> Circling at 2,000 feet (600m), the relay helo takes camera feeds and sends them to a fixed-wing aircraft flying higher at 10,000 to 25,000 feet (3,000-7,600m), depending on weather. The airplane sends the combined feeds back down to two receive trucks located along the race course.
This was the most interesting part. It makes sense you’d have to use a plane at such long distances as you need a perfect feed.
I’m curious what other sports have a plane following them.
They have automatic camera tracking and stabilization, estimated speeds and road maps super-imposed in the live feed while the pursuit is taking place. All this from a helicopter that circles above for several hours sometimes. They even have specialized live commentators like Stu Mundel and specific lingo: 't-boned', 'pit-maneuver', and my favorite 'suspect is traveling at a high rate of speed' eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7K3dZmrcriU
They mention early on in the video that the LAPD has a helicopter en route. It's pretty crazy that the media manages to respond to incidents faster than the emergency services. I'm not trying to cast aspersions on the LAPD, but rather I'm amazed at how well-resourced the entertainment industry (face it, this isn't news) is.
Despite the fact that I find it disgusting that live-crime is an entertainment genre, I guess it's also sort of useful? Do police forces utilise news helicopters as part of their operations? Can the footage be used as evidence in court?
Yes. They cooperate with the LA police dept in real time passing information to help them catch the suspects or warning them of dangerous situations.
Amazingly, they have a code of conduct. If shots are fired they quickly zoom out so viewers don't get to see people getting shot.
The crazy part is when viewers watching the TV coverage in their homes come out onto the streets to cheer the suspects driving through their neighborhood trying to get away from the cops. In a way, just like the Tour de France!
This is one of those expectedly fascinating reads.
If you haven't, I recommend seeking out the opportunity to go for a helicopter ride or to try your hand at one. They're really interesting aircraft. One of the tidbits I got is that they're far safer in normal operation than the numbers suggest, because they're often flown into the most challenging rescue situations where nothing else will do.
I remember watching the first US Grand Prix in Austin a few years back, and the commentators were specifically talking about how great the helicopter pilot was. I happened to be there for the race, but as it was my first F1 race, I didn't know if all the pilots got that low and aggressive, or if this was unique.
Another tidbit that sadly sticks in my mind is hearing about ex-Vietnam pilots flying over New Zealand while sharpshooters culled (invasive, non-native) deer.
Helicopters aren't that safe. Helo pilots are in denial because they drank the kool-aid. Their "failsafe" of autorotation doesn't work without enough forward airspeed and doesn't do any good for crashes while at or near hover or severe loss of control. Then you have the massive number of pending single point failures in the mechanical hardware. You are at the mercy of the engineering and maintenance far more than in an airplane.
Here's a rare survivable crash from low altitude[1]. The passengers still suffered serious injuries. Here is an autorotation training landing[2]. How often will this be possible in real life when something is broken? Here's a failed autorotation with RPMs too low like might be encountered with engine power loss [3].
I can believe that autorotation landings are dangerous, but then, so are airplane engine-out landings at night over water... but how often are they necessary?
Helicopters are more dangerous than other aircraft:
The crash rate for helicopters alone is 9.84 per 100,000 hours. That means helicopters crash about 35 percent more often per hour in the air than your average aircraft
But have a lower fatality rate:
The fatality rate in helicopter crashes is 1.3 deaths per 100,000 flight hours versus 1.4 deaths for aircraft in general.
> Another tidbit that sadly sticks in my mind is hearing about ex-Vietnam pilots flying over New Zealand while sharpshooters culled (invasive, non-native) deer.
You can Heli-Hunt invasive feral hogs in Texas for ~5k/person
Interesting. The pilot makes some really close passes over the track, doesn't the downwash interfere with the cars' aerodynamics? F1 performance depends on it quite a lot, and the downwash from a heli can be really powerful.
