Dead Reckoning

A long time ago, on an island far far away, I opened a small skydiving operation on the beautiful Caribbean paradise that is known as St. Croix USVI. It was a great adventure if not a lucrative one. We jumped, we dove, we drank on the beach. We did just about everything but make plane loads of money. Oh well, you can’t have everything. It also led to on of my favorite stories, the rescue of the Stormion’ Normin.

THE RESCUE OF THE STORMIN’ NORMIN

Never fly in the cockpit with someone braver than you.

By 1997 things had started to slow down in the ferry flying business and I was only making two or three trips a year. Three years after the mid-air collision, the St. Croix Valley skydiving club broke up. A married couple bought most of the parachute equipment and opened up operations in Hutchinson Minnesota. At that time I decided that it was my opportunity to start a business supplying aircraft to this new drop zone. I borrowed some money from my grandmother, bought a Cessna 182 jump plane, and Skerry Air was born.

Skerry Air was an all encompassing aviation company that included aircraft leasing, skydiving instruction, and pilot services. Within three years I had a fleet of four Cessna jump planes and was actually making some sort of a living. Despite having a full time job and raising our two kids, Cathy took over management of the business, leaving me to do all the fun stuff. I definitely got the better end of that deal.

One day I was hanging around the drop zone talking with John, a fellow instructor, when one of the pilots told us that his mother had a condo on the island of St. Croix. I don’t remember whose idea it was to start doing tandems down there but before I knew it we’d hatched a plan to start a small skydiving business on the island. Pushing tourists out of planes and landing them on the beach sounded like tons of fun. What could be better than spending all day skydiving and flying over beautiful turquoise water and all night drinking rum on the beach.

Because both John and I were full time skydivers, and had wives with real jobs, opening a winter skydiving operation seemed like the perfect gig. Jump in Minnesota during the summer and in the Caribbean in the winter. Who could possibly find fault with that plan? It turns out our wives could. Being the classic naive and clueless husbands we thought that our better halves would have no problem with our plan to spend the winter in paradise while they held down the fort with the kids and the cold weather. They weren’t super excited but somehow, unbelievably, they let us go.

So we loaded up one of my jump planes, a Cessna 182, with all the skydiving gear needed to run the operation and headed south to seek fame and fortune. We didn’t expect either but we were pretty sure we were going to have good time.

We set up shop at the St. Croix International airport in what was essentially a large closet in the corner of a large maintenance hangar. This tiny room became not only our office but our dorm room as well. John and I bought a couple of folding beds to sleep on that we could move out of the way during business hours. It was all very professional-ish.

The skydiving business on St. Croix was so-so, at best. John and I handed out flyers, we made deals with all the local bars to advertise for us, we had stickers made and placed brochures in all the hotels. Nothing worked. It turned out that the cruise ships, that we’d hoped would provide most of our customers, rarely spent the night there. That meant that the tourists didn’t usually have the time it took to go skydiving. We did make enough money to keep the doors open by taking the locals and ex-pats for jumps over the beach. The Americans who moved to the island were especially glad to see us. It turns out you can only relax on the beach for so long before yearning for a little excitement to break up the monotony of paradise.

I loved island life. John and I traded a couple of jumps for scuba diving lessons. After that whenever we weren’t going up, we were going down. We also got to know a bunch of the locals who hung out at the beach bar each night watching the sun set. It was heaven.

It didn’t take long for things to fall into a routine. Make a few jumps in the morning or early afternoon. Then a quick scuba dive before drinks on the beach with the laid-back club. I was starting to think that I could really get used to a life like that. It had been literally months since someone had asked me to risk my life flying in some hunk of junk over the ocean. So of course that had to change.

One day a man drove up to our office and asked John and me if we were the skydiving guys. We admitted as such and he introduced himself and said that he needed our help with a rescue. Now skydivers are not often asked to rescue anybody, so I was intrigued. I mean, what could we do? I suppose if his cat was stuck in the top of a tall palm tree I could land on it. But aside from that I was at a loss. His name was Cory and he told us he was the owner of a long line fishing boat that had become disabled out in the middle if the Caribbean Sea. The ships name was The Stormin’ Normin, and it had lost all power when its main fuel pump gave up the ghost, stranding them hundreds of miles from land. He said that the boat was in international waters so the US. Coast Guard wasn’t responsible and none of the South American countries were interested in helping either. The fix was simple, install a new fuel pump. The problem was that not only was the Stormin’ Normin stranded, it was stranded smack dab in the middle of the Caribbean Sea, about as far from land as you can get.

