This is why I like 12,500' and above. Strap on 02, climb to 17,500' and break out the news paper.
Some of Shatner's best acting.
Now that was tacky! you need to come to Denver and take an acro lesson with....Dagmar. In her Pitts. or watch her compete in her Extra.
Interesting. I have a big fear of heights, yet flying a plane doesn't bother me in the least. But looking over the edge of building, anything above 3 floors has my stomach doing the frug.
Channeling Manilow; feeeeeeeelings,,, nothing more than feeeeeeeeeelings.
Ahem - back to our regular program. I've noticed before, and again a few days ago that when I fly low, around 3-6k altitudes, I'm comfy, almost complacent about the flight. No stress, no strain, or anything like the tight sphincter of unease.
However, when I fly above 9000 feet, I get this strange feeling of some kind of insecurity or vague unease. Hmmmmmm. I snorted some O2 finally cause I thought it would be related to Oxygen deprivation, but I checked my SpO2 sat and was getting about 91 without the O2 snort, and up to 98 with it. I left the O2 running for about 30 minutes, and would still get the same feeling.
It's hard to pin down, not like anything I've had before. I can look down and when the ground is nearly 2 miles away, I get a strange sensation that if something went wrong, I would be in greater danger than if I was at low altitude. In fact, I like doing very low level flight.
I know empirically that flying higher is generally safer unless one is on fire, but the strange sensation like I was on my own up there(which I was), and anything that goes wrong will be unquestionably fatal.
Anyone had this before? Wondering if it's just fear of heights, or fear of being alone, or other psychosomatic deal or if I'm just being too critical? Never had any history of trouble up there, but it's one of those nagging things that won't seem to go away. Hmmmmmm.
You have a mild form of what my wife had, I had to fly between the trees with her. Down next to the ground, she was fine, 1000' white knuckles, 5000' shaking, 10,000' crying. She understood the intellectual realities of the safety of altitude and the hazard of being low, her dad was an AF test pilot, she grew up on Edwards AFB. Still though, she couldn't control it.
Yeah, that was a good read and agree that there is relevance. It also sounds like it would be a disqualifying condition.
I think that's it. I used to get that uneasy feeling sometimes in my little T'craft, sort'a like I was sitting balanced on top of a flagpole.
I always wondered what they would do if their arms were too tired to pull them back up.
