IMAC

IMAC - In The Box

It is hard to tell where we are at this point. I thought we were easing out of this Covid mess, but then I start hearing about the increase in cases and things starting to get restrictive again. Who knows what tomorrow will bring??

But luckily, I have been able to attend 2 contests. An IMAC contest in Broken Arrow, OK and a Pattern Contest in Sulphur, LA. Both contests were great. The atmosphere was good, and everyone was in a great mood. I think it was just good seeing everyone and interacting with them again.

At the contests, though I noticed a couple of things that I thought I would mention this month. It’s a safety/health topic that I think applies in both disciplines. I think it is more prevalent since we are starting the contests late and its already blazing hot. First is the most obvious, the heat. We need to double prepare ourselves with hydration and taking steps to deal with the heat. I have noticed a lot of people slow down during the weekend, or have bad rounds, headaches, etc. because they are being affected by the heat. The recommended amount of water is 8 oz every 15 minutes. I drank a lot of fluids, but there is no way I drank that much! Both contests provided free bottles of water, so all we had to do was go get it. We need to be very conscious of this, especially since we have not had the earlier contests to get ourselves acclimated. The second item I wanted to mention was eye care. We are dependent on these little guys in general, but especially in our sport. We don’t want to have our favorite ship up in the air and have an issue with our eyes. We had a particular issue at the IMAC Contest in Broken Arrow where a young man had gotten some dust under his contacts. He cleared the dust and thought everything was fine. After looking at the sky all day and dealing with the heat, apparently it aggravated the situation. The next morning, he could not even go out in the sunlight without experiencing a lot of pain. He tried with his sunglasses and then had some better success with some borrowed sunglasses. Upon further inspection of his glasses, we noticed that it did not block a lot of light. So, I did a little research on outdoor eye care. There are some basic suggestions for sunglasses. You need to have a quality pair of a good brand. You want to avoid lenses that are not perfectly smooth and do not have any waves in the lenses (this could also happen over time). These waves will cause headaches and vision issues. You also want a pair of glasses with a good UV protection coating. The style of glasses could also affect your eyes. The wrap around style that blocks some of the glare and wind from the side give you more comfort longterm than a flat pair of glasses. You also

need to wear them. Even if you can stand to look up in the bright sky long enough for a flight, you can cause some damage to

your eyes if not protected. Another issue the hot dry weather can cause with your eyes is dryness. With this dryness comes irritation and some scratching and damage. Add dust to that equation and you can cause yourself some problems. One of the products that has been suggested to be by my ophthalmologist is a gel drop. These tend to lubricate your eye longer. Do not be shy about using them. If you get something in your eye, regular eye drops can help with the flush. If you wear contacts and you notice irritation, it is a good idea to remove them and go to your glasses if your normal wetting routine does not fix the issue.

Just take care of yourself and make sure you treat your body right. You do not want to waste an opportunity of a weekend of flying on an issue that you could have prevented. We do preventative maintenance on our planes (especially you glow guys!) So, let do some on our bodies. I hope this was interesting and useful. I look forward to seeing you at a flying field soon! Rich Whitlow IMAC SC Regional Director.