Vague feeling of unease when > 9000. Not related to O2

docmirror

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Channeling Manilow; feeeeeeeelings,,, nothing more than feeeeeeeeeelings.

Ahem - back to our regular program. I've noticed before, and again a few days ago that when I fly low, around 3-6k altitudes, I'm comfy, almost complacent about the flight. No stress, no strain, or anything like the tight sphincter of unease.

However, when I fly above 9000 feet, I get this strange feeling of some kind of insecurity or vague unease. Hmmmmmm. I snorted some O2 finally cause I thought it would be related to Oxygen deprivation, but I checked my SpO2 sat and was getting about 91 without the O2 snort, and up to 98 with it. I left the O2 running for about 30 minutes, and would still get the same feeling.

It's hard to pin down, not like anything I've had before. I can look down and when the ground is nearly 2 miles away, I get a strange sensation that if something went wrong, I would be in greater danger than if I was at low altitude. In fact, I like doing very low level flight.

I know empirically that flying higher is generally safer unless one is on fire, but the strange sensation like I was on my own up there(which I was), and anything that goes wrong will be unquestionably fatal.

Anyone had this before? Wondering if it's just fear of heights, or fear of being alone, or other psychosomatic deal or if I'm just being too critical? Never had any history of trouble up there, but it's one of those nagging things that won't seem to go away. Hmmmmmm. :loco:
 
Not related to the OP's unease, but thought I'd note that one of the few times that the fear of heights struck me while airborne was the first couple times I flew a glider maneuver called "boxing the wake".

I think that it was the nearby tow plane's movement across the field of view that triggered a greater sense of "space" and "height" than I normally sense while flying. Two minute video of what it roughly looks like:
 
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