So why was the owner of a disabled fishing boat approaching a couple of skydivers? Because we had a plane that you could drop things from, like people, or, in this case, a fuel pump. While John and I stood there in the parking lot with our arms crossed Cory proceeded to tell us his big plan.

Cory’s plan was simple. We’d hop in my jump plane, fly out to the Stormin’ Normin, and drop the replacement fuel pump to the crew. Easy peasy. Cory even came prepared; he opened the back door of his car and pulled out an oblong Styrofoam shell about twice the size of a football. It was spray painted bright orange and had 50 feet of nylon rope attached to one end; presumably to make it easier to grab once it was in the water. He even had a second dummy styrobomb made up so we could do a practice bombing run before dropping the real thing. Cory had apparently put some thought and effort into his plan. It all seemed simple enough.

Right. Just fly 300 miles out to the middle of the Caribbean Sea, find a tiny fishing boat in the middle of the ocean, drop down to an unsafe altitude, and bomb it with a fuel pump. Simple. Of course, when you’re out in the middle of the ocean, the very last place you want to be is down low. Because if anything goes wrong you’re in the water before you know it. Not enough time to prepare, and not enough time to call for help. Yep, the whole plan was pretty dangerous and stupid. So of course I said yes. I mean, how often do you get to risk your life for complete strangers for little reward and no benefit to yourself? OK, all the time if you’re me but that’s beside the point.

To his credit the owner’s plan for dropping the pump wasn’t half bad. With the long nylon rope trailing behind the styrobomb there was a good chance that some part of the package would land within swimming distance of the Stormin’ Normin’s crew. And if I got lucky the rope might actually end up draped over the deck of the ship and no one would have to get wet or eaten by a Kraken or something. One thing we had going for us was that we wouldn’t be relying solely on luck because I’d done this before. Well, not this exactly, but close enough. You see I’m a Pumpkin Toss pilot.

Every Halloween the skydivers in western Wisconsin get together to jump out of planes, drink vast quantities of beer and bomb cars with pumpkins. Really. Leave it to skydivers to think that jumping out of airplanes isn’t exciting enough. What happens at P-toss is we put a derelict car in the parachute landing area and the skydivers toss pumpkins out of planes and try to hit the car. Good fun. Of course jumpers being jumpers, there’s usually a bunch of drunks standing on the car as it’s being bombed. Wouldn’t want things to get boring would you? It’s not as dangerous as it sounds because from 500 feet hitting a car with a pumpkin is hard. OK, standing on the car while it’s being bombed with pumpkins is dangerous, but that’s what makes it fun. Anyway, I’d done this sort of thing before.

Seriously. I love to swoop. And I especially I love to swoop ponds.

swoopnoun

Definition of swoop 1: an act or instance of swooping2: a single concentrated and quickly effective effortwas done in one swoop—often used with fellsolved everything at one fell swoop

Skydiving has evolved a lot over the last 34 years of my jumping career. (Wait, 34 years? What the hell? When did I get old?) Anyway, Back in my day when the earth was still cooling and dinosaurs romed the earth us cavemen used parachutes to, you know, get down safely so we could go jump again. Then some bright boy came up with the idea of going fast close to the ground. And everything changed. No longer satisfied with landing softly some of us had to go fast too. Really fast!

Of course whenever you invent a new sport there are growing pains. We lost a lot of young men trying to figure out how go fast under experimental parachutes. Notice I didn’t say how to go fast safely, that came later. First we wanted to go fast. And go fast we did, with the reckless abandon and certain invincibility of youth. Thankfully we got tired of doing ash dives for our friends and figured out how to go fast safely. Well, more safely anyway.

Training and new techniques helped us be safe and new parachute technology allowed us to go faster than we ever thought possible. As the parachutes got smaller we went faster. My first parachute was 200 square feet and was considered crazy small and dangerous. Now I jump a 79 square foot canopy and am thinking about getting one a little smaller. I was just watching a video of someone jumping a 39 square foot rig. Crazy.

Want more fun? Just add water!

Ok, that video didn’t have much to do with the water but it was the world record distance swoop I think. If you want to see great crashes go to the Youtube.

I’ll leave you with this picture of me bandit swooping a local golf course pond. If I can find the picture I’ll tell the story of how I got the nickname “water boy.”

