6000 amsl during spin and spin recovery training, probably lowest here :)
When I was living in the US, I got our Cessna 140 up to 12,500 crossing the Sierra Nevadas. It took a LONG time. On some trips in the mountains I ridge soared the plane to get it up high enough when the wind was favorable.
I had the Auster up at FL090 one time. I called Scottish Information for basic service before making the overwater crossing back home and the guy on the other end chuckled when he heard ‘Auster’ and ‘flight level niner zero’ in the same sentence!
I had our 150 hp Piper Warrior PA-28-151 up to FL130 a couple of times. No problem if temperatures are close to ISA – but takes forever, of course.
FL95 near MTOM in our C172B
Around FL120-130 in a glider.
Fl 195 in the supercub, using the portable oxygen set from a glider.
I am a little bit surprised. My “normal” cruising altitude is FL180 in the SR22T, but I regularly take it to FL250. That is the limit for non-pressurized aircraft and I do it with a cannula and O2D2 pulse regulator and wear no mask. In this picture I was trying out for fun in the winter time how the emergency descent mode (EDM) works in the Cirrus with the Perspective glass cockpit. So, I climbed to FL250 and asked London Radar (this was at night over the North sea) if I could try this out and not touch anything other than the radio button. They agreed. So the emergency descent mode kicked in after a few minutes and started blaring at me if I was awake, but I did not respond so it took me down automatically at max IAS for that altitude. Pretty cool. However, it was quite cold outside and I was doing this above the North sea at night. … Oh. Check the outside air temp on the PFD.
This thread reminded me of this (not because of any particular comment, it was just on my mind!) – http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR0701.pdf – which caused a massive stir at the time in the US amongst the regional jet operators (often young inexperienced crews, willing to take risks to show off etc). TLDR version is that the crew flying an empty CRJ decided they wanted to join the FL410 club, conditions were not right, engines flamed out and the engine shrouds contracted quicker than the core and seized both engines. Crew didn’t admit the double engine failure to ATC and ended up crashing and dying despite 6 airports being within gliding distance at the time the engines flamed out.
FL104 over Sarajevo in a C152
Aeroplus, nice feature. Can you hold up O2 saturation at FL250 using only a cannula and no mask?