If it made any difference whatsoever, the Drivers would complain and whine about it relentlessly - so no. They either plan it well, or the wash is negligible
>If it made any difference whatsoever, the Drivers would complain and whine about it relentlessly
While that's a pretty accurate characterisation of pretty much every single pilot that has ever driven in F1, I wonder if they have clauses in the contract saying that they cannot publicly criticise the FIA/F1 organisers about stuff like that.
Actually, they do get to complain about the weight of cameras on board. Back in the 90’s, before there was a camera on every car, they put dummy cameras of the same size and weight on every car that didn’t have a real camera on it, so there was no weight or aero advantage either way.
Guess the point I was trying to make is that as long as everyone experiences the same disadvantage on average, then it’s okay because this is a spectator sport not a “Lets make the fastest lap times” kind of thing.
Cameras are pretty light now but I’m sure you could make a case that cars would be faster/better without them.
The weight of the cameras doesn't really make a difference, because everyone has to carry them and so nobody is put at a disadvantage. What does matter is the aerodynamics of the camera pods - the rules give manufacturers some degree of latitude with regards to the design and placement of the outboard camera pods, so they can be manipulated to provide a tiny aerodynamic advantage.
It doesn't work like that. The effect of the downwash would be minimal in terms of added weight on the tires. But it would seriously disrupt the "clean" air that the car wings need to generate maximum down-force.
They need clean air in mid to high speed corners (where donw-force is of the essence to keep the speed). In fact one of the current problems that makes F1 boring (as in less overtakes) is that cars cannot follow each other closely for extended periods.
If a car follows another closely for 3 or 4 laps, the tires start suffering from overheating (due to the reduction in down-force caused by the disturbed air the tires have less downward pressure and grip making them slide more). After 3 to 4 laps following closely, the chasing car is forced to slow down to cool the tires and avoid damaging them.
If you watch the Volkswagen IDR record breaking videos some of the helicopters have trouble keeping up with the unexpected speed of the car, particularly when there was tree coverage. People in the YouTube comments were complaining but it looked like a very difficult job.
Tim Wallis [1] was the man that pioneered aerial hunting and recovery of deer, back in the 60s and 70s. The whole history of the commercial deer industry in NZ is fascinating.
Originally, they'd use helicopters to drop hunters off on foot, who'd then shoot deer, collect them, and wait for pickup. Then they figured they may as well shoot them from the helicopter.
It's crazy stuff, they basically fly right through a valley, shooting all the deer they can with with an assault rifle. Swiss army surplus SiG rifles were very popular, because they ejected the spent cartridges downwards, reducing the risky of ejecting brass into the helicopter blades. They'd then fly back, and pick up all the carcasses, drop them off in a truck, and repeat. They were then butchered and exported.
In 1969, deer farming was made legal, so they switched from hunting to live deer recovery. They'd chase deer with a helicopter, and a bloke would literally jump out of the moving helicopter onto the deer, tackle it to the ground, and tie its legs up so they could lift it with the chopper. They eventually moved onto using net guns and tranquilliser guns as they were more effective.
Te Ara (the NZ encyclopedia) has a really good online writeup about it all [2].
Most of the pilots weren't Vietnam vets, as NZ didn't field helicopters in Vietnam. They were home-grown civilian pilots. The people down south are a special breed, the most foolhardy, tough people you'll ever meet. It will be sub-zero and snowing, and they'll still be wearing shorts. Nicest people you'll ever meet though, we fucked a wheel 4wd-ing up a river once, and the cocky just lent us a wheel and asked us to return it whenever, the bloke had never met us before and didn't ask for any sort of security at all.
As for Tim Wallis himself, the man's larger than life. He survived a helicopter crash in 1968 that broke his back (and escaped from hospital to go to the pub). He was an avid collector of old warbirds, owning several Spitfire, P-51 Mustangs, and Russian Polikarpovs and started the Warbirds over Wanaka airshow. He ended up crashing these several times, and unfortunately in 1996 had a crash on take-off that left him several injured and brain damaged.
