Why i couldn't leave the feeling behind me, that some of you guys seems to wish, it was a
PR joke?
I doesn't know the near circumstances about this record, but i'm shure that ECF is long enough in the business and
they don't need lies . ECF is very good in in the market, some people say they dominate the single turbine market and their twins like EC 155 or Puma/ SuperPuma are also not hangarqueens.
May be they used a engine above the red line. Any pilot should know that engine isn't engine and important is only to have the promised power to the customer. But some engines have 10-20% more power direct from the production line. And such ++powered engines are also still "serial engines".
Anyway this flight is a milestone in the rotary world and any helicopterpilot should therefore be glad to be in this business. And Didier is still a collegue of you. Some nice collegues here! All i could say to such collegues is, first think and then write.
Methods like "instrument recalibration", engines above the red lines or "single way transmissions" are not uncommon in this business to reach records. But i don't say that there was anything like that in this record. If anybody doesn't believe, he should buy the Joe Mashman book "To fly like a bird". A former
Bell Testpilot btw.
But no "instrument recalibration" helps the pilot to fly the ship. I'm shure that not many pilots of this thread and in this forum
have ever flown their helicopter in the RFM certified max. altitude. Therefore they couldn't imagine the challenge to fly and to land a ship on such altitude and on such environment and the special performance Didier showed.