Jordan is one of he most beautiful places in the world to fly over. I seriously have enough great photos to make a coffee table book. It’s no wonder they filmed “The Martian” here.

I know, I know. “Hey Kerry, you took another year off from posting. What the hell?” Well, dear reader, like I’ve said before, I’m lazy. And like I’ve said before, I make no promises but I’ll try and post more often. because I still have a boat load (plane load?) of stories to tell and it would be a shame to keep them all to myself. So without further ado , a story.

So there I was, sitting behind a desk, answering phone calls. ( Not every flying story starts with “It was a dark and stormy night.”) I had been hired to man the phones for my good friend Quazy’s skydiving operation while he was out of town visiting his mother. This was back in the dark ages before cell phones so when the landline rang I assumed it was someone looking to thrown out of a reasonably good airplane. Nope, it was quazy. I was a little surprised because he’s just taken off in his Cessna 182 about an hour before. He was flying from Minneapolis to North Dakota and while planes are fast and all that, it was still a going to take him at least 2 hours to get there. How did I know this? Because he’d called me prior to leaving to get my opinion on the line of thunderstorms that were going to be in his way. I’d told him that I thought he should wait and let them pass but he went anyway. (If you’re not going to listen to me why call?)

My opinion was based on a number of things.

1. Thunderstorms aren’t to be missed with if you can help it.

2. The beat up, old, broken down, jump plane didn’t have much in the way of flight instruments. (none to be exact) . So even if a pilot had an instrument rating and a lot of experience flying in bad weather that plane wasn’t the one to do it in.

3. Quazy had neither and instrument rating or the bad weather experience to use it if he did. Which he didn’t . See above.

4. Thunderstorms aren’t to be messed with!

But Quazy was not to be deterred. He was going to visit his mother come hell or high water damn it! You see Quazy suffered from the same thing many doctor/pilots suffer from. The mistaken impression that if they are outstanding and above average in one field you then must therefore be amazing at everything you do. Was Quazy a doctor you ask? No. He was something worse. A professional skydiver. Those guys are the worst! How could some scraggly dude in cutoff jean shorts possibly have a bigger ego than someone who literally holds people’s lives in their very hands? Because professional skydivers do that too, only at 125 miles an hour.

So because Quazy was one of the most experienced skydivers in the world that obviously means he can handle any weather that comes his way. Turns out his ego was writing checks his Cessna couldn’t cash. Quazy was calling me from a hotel in central Minnesota and needed me to come and get him. “Where’s the plane Quazy?” I asked, not caring if he was hurt. (pilots are a dime a dozen. Planes cost real money) ” He told me it was in a farm field and was undamaged. But he was too shook up to fly so he needed me to come and fly it out for him. That got my attention. Quazy was a lot of things, but easily rattled wasn’t one of them.

When Quazy approached the line of thunderstorms he went lower. And lower Aaaand lower. Until there was no lower left. And when he tried to do the whole discretion is the better part of valor thing and run away he found that the clouds had closed in behind him. He was trapped like a rat in a cage. At that point he decided to stop wishing he was on the ground and do something about it. He spotted a nice little country road in the middle of nowhere (because that’s where you put them) and landed his plane without a scratch. He pulled into a short driveway next to some farmers shed and hitched a ride into town.

That’s where I come in Quazy wanted me to fly the plane out of ther before the FAA got wind of his little incident. The storm had passed by the time we got to the plane. At this point Quazy declared his constitution had recovered enough to allow him to finish what he started so he ws going to be the one to fly the Cessna out of there.

The road/runway had a slight hill on it so Quazy told me to drive up to the top to watch for cars and signal when it was clear. I was just shy of the top of the hill when I saw a powerline that we’d failed to notice before. I looked in the rearview mirror and was alarmed to see the little Cessna pulling out onto the road already! Quazy hadn’t waited for my signal, he just going for it. I jumper out of the car, stood under the powerline and started jumping up and down while pointing at the powerline. It didn’t matter, Quazy was rolling. He finally saw me just after he broke ground. The plane pitched up briefly. (Can I make it over the powerline?……Nope) Not sure if he could make it over the of the lines he went under. Now this powerline wasn’t one of those tall transmission lines that you could fly a 747 under. No sir. This was a short farmland powerline just barely tall enough to tractor under, or a Cessna. I ducked as he lowered the nose adn dove under the powerline with only a few feet to spare. Was the excitement over? Not by a long shot because just as he was squeezing under the powerline, a car full of teenagers crested the hill going the other way. Imagine their surprise when they came over the top of the hill and were greeted with a windshield full of Cessna. Quazy was just as surprised. He pulled up sharply and missed the car with a good 10 feet to spare. And where was I during all this? I had a front row seat because I was still standing/ducking under the powerline. Ity was all very exciting.