Tragically, he lost two of his sons in 2018 to two separate helicopter crashes. Bush flying is incredibly dangerous, they say there are old pilots and there are brave pilots, but no old brave pilots. Some of the situations I've seen helicopter pilots flying in are just straight reckless. I've seen pilots with a slung load underneath, flying probably 50 feet above the ground, through winding river valleys with hillsides less than 100 feet away on each side. If they had any mechanical issues at all, they'd be dead.
Sadly this kind of "she'll be right" attitude is incredible common in New Zealand, it seems everyone knows at least one or two people who have died in aviation accidents. I knew a guy who passed away recently in a microlight crash (unknown circumstances), and he'd commonly drop down to 100 ft over land or water (which is illegal), often to buzz a friends house or boat. One time I was with him and we shot straight past another microlight (less than 500 ft, technically a near miss and very illegal) and did a barrel roll in front of them for a laugh. Were were at probably 1000 ft at the time, which is also under 3000 ft minimum for aerobatics. Over the course of the afternoon we probably managed to break at least half a dozen aviation laws, we almost landed on a close airfield (2 weeks after he copped a fine for doing the same) until I reminded him it was closed.
> Two AS355s serve as the video-copters, [...] An AS350 serves as a relay helicopter, equipped with VHF antennas that receive and transmit live feeds from the AS355s, as well as ground cameras on motorcycles.
> Circling at 2,000 feet (600m), the relay helo takes camera feeds and sends them to a fixed-wing aircraft flying higher at 10,000 to 25,000 feet (3,000-7,600m), depending on weather.
> The airplane sends the combined feeds back down to two receive trucks located along the race course. The trucks act like signal repeaters, the first sending video to a satellite that sends it back to the second truck further along the course, which finally forwards the signal to the town where the finish line is located.
> With stages of varying terrain up to 140 miles (225km) long, this hop-skip method ensures the best video fidelity with the least time-lag.
Knowing next to nothing about production video transmission, this seems overly complicated to me with several points of failure. I wonder how much of this article is editorialized and mixing up backup/redundant methods vs actual implementation?
The part about relaying between trucks using satellites seems especially strange, if the goal is to reduce time lag. Why are trucks needed to relay a satellite signal at all? Why can't the video-copters send direct to the fixed wing aircraft, or to the satellites? Why can't the fixed wing aircraft be used as a single hop?
If this is accurate, it makes me wonder how much of this setup is "we've been doing it this way for x years, and it works, so don't we mess with it" vs how it would be done with a modern, best-practices design. Anyone that's done this kind of work care to weigh in?
$DAYJOB is about installing satellite equipment of all sorts.
It's very challenging to establish high-bandwidth satellite links from a helicopter due to the rotor blades. I'm guessing VHF is used to avoid line-of-sight transmission at an angle that can avoid the blades.
It's however quite possible to establish satellite links from fixed-wing aircraft. The speed is a direct function of available satellite bandwidth (ie. money).
BUT, high throughput satellite systems (HTS), are a relatively new marvel of technology and are very costly to retrofit on airplanes because no airplane maker will want to allow a new hole on the aircraft's body.
So I'm assuming the fixed-wing aircraft lacks the required satellite equipment (as well as broadcast-management equipment typically found in live-action-reporting trucks) hence the beaming back to trucks.
Almost all of the television/radio broadcasting stations have their own uplink trucks (and directing rooms for their own camera's) on site. My guess is they send it there to allow the stations to intermix their own signals before sending it out, as well as to give the live reporters (which are at the finish) to view the most recent image without going though satellite delays.
Probably a naive question, but would it be possible to use drones instead of helicopters for this?
My thinking is they are significantly cheaper to buy and fly, and presumably much safer for pedestrians too. Maybe they could also form a mesh network to avoid a single point of failure.
Depends how big the dish is. But at the size where it would become competitive for endurance and risk tolerance you might as well charter or buy an aircraft that'd do a better job.
If you want a drone that's safer than the average helicopter, you're going to be paying a lot of money.
