10,000 feet (or more, depending on the windspeed) is an interesting altitude for an OGE hover, especially at night, lights out and transponder off, of course. We did have the luxury of cross hairs on the AI showing the along and across Doppler motion but it had to be flown by hand. The best / quietest way to get there was a climbing quickstop; less blade slap to alert those on the ground. Mind you, it was interesting when you ran out of power and the aircraft just fell out of the sky. In this case we gained some airspeed before vortex ring set in, flew away and came back a thousand feet lower and tried again. Once established, we used to set max. continuous power and accept the altitude it gave us and stay there for an hour or more. We couldn't tell ATC exactly where we were and we faded from radar once we slowed right down. We once watched a set of nav lights, travelling at speed, which turned directly towards us. We eventually chickened out and descended rapidly, only to see a B737 pass directly over us, exactly where we had been hovering. We discovered later that the military charts didn't yet show the new airway; we had been hovering right in the middle of it. I might have finished my days as a radiator mascot on one of the first scheduled aircraft to fly in it.
