# Aeromedical Training



## Courtney (8 Jan 2005)

Just came across this website tonight,,, happy to see that theirs finally an Airforce discussion board.  Anyways, I'm headed to Winnipeg at the end of the month for Aeromedical Training, does anyone have any info on the course?  

Thanks,
Courtney


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## aesop081 (8 Jan 2005)

I did mine in august of 2004.  I enjoyed it,  The first time in the chamber is not too crazy, its just to expose you to emergency drills.  The second time in the chamber is where you do the hypoxia demo.  They bring you to 35K feet and you take off you mask and answer questons on a sheet of paper until you start feeling symptoms of hypoxia. The you come down to 18K and the visual demo......wacth those colours !!  It was good short course. Lots of boring classroom stuff but definately try the barany chair !


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## Inch (8 Jan 2005)

I see they've changed it a bit since I did mine in Oct 01. Probably due in no small part to them bending a few of us. There were 2 guys on the course ahead of us that got the bends and two on my course including me. I got to spend the Sat of Thanksgiving weekend in the dive chamber at Toronto General Hospital with a male nurse named Richard.  

When we did it, we did 4 chamber rides. I don't remember which order we did them in but we did a rapid decompression one day, a slow decompression another day, a hypoxia run at 25,000ft and the second last run we did was pressure breathing at 43,000ft followed by a descent to 30,000 for another hypoxia demo.

The chair is fun as is the Vomitron. I think it's a pilot only demo, but they'll show you the leans as well as the Coriolis tumbling effect of moving your head too fast while turning. It's pretty fun. We also did the night vision demo unaided and with goggles in the black room. Pretty cool stuff actually, and of course the requisite laser safety lecture. After which, for the rest of your life you'll duck, close your eyes and tell those F'ing idiots to stop waving the laser pointer around.


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## aesop081 (8 Jan 2005)

The chamber profiles have changed alot in the last year.  Everybody does the spining simulator at CFSSAT.  It was actualy pretty cool to see how easy it is to get disorientated.


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## Courtney (9 Jan 2005)

Thanks for the info... were you guys on the Firefly?  I'm looking for a checklist, or any other type of study materials.


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## aesop081 (9 Jan 2005)

Sorry....i didn't got to the slingsby firefly. I went straight to CT-142s.  Inch migh though.


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## Inch (9 Jan 2005)

Courtney said:
			
		

> Thanks for the info... were you guys on the Firefly?   I'm looking for a checklist, or any other type of study materials.



Sorry, I bypassed PFT. Checklists are controlled documents and are issued out when you get to the school/unit. Copies aren't supposed to be made. You'll have lots of time to learn the procedures. In military flying, we verbalize and read the checklist for most stuff. There are some memory items but it doesn't take more than a week of repetition to get them into your head. Just recite them every chance you get, even in the shower.


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## Dirt Digger (30 Mar 2005)

Inch said:
			
		

> I see they've changed it a bit since I did mine in Oct 01. Probably due in no small part to them bending a few of us. There were 2 guys on the course ahead of us that got the bends and two on my course including me. I got to spend the Sat of Thanksgiving weekend in the dive chamber at Toronto General Hospital with a male nurse named Richard.
> 
> When we did it, we did 4 chamber rides. I don't remember which order we did them in but we did a rapid decompression one day, a slow decompression another day, a hypoxia run at 25,000ft and the second last run we did was pressure breathing at 43,000ft followed by a descent to 30,000 for another hypoxia demo.
> 
> The chair is fun as is the Vomitron. I think it's a pilot only demo, but they'll show you the leans as well as the Coriolis tumbling effect of moving your head too fast while turning. It's pretty fun. We also did the night vision demo unaided and with goggles in the black room. Pretty cool stuff actually, and of course the requisite laser safety lecture. After which, for the rest of your life you'll duck, close your eyes and tell those F'ing idiots to stop waving the laser pointer around.



Actually, the change to the flight profiles came out of the development of a pressure breathing bench, not due to decompression cases.  The chance of developing DCS is incredibly low...in fact, the risk is *much* higher for the staff at CFSSAT than any student going through the school.  As a student, you do a flight every tens years.  The AMT Techs do a flight usually every month or two.  (When I say "flight", I mean an actual altitude exposure over 18,000 ft)

I believe the two students on the course ahead of yours were from Comox (I was in Pensacola doing my Aerospace Physiology course at the time).  Without going into specific details, a number of changes came out regarding civilian flights following altitude training.


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## Sf2 (25 Apr 2005)

I did it a few years ago.....quite fun actually.  One of the students got so hypoxic that he tried to fight one of the instructors who was trying to hook the o2 back up.


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## Dirt Digger (1 May 2005)

short final said:
			
		

> I did it a few years ago.....quite fun actually.   One of the students got so hypoxic that he tried to fight one of the instructors who was trying to hook the o2 back up.



Not surprising.  Due to the nature of hypoxia, in a severe case the individual being affected often doesn't realize it...to the point where an instructor trying to hook them back up will be interpreted as interferring with their O2 connection (confusion) or an attempt to end the good times (euphoria).  It can also be the result of a serious first-sign of hypoxia: task fixation.  People will become so focused on doing the clip board questions that they forget about everything else to the point of LOC.  Not a good physiological symptom to have.

After a severe case of hypoxia is hooked back up, they will usually go back to doing the last thing their brain remembers doing...I've seen people continue with the questions on the clip board on a number of occassions.  If you ever get the chace to see the USAF shapeball or card deck videos, they're great examples of what a severe case of hypoxia will do to human performance.


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## Sf2 (1 May 2005)

well, its all good - he flies F18's now


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