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.
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.