Regarding safety, what I meant is that a helicopter coming down in a crowd is going to be absolute carnage - a drone could do serious damage, but the death and injury toll would surely be a rounding error by comparison.
The professional peloton is an incredibly noisy RF environment. Every rider is carrying a two-way radio and a telemetry transponder, every car in the caravan has multiple radio systems, the TV motos are transmitting back to relay trucks with satellite uplinks. Much of a grand tour takes place on mountain roads replete with canyons, cuttings and tunnels.
If you're flying a drone in proximity to the peloton, it's not a question of if you'll lose your control signal link, but how often. I don't know how anyone could operate a drone in that environment with any degree of confidence, even if it's capable of GPS position hold. What happens if you lose your control link just as your battery is running flat? What happens if your chase vehicle gets stuck in traffic and your drone is stuck loitering on the other side of a tunnel? How can a large, heavy drone autonomously find a safe landing place on a mountain stage that's littered with thousands of spectators? A drone big enough to carry the requisite broadcast equipment is undoubtedly heavy enough to kill a bystander.
Broadcasters and race organisers have been using helicopters for decades and know how to manage them safely. Drones simply present too many unknowns. To the best of my knowledge, no helicopter has ever crashed while covering a cycling race. There have been a few incidents where the downdraft from a helicopter caused riders to crash, but none of them were serious.
Semi-pro drones aren't reliable enough. DJI recently shipped batteries for the Matrice and Inspire 2 which failed mid-flight due to a firmware bug. Affected drones fell out of the sky. Most "pro" drones haven't had anywhere near the level of auditing that any commercial helicopter has gone through.
The lightest video-capable satellite terminal that I, a mere civilian, know of weighs around 3kg. Even as a satellite equipment, it's relatively expensive to buy and operate. Its power requirements are also non-trivial, both because of the need for highly compressed video and the high-power radio transmission.
As much as I know about the Tour, the route is extremely challenging, not so much related to time-lag of the video, but to actually having a clear signal going through at all times. The production of this race is done by the most qualified outdoor video professionals in the world, it is highly scrutinized, and I doubt that this setup is a product of coincidence.
And the quality has got a lot better over the last 10 years. It used to be that picture drop out was very common, but I haven't noticed much over the last couple.
I do broadcast production for $JOB (as the other person put it) as well. While satellite transmission sounds a bit old, it is proven and widely understood in the industry, if you can get the signal 'on the bird', someone else can get it down. Meaning, the downlink facility at the broadcaster's operations center, other networks, etc.
[edit]Communication between aircraft is a mix of RF and microwave, likely.[/edit] With regards to the camera helo -> relay helo -> fixed wing -> truck workflow, it's likely based on the ability for the camera helos not being able to 'see' the fixed wing aircraft. For instance, since the tour goes into mountainous areas, the camera helos may go down into a valley or be occluded from the fixed wing air craft at various points in time. Using the relay helo allows the fixed wing to fly a less complex flight plan, reducing potential issues with its link to the trucks.
Finally, having all of this operated by professionals who have many years of experience is required for live production. You just can't tolerate any outages, so things like drones, etc, which require longer iteration cycles for updates in flight plan, etc become less of an option.
>> With regards to the camera helo -> relay helo -> fixed wing -> truck workflow, it's likely based on the ability for the camera helos not being able to 'see' the fixed wing aircraft. For instance, since the tour goes into mountainous areas, the camera helos may go down into a valley or be occluded from the fixed wing air craft at various points in time. Using the relay helo allows the fixed wing to fly a less complex flight plan, reducing potential issues with its link to the trucks.
The two camera helicopters do need to remain within range of a relay airplane at all times. This is often tricky in mountainous areas, as you’ve correctly identified. A camera helicopter losing sight of its airplane relay is the most frequent source of signal dropouts.
The relay helicopters are only used to relay the motorcyles’ signals, not the camera helicopters’ signals. The helicopter relays travel freely up and down the route, depending on where the motorcycles are located.
>Why can't the video-copters send direct to the fixed wing aircraft, or to the satellites?
