jose" wrote in message
t...
I'm not at all against the use of
oximeter but would certainly get O2 bottles before buying an oximeter.

I'd get the meter before buying the bottles. You may find by using the
meter that you don't need oxygen at the altitudes you do fly, and you may
find that you need more oxygen than you thought (because you need it
lower) and that would influence whether and what size oxygen to get.

And it just bugs me that the thread title is in the possessive.

Jose
--
He who laughs, lasts.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.