Ears: pain, plugged, or perfect

[cocheese 0]

How's your ears ?
howzers?
Hzzzs ?
AM I YELLING ? MY EARS ARE PLUGGED.

[piisfish 140]

I voted for the 1st, cause usually when I go jumping I'm in a good health condition. If I jump like with a cold or something, then it's different.

scissors beat paper, paper beat rock, rock beat wingsuit - KarlM

[Casch 0]

When I first started jumping, and whenever I start jumping after a bit of a layoff, my ears tend to be...not so much plugged...just weird for the rest of the day. Like, they will pop and repressurise when I talk or eat or do anything really. But after a while of regular jumping I hardly notice it at all

[Evelyn 0]

My ears will start to plug up after my first jump and by the end of the day will be completely plugged. Now I take Sudafed (non-drowsy kind) and it pretty much eliminates the ear plugging. They might be a little plugged by the end of the day, but not too bad. I take it as soon as I wake up and continue taking it throughout the day. I've talked to several other skydivers who swear by it (that's how I found out). Hope this helps.

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing ~ Helen Keller

[Cepheus 0]

I never had trouble with my ears -- except one time, when I tried jumping after getting rid of a head cold.

Well, I thought I got rid of it.

Rode the plane down. That was the worst pain of my life, and the only time I'd gotten airsick. Like, ever.

--
Skydive -- testing gravity, one jump at a time.

[Adrenaline16 0]

My ears are always fine after a jump except one time, i hadnt jumped for 3 weeks cause of the weather, and finally when it was sunny i had a really bad cold, so i did three jumps that day anyway, my ears blocked in the airplane a little, and my teeth hurt when i opened my parachute and i couldnt hear that well when i got to the ground but that`s about it. I was pretty lucky

[Beerlight 0]

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1011420;search_string=ear%20problems%20;#1011420

previous post on the subject.... Learn how to perform the Valsalva Manuever during descent and after landing if your ears still aren't cleared. Never jump with a cold/congestion of any sort......

Buck

[cocheese 0]

thanks for the info. I missed that thread. Did a search too and didn't find much recent stuff.
Good to know not to clear the ears on the ride up.

[riddler 0]

I have small eustachian tubes, and it was worse when I started skydiving. I would get ear popping even the next two days after a jump. At the time, I worked at an elevation that was 2,000 feet higher than my house, so every day I would "practice" clearing my ears on the drive home every day, as I descended down a mountain highway, just to prepare myself for the next jump. I noticed after a few months of practicing and jumping, I had fewer ear problems after a jump.

Less than six months later, I started SCUBA diving. In SCUBA, it was much harder for me to clear my ears. The relative pressures seemed to be much greater with very little descent. I took it slow on descents until I got used to it. Now, I don't have too many problems, but sometimes get a "squeeze" if I'm descending too fast and not paying attention to my ears.

I don't have many problems with my ears now. They still clear a lot, but I don't think I notice it much - it's more automatic and not painful. I still clear them when I get under canopy (so I can hear other canopies), and again on the ground (so I can hear people when they ask me if that landing hurt as much as it looked ). I think SCUBA diving helped the most in conditioning my ears for pressure change.

Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

[freakflyer9999 1]

A number of years I made 5 jumps in one day with a head cold. My ears plugged up after the 3rd jump. The left one popped later that evening, but the right one didn't "pop" for 2 years. I had 65% hearing loss in that ear during those 2 years. One day it just popped and my hearing returned except for the high frequencies.

Kenny G.

[skydiverek 63]

Quote

I think SCUBA diving helped the most in
conditioning my ears for pressure change.

What is the equivalent descent in water to descending from 13,000ft to 0ft in in air??? In other words, how many feet of water equals 13,000ft of air (talking in "pressure" and "ear" terms) ???

[riddler 0]

Quote

What is the equivalent descent in water to descending from 13,000ft to 0ft in in air??? In other words, how many feet of water equals 13,000ft of air (talking in "pressure" and "ear" terms) ???