For context, this is the sort of satellite truck you see used for live video broadcast of most sporting events.
It looks like it might be difficult to mount the same hardware on a helicopter.
Yeah seems a little baroque. Though if there’s anything I’ve learned is that whenever you see an overly-complicated solution to a seemingly simple problem, you probably just don’t understand the problem. Though, like you said, sometimes the problem used to be complicated and isn’t anymore and there’s not a big incentive to change a known complex solution to an unknown solution.
Satellite links are actually used rather sparingly, precisely due to the high latency they introduce. None of the planes, helicopters and motorcycles are equipped with satellite uplinks; they are all using RF links in the HF band.
While there are multiple HF relays, there is only one satellite relay truck per stage, located at a geographically convenient location at roughly mid-point through the route. Its role is to pick up all the HF signals, multiplex them, and uplink them to a satellite for downlink by the Euro Media¹ HF trucks back at the finish line. It also works the other way round, in order to relay signals originating at the finish line, such as the director’s orders, back to the crews covering the race.
This satellite relay stops being used as soon as the riders have passed the midway point; from that point on, the two planes and relay helicopters are linked to the finish line solely via HF and microwave. Shorter routes like the time-trial stages don’t require a satellite relay at all.
Another use of satellite uplinks is the midway sprint location, which is covered by a fixed camera on a crane. It is relayed back to the finish line independently of the HF relays, by a regular SNG truck.
¹ Euro Media is the outfit tasked with coordinating all the HF feeds, for delivery to the (adjacent) France Télévisions production trucks which are, in turn, responsible for producing the international and domestic TV broadcasts.
As an absolute amateur, the fixed wing aircraft/relay helo probably can't carry the equipment (big? satellite dish? that have to be aimed accurately?) to send it to the satellite. The relay helo probably can't have LOS with the first truck all the time so the fixed wing plane is used to relay to the truck. The producers, where the signal needs to go to, want to sit at the finish line because that's also where the ceremony is located.
I think most of complications come from the varying terrains blocking the signal path to the producers at the finish line.
I'm guessing heli or plane to satellite is hard because of the movement requiring tracking of satellites. The intermediate heli and plane are probably to ensure you keep LOS. With the trucks. The third heli I'm guessing is either for boosting the signal (putting the heavy equipment on a heli that does less extreme maneuvering) or perhaps for ensuring LOS between the cameras and plane.
Then the two trucks are simply relay points for the satellite.
I would pay good money to see Bob Roll (one of NBC’s main pair of English-speaking commentators) use his famous gesticulations to explain the various signal hops.
I was wondering how long the pilots train for and how much they practice the routes used for the course.
>For six months, the pilots train for the routes, maneuvers, emergency procedures, and camera positioning required by the director for the most effective, picturesque coverage. Their filming missions are literally scripted to the minute by the TV director, leaving little room for improvised maneuvering.
Besides the script, the training is needed because they fly real low, and particularly in mountain zones (it is the same for the Giro d'Italia [1]) there can be a lot of obstacles, particularly high voltage lines, that may be badly signaled or have been changed recently.
[1] curiously enough one of the pilots for the Giro d'Italia has been for years Gianni Bugno, who won the actual race in 1990, here is an interview (Italian, but not too bad via Google translate):
I did not mean to imply 6 month's was excessive. Far from it in fact. It seem's to be just right, considering they're the pro's and they do this every year.
Sure, I was referring to the fact that the main reasons for the training is due to safety requirements.
In the original article it seems like the importance of the safety procedures were minor compared to the director's needs.
As a side-side note, several years ago I happened to be involved in a couple "normal" projects (construction) involving transporting machinery and materials via helicopter, and the guys doing the actual work, besides the helicopters pilots, the ones hooking/unhooking the loads (that we provided) followed (understandably) much, much more strict safety rules than "common" building crane operators and workers, including (much like - say - firefighters do) exercising on things like quick load release, communication (via radio), ropes/belts checks, etc.
