Posted on 07/17/2006 10:37:10 AM PDT by presidio9
A 45-year-old French woman dangled upside-down for two-and-a-half hours over a cliff-face in the Alps after being saved from falling by a small root, emergency workers said.
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Mountain rescuers used a helicopter to land near the woman, whose foot was caught in the four-centimetre (less than two-inch) root after she slipped during a hike in the Bauges range on Sunday afternoon.
"We couldn't bring the helicopter up against the rock-face, and we were also afraid the draught from the blades would blow her loose. But finally we managed to get straps around her," police rescue squad chief Captain Pierre Pelceneur said.
The woman was being treated in hospital Monday, suffering from shock but no serious injuries.
One hopes this gives her an appreciation for divine intervention.
... so let's root-root-root for the home tea - Huh? Root? Oh. nevermiond
Sounds like the episode was a real cliffhanger.
ba-dump-bump!
Beetle Bailey comes immediately to mind.
Or an episode of Gilligan's Island
If she'd stay in the kitchen, this wouldn't happen!
And what made it worse was that delivery man who kept trying to hand her that anvil.
Communing with nature is so rewarding... and healthy.
We must get to the root of this.
bush's fault ... global warming and all that, i'm sure.
FIRST!
An Israeli and I are working on just such a solution : a helicopter that can nudge directly onto a cliff face or building : the 4 rotors are in a solid plate. See aerosafe eagle on the web.
Yup, you got it, Dr Metrevelli's aerosafe eagle concept. Did you know he once worked on the russian buran space shuttle? He then emigrated to ashdod. The people jumping to their deaths from the twin trade towers on 911 was his impetus to develop this concept, mine was the clinton-gore roadless nonsense = a LOGGING helicopter. Dr Metrevelli and I arrived at the same basic idea : rotors in a solid plate.......My variation is to have a sphere instead of a box at the center with either 2 side hinges(horizontal axis)between the sphere and outer plate, or 4 hinges with a transfer ring between sphere and outer plate(0 deg and 180 deg between sphere and TR, 90 deg and 270 deg between TR and OP). That way the sphere, with c.g. below the ctr of sphere, like a ship, remains level no matter how the outer plate rotates; universal joint action in other words. Thus I call it SATUJT for SATurn Universal JoinT as it reminds one of saturn and its rings......After some 7 or 8 design iterations I arrived at a 6 rotor design(nest 7 pennies on a table)some 5 years ago. Recently I've been fooling around with further variations, using combinations of turbines, rotors, plates, wings; mostly just for fun since aircraft companies are the toughest market to get thru to, witness the channel wing concept of 1940s. Here was a harrier jet concept using propellers instead of directed jet nozzles for STOL, an ingenious, nifty idea; completely ignored by the army air force....Right now I'm doing a model : have the 4 rotors in your picture as also U-joint rotors so that they too can rotate any-which-a-way. Thus the plate can become a wing in forward flight with rotors in a vertical plane. Anyway, will take pictures next week when I'm done with these newer 8 variations, would you like to see them?
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