Great Minnesota Aviation Gathering 2015

This weekend (April 10th and 11th, 2015) is the Great Minnesota Aviation Gathering sponsored by the Minnesota Pilots Association at the Golden Wings Museum at the Anoka County Airport (KANE). I volunteered at the Minnesota 99s booth Saturday morning and had a great time. Its always fun to spend time with the other Minnesota 99s, plus meet other pilots, talk to people I had not seen in a few years, walk about and look at the beautiful airplanes in the museum, and get a few freebies (aviation brochures, magazines, post-it notes, and a t-shirt).

Also this year the FAA/CAMI hosted HYPOXIA TRAINING! The FAA/CAMI brought their Portable Reduced Oxygen Training Enclosure (PROTE) and gave pilots the opportunity to “experience hypoxia in a normobaric hypoxia training device that simulates altitude by reducing oxygen percentage without reducing atmospheric pressure” (http://www.mnpilots.org/gmag/). They offered a two hour class, which I did not attend, but I did try out the hypoxia chamber was really interesting. You get briefed and then enter the chamber which has the amount of oxygen you would find at 27,000 feet or about 7%. You can feel the lack of oxygen right away. We were given a worksheet and a monitor to measure the O2 saturation and pulse rate. As soon as I walked in the chamber, I could feel the lack of oxygen and I did not like the feeling. Typical symptoms are dizziness, headache, tingling, air hunger, fatigue, hot/cold, vision, numbness, nausea, etc., but what you feel is not the typical dizziness, headache, etc. For me it was like this weird pressure feeling, my thinking and responses were slowed, there was a bit of fatigue and dizziness, and my vision was affected. While the maximum time of the experiment is 5 minutes, at 2 minutes the FAA instructor was asking me to repeat a sentence and I repeated the first sentence and after he asked me to repeat the second sentence I was thinking ‘Nope. Not going to answer. I hate the way this feels and I am going to stop.’ So I just stopped and put on my oxygen mask. Right away it was as if someone had turned up the lights and everything was brighter and I noticed the others in the chamber. Then I watched the others go towards the 5 minute mark. It was a very interesting experience and something that I never want to experience live and in person.

More photos from Carly. Thanks Carly!