I think it speaks volumes about my CFI that I was able to pay attention to this material. He even made it interesting. Yesterday, I was in class literally all day, 8am-8:30pm, then headed to the airfield immediately afterwards, and after BSing a bit, dug into Aeromed.
We just covered the basics, and are finishing it up in a group ground lesson on Monday, but it was clearly a valuable and critical topic. We covered the different types of hypoxia and the symptoms, hyperventilation, some FAR/AIM regulations that pertain to that, and other physical & physiological symptoms that should ground pilots, such as congestion, medications, etc.
Also went over "I'M SAFE," which is an acronym for basically a preflight checklist of yourself, the pilot. Illness, Medication, Stress, Alcohol, Fatigue, and Eating habits. This was all very straightforward and mostly common sense, but the value of the lesson is clear.
Of particular interest to me was the section where we discussed what happens to the ear canal during ascent and descent, especially to higher altitudes. I've always had excessive ear pain in commercial flight, particularly on descent (I had ear tubes put in when I was 2, probably why), so it was very informative to see diagrams of what is actually occurring inside your ear.
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