Helicopter Breaks Record By Landing On Mt Everest

[SiuDude]

Through the miracle of plate tectonics, Everest continues to grow at a rate of 2.4in/6.1cm per year. Call it an act of God or whatever you like, but it happens, and provably so. The Chinese government sent out another expedition just this year to resurvey Everest (Qomolangma to them) again. The trick will be to find out when the trend starts to reverse itself, and go land there that day. But that may not be for another several hundred thousand years, by which time Daniel Delsalle and the engineers at Eurocopter won't care much anyway that their record was broken.

And ultrarunner is right on about the garbage. The Nepalese government pays an incentive to Sherpas that bring back discarded oxygen bottles. I guess the whole 'garbage in, garbage out' philosophy isn't followed so well when you're dying (and I mean literally dying) to summit.

Regards,
Starsailor

I learn something new every day!

 

[User546]

(max theoretical speed of a rotorcraft is 218mph)

Do explain, I'm interested...

 

[Dan CFI/CFII]

"Yeah, I don't consider any of those folks that climb Everest to be true mountaineers. Leaving garbage behind is simply unacceptable.

Only Reinhold Messner has climbed the way is should be done."

Yeah, Messner was the only one who has ever done Everest straight Alpine style.... (and for the record, I love Messner's style)

C'mon man, times change. Hillary and Norgay were definately true mountaineers, but working within the limits of the technology and climbing ethics of the day. I agree that today, to leave a bottle is absolutely awful, but in '53?

Maestri was once thought to be merely a jerk, rather than the utter mountain-terrorist he is considered to be today. And some people even defended him at the time!

The number of bottles up there is steadily decreasing, and I forsee that the Maoists might drive so much more tourism away that there will be some "Sherpas" getting bottles for purely economic reasons.

Helicopter's taking tourists up there? I don't see it happening. The weather is bad far, far too often, there's nobody that will wait in Lukla for the weather to improve (Lukla is interesting for about a day, perhaps two, but then you've got to get up to Namche or down towards Jiri). That, and far too many people would die doing that. There are enough people who need the Gamov's by the time they get above Namche...

OK, back to your regularly scheduled thread...

Dan

 

[LAZYB]

Haven't done much thinking about helicopters and aerodynamics lately, but the primary issue would probably be "retreating blade stall".

 

[mattpilot]

Do explain, I'm interested...

As LAZYB said, its primarily do to retreating blade stall - either that, or the rotorblade tip reaching a supersonic speed.

Engineers came up with the theoretical max speed and some british people took a lynx helicopter and modified it heavily with special high lift blades & variable RPM.

The fastest production helicopter is the MI-8 with a top speed of 198mph (if i remember correctly).

Now thats all Indicated. TAS will vary with altitude, of course.

Do a search on google if you want more detail on the subject.

 

[mattpilot]

Hmm... it seems the helo wasn't modified. Or so the press release says.

Anyhow... on another forum someone estimated a TAS of 60kts.

But it still is very likely that they made a vertical landing (hover). The one element i haven't considered was wind. A strong wind at that altitude shouldn't be hard to come by