The kids in the car didn’t even have a chance to stop before the plane was over and gone. The look on their faces as they drove past me was priceless. I just smiled waved.

Having had a pilot’s license for over 30 years I’ve seen a lot of changes. Changes in how we navigate. Changes in the instruments that monitor our engines. Changes in how ATC (BIG BROTHER) keeps track of us on the sky.

But the most important innovation in aviation over the last thousand years head got to be how we take pictures of ourselves while we’re flying and past themon social media. Because face it, the only reason any of us got our pilots license in the first place was to get clicks,I mean chicks.

When I first started flying I’d bring along my old 35mm point and shoot. It was amazing! All I hsd to do was point the camera at something out the window I thought was cool. Take the picture. Pull the film out of the camera. Drive to a drugstore or one of those crazy little photo booths. Give some 16 year old kid my film (after filling out the envelope) wait 6 months or so. (More if you completely forgot about it) drive back to the drugstore. Dig in the alphabetized bins for your pictures (while peaking at a few of the other customers pictures because everyone’s got a little peeping tom in them) And voila! You got your pictures!

Of course now days things are a bit different what with all these new fangled contraptions pilots can use to take pictures of themselves. And yes, even an old guy like me can figure out how to use some of the features on my phone. Like hyperlapse.

Not really sure what hyperlapse is but it’s kind of cool. Check it out.

Cool huh?

So that didn’t work. Might be because I tried posting this while cruising in the Citation asst 43,000 feet. We’re do have wifi but it’s only so so. I’ll try and fix it later.

Instead of spending time with my family on this beautiful Easter Sunday I’ve been trapped to fly someone else’s family back home after their own Easter weekend.

Now don’t get me wrong I like flying jets as much or more as the next guy but I could of really gone for a big Easter dinner at my parents. (MMMMM! HAM!)

But duty called, so Big Troy and I fired up the Great White Hope (Cessna Citation 7) and made a short hop to Winona Minnesota for to pick up our passengers.

When we got there we had some time to kill because dad says we need to be in place at least 30 minutes before the passengers want to leave and because said passengers are always late. Unless you’re late, then they’re early.

Anyway, with time to kill I wandered over to a couple of relics that had been pushed off into the grass to spend what was most likely the rest If their lives.

• 

• 

Then the pax showed up and it was time to make the quick run down to Fort Worth Texas. The flight was fast and smooth and in just over 2 hours we were on the ground unloading our cargo, three of which were of the toddler variety, one fast asleep draped over his mother’s shoulder while the other two tumbled down the stairs spilling melted chocolate easter eggs and dragging their mini carry on bags across the ramp.

I flew left seat back home while Troy cleaned tiny chocolate fingerprints off the leather seats before the boss could see them. It took a little bit longer to get back to Wisconsin but it was another beautiful day to be cruising at 41,000 feet so I didn’t really mind. Sometimes I can’t believe they actually pay me to do this.

• 

The sun had just set as I flew the approach back to the home base. There were dark clouds filled with flashes of lightning moving in as we touched down but that didn’t keep me from making one of my better landings in the jet. I think I’m finally starting to figure out how to get the big bird on the ground without scaring the poor guy sitting next to me. About damn time too.

It was pretty quite on the ramp as we shut the engines down. Just one sleepy line guy sitting in the tug waiting for us to clear out so he could tow the plane back into the hanger and go home. Just another Easter in the aviation world.

When we last left our intrepid heros (Marcio and myself) they were cruising along in a turbo Cirrus at 24,000 feet over the north Atlantic, enroute to the land of beautiful blondes (Iceland) from the land of golf and scotch (you figure it out).