Right, and the training is on this specifically - remembering that these are mostly ex-military helicopter pilots with already thousands of hours of training.
Hah, yeah I was going to post about Bugno too. It was cool to see him flying during the Giro - they'd always give a bit more of a shout out to him than the regular chopper pilots got.
(aside: ASO is a for-profit, and looks at the short term, to the detriment of the ever more popular women’s cycling. Earlier this year, they decided to move down two major women’s races (Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège) from the top flight level because they didn’t want to spend the money on broadcasting them that the international cycling union requires for top flight races (https://www.outsideonline.com/2397117/aso-bumps-marquee-wome...) )
I've read the Tour de France generates roughly 90% of the advertising income for bicycling as a sport. Each city that hosts a stage start or finish pays for the privilege.
I know that the helicopters really help with funding the race, but no one wants to listen to them. It blew my mind to see Zwift bring helicopters into their biking simulator --- there are so many features that Zwift needs, and they added a distracting helicopter.
Fun fact: up until a couple of years ago, whenever you saw a helicopter shot on the Tour de France, a fake chopper noise soundtrack would play faintly in the background. The host broadcaster felt that it added to the ambiance, since the helicopters don’t carry microphones.
Fortunately that practice has been nixed for good. Now the helicopter shots are only mixed with the (real) sounds captured by the motorcycles.
Several reasons:
- autonomy is in the 1/2h range for rotary-wing drones, you would need a lot of drones/operators throughout the race (it lasts 6h on average).
- the cameras/lenses used are huge, in the tens of kg, you could be closer with smaller drones thus requiring lighter lenses, but still, I think you would need big drones to keep the same quality. That means less safe and cheap.
- speed, the riders can reach 80-90kmph when going down, which is about/higher than the top speed of most drones.
- worse visibility/reactivity than a team in a helicopter, so harder to adapt to the action.
- better weather resistance
All around, helicopters are still the better option right now.
I guess they could/do use drones for some specific sections: climbs with a lot of public and similar where endurance/speed is less an issue and you can go much closer.
One of the advantages of using motorcycles is that they can get shots from in amongst the bikes, at more or less the same level as the riders. Maybe using drones would work, but if I were riding a professional cycle race I'm not sure how happy I'd be about having drones buzzing around at head level.
Drone buzzing followed by a crash on the road would certainly not be preferable to a blunt bump with a motorcycle followed by a crash on the road.
A minor motorcycle bump would also be quite recoverable, not much different from contact with a peer which is a routine occurrence in racing, far from being inevitably followed by a crash. A "minor drone buzzing"? I don't think so.
For professional drone pilots that kind of flying would be a piece of cake. Then the fixed-wing becomes a bi-directional relay for the drone control. The motorcycles seem to crash or cause crashes every year...
No way they could match the situational awareness of a motorcycle rider who's there, moving on the same mechanical medium, following the same vehicle physics as the athletes, ideally even being a former pro cyclist who's experience would not transfer remotely as well to stone piloting as from one kind of bike to another.
And still, moto/cyclist crashes happen and replacing them with drone/cyclist would be worse.
You are replying in a subthread concerning replacing the motorcycle camera operators with drones, not the helicopters. If you can precompiled the order and behaviour of the cyclists then you can make a lot of money gambling on the race this year...
Yes, I'm talking about replacing the motorcycles. Drones can fly close enough to get basically the same footage as motorcycles. Yes, the pace is not precomputable, but the path definitely is. For professional drone pilots, that is huge, because if the path is known but the pace isn't it reduces the entire piloting effort down to a one dimensional instruction. And there's no need to have only one drone.
The motorcycles are an eyesore, they interfere with the race, and they emit noxious gasses for the athletes to breathe. Replacing them with drones seems like the thing to do.
There have been enough significant accidents caused by the motorbikes that reliable drones (flown appropriately) would probably be welcomed, after the usual uncertainty period.
"flown appropriately" would imply restricting the drones to the kind of shot that is already provided in generous quantity by helicopters. They'd want to keep the motos for the same reason they haven't gone helicopter-only.
