New russian helicopter can land on top of Mount Everest, never ages

Euronews http://www.euronews.net/ speaks with more or less exactly this accent too.

I am british, and I could not stop laughing at the accent. You can tell its how someone not britain thinks how a british person speaks. Waaay to exaggerated.

To me, the "never ages" part is the most interesting, though in terms of aerospace, this doesn't have to be literally "never". An "estimated service life of 150 years" would be half again as long as humans have had powered flight, and would basically amount to the same thing.

Yeah. Helicopters in flight use less power because of "free" translational lift, the lift provided by air flowing over the rotor because of the helicopter's forward speed.

It uses much more power to lift off when stationary because there is no translational lift.

So if the helicopter is at maximum power while moving, it has no "extra" power to hover or land gently or take off. It can fly as high as Everest, but it can't land or takeoff.

I remember reading (I think it was "Chickenhawk", great book) that some pilots in Vietnam with an overloaded helicopter stuck on a ridge would basically drop it off the side of the ridge to get some forward speed before they would recover and climb up to altitude. That takes guts.

While I'm telling anecdotes, a long time friend had always wanted to fly, it was his dream, so he joined the Air Force after school. He passed the basic ab-initio training with flying colours and got assigned to heavy transports. He quit after two years. I was very surprised and asked him why. He said he was so scared he couldn't handle it. (He wouldn't say what, but I assume something like short landings at night on unmade strips in the middle of the bush, etc.)

And yes the accent was "extra-normal" quality.