It's kind of a loaded question, because the total pressure is always the water pressure plus the one atmosphere that's on top of the water, so you can't really equate the two because you can't remove that atmosphere of air that's present when diving. But to get an idea, we'll ignore that fact for now.

An atmosphere of pressure, defined numerically, in pounds per square inch, is the weight of a column of air, one inch square, that goes all the way from sea level to outer space (whatever that means). The weight of that one-inch column of air all the way to space is about fourteen and a half pounds. The weight of that column if you are 13,000 feet above sea level is only about 9 pounds, since there is less air on top of you. 13,000 feet ASL is about 0.62 of one atmosphere. The weight of that one inch column of air going all the way to space is the same weight as a one inch column of water that's only 33 feet high.

If you are on the surface of water, you are already under one atmosphere of pressure, from all the air on top of you. If you descend 33 feet in the water, you will be at two atmospheres, since water is a much denser fluid than air, and you now have about 29 pounds of force per square inch on your body. 66 feet, you are at three atmospheres, 4 at 99 feet, and so on.

To figure pressure at depth, you can take the depth, multiply by 33 feet, divide by 14.5, and that will tell you the pressure, so to get an additional 0.62 atmospheres, you would need to descend about 20 feet in water. Or the reverse of that, since descending from .62 (13,000 feet) to 1 (sea level) is about .38 atmosphere change in pressure, then the equivalent depth of water descent would be 13 feet. So ball-park numbers, descending from 13,000 feet to sea level is about the same as submerging 12 to 13 feet in water.

Just as an aside, these numbers will be different if you jump in Colorado, like I do, because our field elevation is 5,050 feet, so when we jump at 12,500 above ground level (AGL), we are really 17,550 above seal level (ASL). Also remember that it's a bit off because we removed the air pressure on top of the water. Another note is that all these numbers are not exact - they are approximations off the top of my head. If you want an exact answer, never ask an engineer

Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

[ryoder 1,590]

Quote

Quote

I think SCUBA diving helped the most in
conditioning my ears for pressure change.

What is the equivalent descent in water to descending from 13,000ft to 0ft in in air??? In other words, how many feet of water equals 13,000ft of air (talking in "pressure" and "ear" terms) ???

Starting from sea level:
- Ascend (in the air) to 18,000 feet and the pressure is halved.
- Descend (in the water) to 33 feet, and the pressure is doubled..

"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

[cocheese 0]

We're under a lot of pressure.
The engineers.... one long answer, and one short answer.
Yea ... what they said.
So can a skydiver get the "bends" so to speak ? I think it's possible by going to altitude fast and then going fast in freefall. Not as severve as underwater, but i think i heard some symptoms can occur. Anyone know if this is true ?

[peacefuljeffrey 0]

My ears are usually perfectly fine when I skydive.

I have had a cold for about a week, mostly in my nose, but partly in my head, and I jumped twice yesterday. I had very mild plugging in my right ear once I was under canopy, and I did some swallowing and a little puffing with my nose held, and it took care of itself.

I remember one hellish experience when I was flying back from Georgia, where my mom and I were visiting my brother during his Army basic training.

I had fallen asleep in my window seat, and I had my Walkman headphones on, the kind that go into your ear a bit. I awoke while we were on descent into Newark, to the sensation as though someone were using the Jaws of Life inside my ear canal. I don't know what happend, but I guess since I'd been asleep maybe I hadn't swallowed during the descent from cruise altitude, and the pressure difference caught up with me. All the subsequent swallowing I did was in vain. I don't know how long it took, but my ear didn't stop hurting for quite a while.

Nothing like that's happened since then, fortunately.
-

-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

[jannu 0]

ride to altitude... only green is missing so I get the traffic lights to my snotpaper...

But after freefall.. couple of easy blows with nose closed, theyre ok. Ears I mean... in the beginning of season it was a lot worse... pain pain pain

[Stumpy 284]

I don't think so - as far as i remember, the Bends is cause by increased solubility of Nitrogen in the blood at a greater pressure than normal ground pressure. As you never increase the pressure above 1 ATM on a skydive its not an issue.

of course - i may be talking out of my a**e!

Never try to eat more than you can lift