Highest altitude hover?

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I am planning to fly my P2V off considerably tall mountains. I've flown already from ~1500m mountains in the Victorian Alps, but as I plan to fly off 3500m mountains in other countries I want to know what the highest stable hover pilots have achieved is.

Hover altitude is a different characteristic to maximum altitude for rotorcraft and has caused a lot of problems in operating full sized helicopters in places like Afghanistan. Operating at or around the maximum hover altitude increases the risk of introducing a vortex ring state (look it up), which is an emergency that requires prompt action to recover from.

The last thing I want is to have a downed P2V with amazing footage onboard 2,000m downhill from me, perhaps on a mountain that has only a small number of safe approaches.
 
Well, I live at a mile high (5300ft to be exact) and I have no problems sending her way up. :)
 
My highest hver was 1334 ft. Of course you can'r see it at that height. I actually did a RTH, as I thought it was a goner.
 
Over 10,000ft MSL if I recall correctly. You will need to be lightweight and take your time descending.
 
Once you're outside of ground effect the surface height is not relevant. Height above sea-level is more relevant.

Did you guys confirm stable hovering at those heights?

I'm actually impressed but not completely surprised at the altitude this thing can achieve. Good news for my Volcano climbing!
 
MonsieurAnon said:
Good news for my Volcano climbing!

Sounds fun! Please upload some videos like this when you get back!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-shWVW1UBc[/youtube]
 

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