We hadn’t been up at altitude long before Marcio started complaining that the nose cannulas weren’t giving him enough oxygen and that he was getting light headed. I wasn’t a bit surprised. 24,000 feet is pretty damn high to be using the little plastic hoses that just shoot oxygen up your nose. Up above 18,000 feet you really should be using full blown oxygen masks. So why weren’t we? Because we were shooting a TV show that’s why. And the cameraman thought I would be hard to hear us if anything interesting happened. Like passing out due to succumbing to hypoxia. Now that’s good TV! I wanted to use the oxygen masks in the first place because the particular type of nose cannula had goofy things on each side that made us look like we had big white plastic mustaches.

I was feeling fine because I have a pretty good tolerance for high altitude flying but Marcio need to change to an oxygen mask so he unplugged his nose cannula and began trying to hook up the mask instead. Ands when I say try I mean try because as soon as he went off oxygen to make the switch he began to lose it. He had a lap full of clear plastic hoses and couldn’t figure out which one went where, or how to untangle them, or how to plug what hose into where, or, or, or,???????

I watched that process unfold and was shocked by how fast he became totally useless due to lack of oxygen. If I hadn’t been there to take over and get him set up with a mask he would’ve passed out and the Cirrus would have kept flying on past Iceland before crashing when it finally ran out of fuel. Heck, it probably would’ve made it all the way to Greenland.

Once Marcio had his mask on and the O2 flowing he was right as rain. The rest of the flight to Iceland was uneventful except that I made my copilot a bit uncomfortable when I peed in a ziplock bag to relieve myself of excess bladder pressure.

In Iceland we were lucky enough to get some real life ocean survival training at the Icelandic Water Survival Institute training center. (A name I totally made up because I have completely forgotten what they are really called) The instructors as IWSITC had us done our survival suits and then jump into the water to demonstrate their effectiveness. Did we jump into a nice heated pool you ask? No we did not. We were taken on a short boat ride about a mile offshore and were dumped into the north Atlantic….Off the coast of Iceland….In the winter.

Lucky for us the survival suits work pretty darn good except the ones they had us use had removable gloves that let water in so our hands got pretty cold. The suits we fly in sre one piece with only your face exposed. Once in the water we practiced solo swimming, buddy swimming, and rescue swimming. Swimming in the suits isn’t too hard. The suits easily keep you afloat in the salt water so you just lay on your back and swim backwards with your arms.

The last thing we did was practice getting into the life raft. Which isn’t as easy as it sounds. And doesn’t really sound easy. Because it isn’t. How do you get into a big rubber life raft while wearing a heavy neoprene survival suit while bobbing in the ocean you ask? Easy just grab the strap by the door with your cold numb hands, then blindly search for the rope ladder that dangles underneath the raft with your foot. Once you somehow manage to get your foot on one of the straps just push pull heave flop your way over the side and into the raft. Easy! Just remember, if you let go of the raft, even for a second, the wind will take it and it will be gone.

This was my second time going through the training so it only took me 3 or 4 tries before I was able to get into the raft. But Marcio was another matter entirely. Being a big guy and not very athletic he just couldn’t manage to get enough leverage and momentum to get himself up over the side of the raft. (For some reason he didn’t find my words of encouragement funny at all!) After watching him struggle to get into the raft by himself I finally grabbed him by the shoulders and heaved him inside the raft.

Bottom line? If we have to ditch in the ocean and Marcio get’s out of the plane with the raft he’d better hope I make it as well or he’s going to die. That realization did wonders for my big Brazilian copilot’s confidence because we still had two of the most dangerous ocean crossings left to do on that trip.

As you might have heard, up here in the great white up we’ve had, how shall I put it? A shit ton of snow this winter! Sorry for my french but damn it’s deep!

So can you guess what happens when the temps finally start to rise dear readers? That’s right, solids magically turn into liquids. And when there’s too much of the liquid stuff laying around things tends to get messy.

This is the current state of my skydiving school. I say current because the snow has just started to melt and it has nowhere to go so I wouldn’t be surprised if the water level continued to rise.

I went out there yesterday and spent the better part of 2 hours putting gear (parachutes) boxes of paperwork, and anything else I could save up on packing tables and counters. So far all we’ve lost is some first jump certificates and waivers but all the carpeting will have to come out and I’m sure a lot (or all) of the sheetrock will have to be torn out. Not a great way to start the season but on the positive side I now have a float plane!

Winter evening over Wisconsin.

Oxygen, it can come in right handy when you’re trying to make your brain work well enough to do complicated things. Like fly an airplane. Problem is, airplanes perform best when they are up at altitude where oxygen can be in short supply. What to do?

