Pressurisation question
A silly question from a dumb SLF. As my holiday flight left the 38,000 ft cruise this afternoon my ears started popping pretty much straight away as usual, implying an immediate increase in cabin pressure. Then it occurred to me that I thought the cabins were typically pressurised to 8000 ft equivalent or so, so why should there be any change in cabin pressure before the aircraft descends through 8000 ft beyond which I would expect it to increase with environmental pressure ? I know, I know, a really silly physics question, but I'm genuinely interested to understand what's going on. My hobby flying rarely gets me to 6000 ft so it's not usually an issue. Perhaps a professional driver out there can explain it for me ?