Did you see the video shot from the A-Star's belly? If this is genuine (and
I have no reason to think it's faked), the pilot made a more or less
horizontal approach to the peak -- he did not descend from a ridge-lift
situation. The summit was a blunt arrowhead of hard, windblasted snow --
the rotor wash didn't move the surface snow around at all. There was no
level ground, no way to get both skids onto the snow at once. No ground
effect there because of the way the terrain falls off in all directions.
The machine hovered for two minutes, repeatedly pressing one skid into the
hard snow and leaving an impression. Then the collective came back, the
machine rose a foot or two, torqued around and dove for the valley.

I call it a landing. It was close enough that a ballsy climber could have
flopped into the machine for a ride home.

Seth
Comanche N8100R

"Skywise" wrote in message
...
Chris Colohan wrote in
:

"Peter Duniho" writes:

I'm surprised there hasn't been any mention of this yet. IMHO, this
isn't getting nearly enough attention (here or in the media in
general).

http://www.mounteverest.net/story/Fr...persUtopiasumm
it-VIDEOMay272005.shtml

Did it land, or didn't it? Apparently there is some controversy:

http://www.kantipuronline.com/kolnews.php?&nid=41844

Chris

Unless I misread the article, it seems that the issue is if
they had permission to land on the summit. Since they weren't
explicetly given permission to land on the summit, the attempt
doesn't count towards the record.

Kinda reminds me of the flap over the world land speed record.
Who broke mach 1 first? ThrustSST in 1997 or the Budweiser
rocket car in 1979? It's controversial to this day.

Well, I'm still damned impressed anyway, on both events.

Brian
--
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