Darrel Toepfer wrote:

Longworth wrote:

Yeah, it's a nice thing to have but not essential to the pilot's
health or safety except the extreme cases.

You're missing the point. Oxygen starvation is insidious. You don't
notice anything till the situation is critical, and you still think
everything's going great. Then you lose consciousness.

The advantage of an oximeter is that you can monitor your blood oxygen
level while you're lucid enough to react in case something goes wrong.


Not sure how expensive is an oxygen system integrated with an oximeter (on-demand system) but
unless one is concerned about running out of oxygen, there is no point
of messing around manually with the regulator while flying.

Not sure what you mean by "messing around with the regulator". The
regulator is usually opened all the way when supplemental O2 is being
used. Flow rate, OTOH, is something that normally does require some
"messing" on a portable system, so it flows enough O2 to meet demands at
a given flight level.