Was the pilot nuts or did he have cajones the size of a Buick?
:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:
Quite a feat!
Next flight they’re probably going to drop off some snowboarders. 
The one with nuts the size of a Buick only made it to 6,000. This guy had little bitty cajones… and they were made of carbon fiber.
Very cool - but what is a serial helicopter? One they got from a box of cornflakes?
Duh. It’s the opposite of a parallel helicopter, obviously.
Here is a cereal helicopter.
No, no, no. A “serial helicopter” is one has been a helicopter before, several times (though there is no set number of times - usually anything over 5). It’s a helicopter today, it was a helicopter last month, it was a helicopter several times last year, it will probably be a helicopter again unless there is significant intervention. If it were a helicopter only once, even if it was all day, then it would be considered a “binge helicopter”. If it were a helicopter only once and that was due to intense, emotional circumstances, it would be a “helicopter of passion”. The term is etimologically the same as “serial killer”.
I’m pretty sure.
Nice! I’ll read the article later.
I love you.
Silly me - I should have checked the spelling.
… and so the world gets a little smaller…
once, in 2005, for about 30 seconds…
That is so totally awesome. 
[Pedant]
In case anyone doesn’t know why it’s such a feat…
Airplanes fly at tens of thousands of feet. What’s the big deal with a helicopter landing on Everest, which is, after all, much lower than passenger jets fly? Lift. It takes a certain amount of air flowing over an aircraft’s lifting surfaces in order to keep it aloft. The higher you go, the less dense is the atmosphere. In an airplane, the indicated airspeed may be the same at altitude as it is down low; but the actual airspeed is higher. (The aircraft I’ve flown have been pretty basic, so I had to do the TAS – true airspeed – calculations on a ‘whiz-wheel’, the venerable E6B flight computer. I’d assume that more advanced aircraft would do this automatically.) But a helicopter must fly more slowly as it gains altitude. Why?
In forward (or any direction) flight, the airspeed of one rotor blade – the retreating blade – is always slower than the other(s). Helicopters correct for dissymmetry of lift through blade flapping, blade pitch, and, in the case of multi-bladed, fully-articulated systems (or rigid systems) leading and lagging. At some point, the retreating blade can no longer be ‘adjusted’ to produce the same lift as the advancing blade, which can lead to retreating blade stall with disastrous results. Thus, as air density decreases, the helicopter must fly more slowly so as to reduce the ‘negative airspeed’ being applied to the retreating blade. At some altitude, the helicopter’s directional speed must be reduced to zero just to stay aloft. So just getting a helicopter that high and having directional control is pretty amazing.
One ‘trick’ that helicopter pilots sometimes use in high density-altitude situations is to use ‘ground effect’. Like an airplane wing, a helicopter’s rotors are more efficient when in near-proximity to the ground. Helicopters have hovering ceilings ‘in ground-effect’ and ‘out of ground-effect’ (IGE, OGE). I was at a Warren Miller film once, where he described getting some footage in New Zealand. They were high and somewhat heavy (IIRC, the aircraft was a Bell 47), so the pilot ‘hopped’ IGE down the mountain until he came to a cliff where he went over the edge.
Gods, I wish I could afford to go flying! 
Everest is also a bitch of a mountain. Back in the 1980s a guy scaled Everest and then descended via hang glider. He made it, but it damn near killed him in the process. As it was the effort cost him an eye and some fingers on the way down.
Wow, this is amazing. Wasn’t it some sort of world record flight when they rescued Beck Weathers up there at ~22,000ft back in '96?