www.topout.co.uk

Aviation

In the old days if you wanted to climb at extreme altitude you used an outdated MIG pilots mask. It was not robust enough for the job, it was not designed for this harshest environment. So we had to have something new, TopOut. Now TopOut is taking oxygen back to the aviation market.

In the news for the record breaking flight of Bear Grylls recently. He flew over Everest with a powered parglider, probably the ‘rawest’ sort of flying, in the harshest sort of environment. I read the following in the Telegraph,

“Soon our GPSs froze, followed by our variometers. Our radios allowed us to hear base camp, but they could not hear us. We resorted to Morse code “yes” and “nos”. My heart sank as, one by one, different parts of our equipment began to fail. Everything that we depended on for our safety was dying in front of us. Only our oxygen and engines were still working, thank God”.

Not wishing to be seen as ‘unholy’, but there are several groups who ought not thank God, or rather rely on him too much: Engineers and mountaineers for we (to a large degree) make our own luck. It was not down to God that Bear succeeded. He had a good engine and good (many say the best) oxygen system.

.: Many will have seen TopOut on TV on Boxing Day. It featured with the Extreme Everest experiments on a science programme about oxygen.