BullseyeB
Photos by John Wiley
Reported by edhat readers
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Helicopter circling over Tucker’s Grove. Does anybody know why?
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Anyone notice the green and yellow helicopter that’s been hovering over Goleta in the middle of the afternoon for the past couple days? Just wanted to find out if anybody knew more than I do. I live on La Goleta road and they’ve flown directly over our road and North Fairview for the past few days this week. Does anybody know what’s going on? Very low flying.
I don’t know what’s going on with this helicopter, but it has a very large camera mounted to the front. I watched it very slowly take the exact path as the 2018 Holiday fire today. That’s also the same path as many high voltage electric lines. My guess is that it’s surveying the area on behalf of a local agency or Edison. It’s private, tail numbers N4TV. You can see it’s flight path and ownership details online.
The same Coastal Helicopters crew (pilot and camera operator) were over the County offices and San Marcos Foothills area (154@Cathedral Oaks) about 1:45pm. Looks to me like they’re doing detailed aerial surveying and/or photography. Possibly video? The detail must be amazing, since it looks like the cameras on those news choppers that covered our fires – I recall one long shot from four miles away showing a large area, that zoomed in so close family members could’ve recognized the firemen.
Pix sent to Ed show the camera operator intently watching a screen. I couldn’t tell while snapping that the pilot seemed to have noticed me. I’d guess it was about 1/3 mile away and 500′ up. If it was also over Tucker’s Grove, maybe it’s a watershed survey?
I saw similar (maybe the same) helicopter circling a couple of afternoons last week as well. It looks like a specific general area they are circling, without much diversion to other areas. Lots of round & round, narrowly focused observation or exploration.
Time to stop sunbathing naked in my back yard, I guess.
Contractor inspecting Edison lines.