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Operating altitude / service ceiling

Try [email protected] and you will get Eric Westeren, he is a nice chap.

I bought my MH oxygen system in Mannheim at Friebe, just because I walked into the shop on a fuel stop and took it with me.

Get the biggest cylinder you can fit into your aircraft, don't worry about consumption charts to find the most economic cylinder. I have emptied a cylinder with not totally closing the valve and after 2 week most oxygen was gone, a 2nd cylinder is a good idea.

Try to get a DIN cylinder and 1st stage regulator, not an 540 aviation thread. If you want get it refilled in continental Europe. If everything fails, and there is no scuba shop or refiller, you can get a standard cylinder in a DIY shop (done that in Germany at OBI, looks like B&Q). Rothenberger 2l and use it with the regulator. I'm not a huge fan of adapters.

@Peter: Did you bring cylinders with you? How did you get past TSA?

United Kingdom

The argument of 540 thread versus DIN thread will run and run...

Can scuba shops (those that sell oxygen) directly refill a DIN thread cylinder? The one near me cannot. An adapter is needed for both DIN and the 540, and making up a hose is a neat solution.

I bought the MH stuff from the USA by mail order. No problem shipping empty cylinders.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Can scuba shops (those that sell oxygen) directly refill a DIN thread cylinder? The one near me cannot.

Why? How do they fill scuba tanks with DIN thread?

LDZA LDVA, Croatia

Dive Northampton can fill DIN, but they wouldn't fill 540. Yes, most scuba oxygen cylinders (rebreather) in Europe have DIN connectors, but female not male connectors. The other advantage is to use a small welding cylinder.

United Kingdom

The answer must then be the usual one: check out your refill options before buying the kit.

I had been round and round the scuba circuit ("you are not a diver are you???" etc) and while currently I can, apparently, get a refill locally, that hasn't been the case for most of the 10 years I've been flying with oxygen. So I rent my own cylinder from BOC and have a hose adapter for the 540 thread.

BOC have just jacked their prices up a fair bit. The last swap cost me £36 (and lasts me close to 2 years) and the annual rental is £119.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

BOC have just jacked their prices up a fair bit. The last swap cost me £36 (and lasts me close to 2 years) and the annual rental is £119.

64 € rent for 200l and 30 € for a refill. Oxygen plant is just 15 km from my home so I am always breathing the finest oxygen from home

If you got a hangar, get a 200l cylinder. By far the easiest option.

I have been looking at mountain high prices, AFE at Oxford supply and I am not sure if you order from the states, pay carriage, then import VAT there is much of a saving on list price.

As to operating altitudes, as discussed in the beginning of this thread, I just spotted that Meteox (a site I often use) has added a 'cloud' page looking upto one week ahead. As Peter indicated earlier, there is no easy way to gauge cloud tops, but I take it that on this Meteox page, the white stuff is associated with fronts, so high clouds, and the darker shades with medium to low clouds.

Private field, Mallorca, Spain

I can't find any explanations of the meteox.com imagery, but it does look like

  • the base URL (www.meteox.com) takes you to just the radar return

  • the "lightning over Europe" shows lightning, plus an IR image (I say "IR" because as I type this, the visible image is already dark over eastern parts, yet meteox shows stuff there)

  • the "satellite and radar" combines radar with an IR image

I don't see any way to estimate cloud tops heights other than the usual guesswork, looking at the type of front. There is no cloud top temperature scale. The only site I recall seeing which had a temperature scale is a Turkish one, updated every 6hrs. A wonderful Spanish site which had a scale of actual tops height got killed after a few months.

Do beware that the meteox.com radar image doesn't go below the Alps into most of N Italy. This is not obvious... I have just examined a lot of their archive images and sure enough there is a nice big circle that's missing. That's how it always was.

Amazing they now have a 5-minute UK radar feed. That used to cost loads of money!

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

The Dutch Meteox website does show cloud tops as a "Radar Service": http://buienradar.nl/wolkenhoogte

However, this is for NL only. I haven't found a similar service for other countries yet...

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