The Chamber is a air tight room that simulates the partial pressure of oxygen (and other gases in the atmosphere) at altitudes other than the altitude you are at. We were taken the altitude of 25,000 feet and got to take off our masks and experience hypoxic hypoxia. They did this so that we might know our individual symptoms and be able to correct for it before loosing consciousness and blacking out. Some people feel euphoric, which is actually the most dangerous since you don't want to correct for it since it feels, well good. Me however, I just felt really tingly, like when you wake up after sleeping on your arm, except all through your body. They gave us some worksheets to work on since your cognitive thinking really goes downhill fast and some of the results were pretty funny. One of the questions was, "how many three cent stamps are in a dozen?" It must have taken me about 45 seconds to figure that one out!
This last picture is of the class practicing ground egress (or escape) training. Here they had a mock T-6 cockpit where we had to get out as safely as possible in as little time as possible. We were simulating a an aircraft fire. One of the former B-52 Navigators in our class actually showed us a much faster way to do it and our times quickly dropped.
Well that was pretty much the first few weeks in a nut shell. It's much harder to recall all the little details that you can remember when you right during the same day. Knowing this, it's a good incentive to keep on top of the writing!
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