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RFT 455: My Love/Hate Relationship With Oxygen Masks

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Synopsis

If you read my blog post My Love/Hate Relationship With Oxygen Masks, you know I have some great experiences in flight where the ever-present oxygen mask saved the day. If you're on LinkedIn you may have seen my recent video "Lights Out At Kadena", where having an oxygen mask was instrumental in my safely completing an Air Force mission. I had another Air Force mission where the absence of an oxygen mask had the potential to end very badly. I was flying an O-2A aircraft (military version of the Cessna 337) on a local training mission out of Patrick Air Force Base, Florida. During the flight, the standby magnetic compass, sometimes called the "whiskey compass", started leaking.  The liquid inside the whiskey compass is highly corrosive and the fumes can cause permanent neurological effects. And the O-2A does NOT have an oxygen mask! Fortunately, before the fumes could cause a problem, I came up with a solution: I retrieved an air sickness "barf bag" from my flight suit pocket and wrapped it around the leakin