Many moons ago I was driving down the 300ft hill I lived up, on my way to a 2300 report for a night TFS.On the way down my ears blocked up but,being young(er) and keen(er) than I am now I thought I would give it a go. During the descent into Tenerife I was so distracted/incapacitated by the pain/deafness that I gave control to my colleague and did my best to perform P2 duties on his hand-signals.I was even more reluctant to go tech at 0500 in TFS than I had been at 2300 before leaving, so we got a patch on HF (after landing when I could HEAR AGAIN!)to a Doc. As we had no decongestants on board he suggested taking a couple of Asprin 30min before descent(which he reckoned would reduce the inflammation in the offending tissue) and descending the cabin as slowly as possible.Fortunately in the older 737's you could descend the cabin at a very low rate, as long as you gave yourself time by starting down early;It worked, but it was a much wiser & very relieved pilot that stepped off with ears intact;god forbid that we suffered a pressurisation problem,the other guy would have been very single crew.A lesson learned but I'm still sometimes caught out immediately before/after a head-cold,much less during.
Last edited by captplaystation; 24th Oct 2005 at 19:20.