Mary Shafer wrote in message . ..
On 19 Nov 2003 18:32:38 -0800, (The
Enlightenment) wrote:

The French built a High Altitide Helicopter called the Aerospatiale
SA-315B Lama. Hovered at 17000 ft. It was for the Indian Airforce.

I think this airplane ended up being used on Denali by the US Forestry
Service rescue folks. I read a book by a woman who had climbed Denali
at the time of a rescue effort and she mentioned seeing this helo. If
only I could find the book again--the only thing I remember is that
she used both her first and middle names, which isn't much help when
trying to track a book down on Amazon.

Mary

One of the targets or challenges for Helicopter designers should be an
out of ground effect hover of 30,000 feet with a usefull load (1
stetcher patient and medical orderly). This in theory would allow
landing on Everest.

In a world of bizzare records this must be one of the more usefull
quests as it would allow helicopter rescue anywhere.

Can Steve Fosset or Richard Branson be interested?

The other quests is some sort of ducted fan platform that can hover
along side buildings or land in very confined urban environemnts. We
need to be able to land on a suburban main road or city road.
Helicopters can't do it because of rotor clearence and safety issues
while ambulences can't do it because of traffic.

To save peoples lives you must get there within 10-15 minutes.

I am suprised that this hasn't been achieved. The Pieseki flying
Jeeps worked although they couldn't land on uneven ground or in high
gusts.

When modified with modern quadraplex fly by wire controls and
stability augmentation systems (accelerometers and solid state MEMS
and laser gyros), modern gas turbines and lighter modern materials
they must surely be able to solve the problems of the earlier Pieseki
Jeeps.

Modern 3rd Generation Cellphones will have "location serivices".
Imagine being able to load emergency call coordinates into the
naviagation system of such an air-ambulance jeep. A rooftop in a
small hospital could provide a takeoff to touchdown response of 5
minutes out to 10 miles.

That even makes economic sense. If every city in the USA with more
than 1 million people had one of these what would the market be?