refilling O2 bottles on the road.

When traveling with a motor glider out west ( USA), what do people do, when trying to get their O2 bottles refilled?
I noticed in the notes on airport services available at smaller airport, that most have no O2 refilling services available.
Carrying a full size tank in car to fill from is not an option.

Salutem,
Kimobear
flatlander who likes O2

Find a medical supply house?
Also look for SCUBA shops, industrial gas suppliers (like AGL) but be forewarned, they may do O2, make sure they can do BREATHABLE O2.

Maybe call some local to you places, explain what you're looking for and why, see what they say.

On a trip to Salida, CO a few years back, we went to the local O2
supplier and rented a large bottle.Â* I believe the cost was $42 for a
month.Â* At the end of the week, we offered free O2 to the other glider
pilots, returned the bottle, and enjoyed the rest of the trip.

$42 for the rental vs. $40/fill up at the airport.Â* We had our own trans
fill hose.Â* Now I have a large bottle (one size below the really big
one) which fits in an aft external storage compartment of our RV.

On 6/2/2018 10:52 AM, Charlie M. (UH & 002 owner/pilot) wrote:
Find a medical supply house?
Also look for SCUBA shops, industrial gas suppliers (like AGL) but be forewarned, they may do O2, make sure they can do BREATHABLE O2.

Maybe call some local to you places, explain what you're looking for and why, see what they say.

--
Dan, 5J

On Saturday, June 2, 2018 at 10:30:46 AM UTC-7, Dan Marotta wrote:
On a trip to Salida, CO a few years back, we went to the local O2
supplier and rented a large bottle.Â* I believe the cost was $42 for a
month.Â* At the end of the week, we offered free O2 to the other glider
pilots, returned the bottle, and enjoyed the rest of the trip.

$42 for the rental vs. $40/fill up at the airport.Â* We had our own trans
fill hose.Â* Now I have a large bottle (one size below the really big
one) which fits in an aft external storage compartment of our RV.

On 6/2/2018 10:52 AM, Charlie M. (UH & 002 owner/pilot) wrote:
Find a medical supply house?
Also look for SCUBA shops, industrial gas suppliers (like AGL) but be forewarned, they may do O2, make sure they can do BREATHABLE O2.

Maybe call some local to you places, explain what you're looking for and why, see what they say.

--
Dan, 5J

Ask for ABO (aviators breathing Oxygen) when you go to a O2 Supplier
Go to this page for information about Oxygen Transfilling.

http://www.craggyaero.com/MountainHi...20Info(md).pdf

Richard
www.craggyaero.com

Barry- talk to me when you get a chance.

On Sunday, June 3, 2018 at 7:23:11 AM UTC-7, Richard Pfiffner wrote:
On Saturday, June 2, 2018 at 10:30:46 AM UTC-7, Dan Marotta wrote:
On a trip to Salida, CO a few years back, we went to the local O2
supplier and rented a large bottle.Â* I believe the cost was $42 for a
month.Â* At the end of the week, we offered free O2 to the other glider
pilots, returned the bottle, and enjoyed the rest of the trip.

$42 for the rental vs. $40/fill up at the airport.Â* We had our own trans
fill hose.Â* Now I have a large bottle (one size below the really big
one) which fits in an aft external storage compartment of our RV.

On 6/2/2018 10:52 AM, Charlie M. (UH & 002 owner/pilot) wrote:
Find a medical supply house?
Also look for SCUBA shops, industrial gas suppliers (like AGL) but be forewarned, they may do O2, make sure they can do BREATHABLE O2.

Maybe call some local to you places, explain what you're looking for and why, see what they say.

--
Dan, 5J

Ask for ABO (aviators breathing Oxygen) when you go to a O2 Supplier
Go to this page for information about Oxygen Transfilling.

http://www.craggyaero.com/MountainHi...20Info(md).pdf

Richard
www.craggyaero.com

Or maybe better just rick up and buy a cylinder and everything you talk about is how much steel you have to oxy-cut :-)

The main point is you never want to get in the medical oxygen/prescription stupidity.

And that advice if great, but confusingly the advice to ask for aviators oxygen (to avoid the prescription medical trap) is sometimes taken to confirm beliefs that industrial/welders oxygen is somehow different than aviators oxygen. As long as its bulk oxygen from a cryogenic fractional distillation source (which all industrial stuff will be) it's all the same. We've flogged that donkey to death enough times on r.a.s.

On Saturday, June 2, 2018 at 9:52:46 AM UTC-7, Charlie M. (UH & 002 owner/pilot) wrote:
Find a medical supply house?
Also look for SCUBA shops, industrial gas suppliers (like AGL) but be forewarned, they may do O2, make sure they can do BREATHABLE O2.

Maybe call some local to you places, explain what you're looking for and why, see what they say.

Can you give an example of unbreathable O2 and who supplies it?

It happens I just did this exercise with the local welder's supply.

For a 250cuft tank, the cost was $28 for the O2 + $10 for a month's tank rental(not charged for a week) + $250 for a tank deposit (refunded on return) + $9.50 for a hazmat fee.

After talking to them, one difference for aviator's O2 is that they actually have a lab test a for purity. So there is a paper trail and a neat certificate saying 99.9% purity. (I didn't ask if the remaining .01% was the hazard.)

Given the physics of liquid O2 and the cleanliness requirements for dealing with 2000psi O2, probably very few welder's bottles would fail the test. Next time I'm there, I'll try to ask if there is anything different about the filing procedure that might affect the odds. But the cost is so low that I can't imagine getting anything else.

No, I can't.
I go based on having Scott airpacks refilled for emergency use at manufacturing plants I have worked at in the past.
User manuals back then stated to refill with "breathing oxygen", thus my comment.
I thought part of that was humidity, but not sure.

If someone went to a decent supplier and asked for "breathing oxygen" and were told, "no difference", then fine.

On Sunday, June 3, 2018 at 7:25:01 PM UTC-7, Charlie M. (UH & 002 owner/pilot) wrote:
No, I can't.
I go based on having Scott airpacks refilled for emergency use at manufacturing plants I have worked at in the past.
User manuals back then stated to refill with "breathing oxygen", thus my comment.
I thought part of that was humidity, but not sure.

If someone went to a decent supplier and asked for "breathing oxygen" and were told, "no difference", then fine.

Moisture differences in different labeled oxygen supplies (again we are talking about O2 from cryogenic fractional liquid distillation) is an old wives tale. There is no water vapor in the gases produced by fractional liquid distillation, and nobody is going to add any downstream to the high pressure gas. High pressure O2 is extremely reactive and the systems would not tolerate moisture in it. Imagine the rust/corrosion eating holes inside a steel cylinder in a pure oxygen high pressure environment with water condensed inside of it. Yes they nay have surface treatment, but its only partially effective. Humidity in medical oxygen is added to the oxygen at the point of administration when the oxygen is essentially at room pressure and the delivery system is all inert plastic and silicone.

There are risks in dealign with this stuff. Handling any high-pressure gas and such a powerful oxidizer as high-pressure oxygen is dangerous, I hope people minimize those risks, there have been had fires during transfilling and nice articles about that in Soaring Magazine in the past, luckily nobody was injured or killed. Personally I'm OK with breathing welding supply oxygen as long as I know the handlign has been reasonable. I have been more worried just seeing people handle cylinders with less than respect than they deserve.