Well, you can either make it by pressurizing the cockpit with compressed air from the engines, like in a jet, or bring it with you. Now flying in pressurized aircraft is a breeze, (see what I did there?) All you have to do is set the field elevation of your destination in the little window and forget it. Easy peasy.

Now if you’re not lucky enough to be flying a pressurized aircraft but still want to enjoy the magic of flight above 12,500 feet you’re gonna need to bring you oxygen with you in a more primitive manner. Like in a bucket. Which is essentially what a portable oxygen tank is.

You can get the O2 from a portable bottle one of two ways. You can use a cannula, which is basically a tube that runs under your nose with two small prongs that stick up into your nostrils or a full blown oxygen mask. The cannula work on most pilots up to around 18,000 feet or so. After that a lot of pilots need to switch the mask type in order to get enough O2 into their system.

I use the term “most pilots” because every pilot develops signs of hypoxia (lack of oxygen) at different altitudes for different reasons. If you’re old, out of shape, a heavy smoker, and heavy drinker, (cargo pilot) you might require O2 at a lower level than say, a young, marathon runner who reads to the blind in his spare time. (present day US Air Force pilot, with a pretty scarf and pressed flight suit)

Another big factor is acclimation. How much time do you spend at altitude not on oxygen? Remember many men have climber Mt. Everest without oxygen because they spend a month getting their bodies used to working in a high altitude environment.

Which is how come I have a particularly good tolerance for flight at high altitude. I work “up there” almost every day as a pilot and more importantly as a professional skydiver. Every summer I spend 6 days a week riding in a plane up to 14,000 feet, strapping some big 250 guy to my chest, stand up, walk down the aisle of the plane and jump out. All without oxygen. And that’s getting into freefall. That part can be quite demanding, believe me. Do that 15 times a day, every day all summer long and your high altitude tolerance will go up too.

What difference does it make you ask dear reader? “Aren’t pilots supposed to be on oxygen any time their above 12,500 for more than 30 minutes?” You might ask? Well, technically, yes. But it’s one thing to be pleasure flying in the good old USA, where you can get your portable O2 tank filled up at almost any airport you stop at. It quite to ferry a plane across the planet on a tight time schedule where oxygen refills can be hard if not impossible to find.

And because someday you might really need an hour or so of oxygen to, say, clear a really nasty thunderstorm or an area of unforecasted icing, you’d be wise to save a little O2 “just in case”

So why not just fly under 12,500′ when not in fear for your life? Lot’s of reasons. Especially when flying over the ocean in small single engined aircraft. You see when you’re ferrying a single, or any small aircraft for that matter, you’ll want to be as high as possible for a number of reasons.

Number 1. Better performance. Unless the high altitude winds are in your face you’ll get better range out of your plane if you’re up high, say 14,000-18,000 feet, because when flying across the ocean you never know when you’ll need that extra hour of endurance.

Number 2. Better radio reception. Back in the old pre GPS days (yes, I’m that old, I made 7 or 8 solo Atlantic crossings using nothing but a compass. Just like Lindberg.) the higher you were the farther out you could pick up the radio NDB beacon in the Azores. And that was the big thing back before GPS. Because once you were out over open ocean you really had no way of knowing what your position was. Oh, you got a winds aloft report before you left but if it was wrong you could be blown miles off course, and when you’re trying to find a small island in the middle of the ocean the farther out you pick up the beacon the better.

Number 3. More time to fix a problem and call for help. If you’re cruising along and your engine quits, you’ve got a lot longer to get out a position report and get ready to ditch if you start at 18,000 feet than if you start out at 8,000′.

So what’s does a real life ferry pilot to do when he wants to fly at high altitudes over the ocean but only has a limited supply of oxygen? Well I can’t speak from personal experience due to the whole self incriminating thing but I do know this one ferry pilot really well and here’s what he told he does. It turns out that this pilot has a really good tolerance for flying at high altitudes without supplemental Oxygen. He told me the trick to keeping his wits about him is to be really still in the cockpit. No excess movement. And if I, I mean he, get a little light headed or winded just a few hits on the old Oxygen bottle and he feels right as rain. In fact he’s done practical experiments using a sensor on his finger that measures the O2 level in his blood. It is truly remarkable how a few breaths of oxygen will bring the levels from the low 70s back up to levels.

And according to this unnamed ferry pilot this method can make a portable oxygen bottle go a long way. Apparently, I’ve been told, and you can’t prove anything.