Also, the low hanging fruit would not be getting rid of the very few TV motos, it would be reducing the high number of mostly redundant photojournalism motos.
> "flown appropriately" would imply restricting the drones to the kind of shot that is already provided in generous quantity by helicopters.
Actually, I'd argue differently. I'd imagine the greatest risk of injury from a drone would be it failing and falling from a significant height (i.e. similar shots as provided by helicopters). However, I'd envisage they could do a great job providing images/video from (say) 15-20 metres away - close enough to replace the video motorbikes and not present a great risk in the unlikely event of failure, but far enough to not interfere - and probably interfere less than the motorbikes currently do.
> Also, the low hanging fruit would not be getting rid of the very few TV motos, it would be reducing the high number of mostly redundant photojournalism motos.
Agree; but it can't be beyond the wit of man to outfit a drone to take decent quality stills?
> I'd imagine the greatest risk of injury from a drone would be it failing and falling from a significant height
Not if you are trying to replicate a motorcycle camera angle. The motos get very close not only to the athletes, but also to the audience. Not just because they can't fly, but also because that low camera angle is desirable.
> but it can't be beyond the wit of man to outfit a drone to take decent quality stills?
The stills are mostly for closeups. You would not even be able to get that angle with a drone carrying a reasonably sized camera, because the rotors would not only be in the image, they would also be in the face of the subject.
Drones might find some niche in broadcasting road cycling if they get safety and regulations sorted out (tough problem with basically unrestricted audience access), but not replacing motorcycles and helicopters. Smaller races that don't have helicopters will surely add drone angles, just like many have recently started to introduce their first motorcycle camera thanks to price drops.
Now waiting for another article on the camera bikes that get the images from the road. Most of their riders are retired pro cyclists who had transitioned into motorbikes for broadcasting the races all over the pro season. Field experience is necessary to anticipate rider's moves on every possible corner or hill, avoiding crashes and still making the most exciting footage you can expect.
Not sure about the claim that the moto crews are former pros. This was stated a few days ago on /r/peloton, but in a kind of hand-wavy way.
The guy featured in the article above does not seem to be an ex-pro, at least he has no profile on PCS. And there is this quote, although it refers to a photographer's rider: "With such potential for accidents, you might think that there would be a rigourous set of qualifications for motorcycle riders before they can share asphalt with the pros in the Tour. Not so, says Evans, who got his slot because his photographer ‘saw me riding through town traffic with a fairly exuberant riding style’."
This has been a bit of a complaint by riders and commentators, though it is secondary to the effect of motorcycles filming riders by driving in front of them.
The defense I've heard is that televising is essential to the business model of cycling. Hence, some effect should be accepted.
You absolutely do want to read up about the time trial duel between Fignon and Moser in the 1984 Giro d'Italia. That story is very famous in cycling, so there is no way a team of experienced cycling pilots would not aware of that issue.
The dramatic pictures in the article are certainly misleading, shot with a long tele from a clever angle. 500 feet lateral separation (to a mountain road I assume) is still crazy close by non-emergency aviation standards.
”Their filming missions are literally scripted to the minute by the TV director, leaving little room for improvised maneuvering.”
I find that “scripted to the minute” hard to believe. The “advertisement detours” (where a village pays them to fly around a castle, church, or mountain top) likely are scripted because they _have_ to be shown for the contracted number of seconds (and they will be shown, even if there’s a significant development in the race that the helicopters miss as a result), but it remains a race, where one cannot know beforehand how fast the riders will ride.
⇒ The route flown may be fairly rigid, but the timing can’t be.
I think what it actually means is 'you will fly this route past this section of the parcours in this length of time' rather than 'at 3:20 you will be here'.
They do know the expected expected min, max speeds of the riders, and the most likely time.
I assume that when they file their flight authorisations long in advance that they are declaring the time slots that they will need over airspace, and probably do have scripts for those min/max rider speeds so that they know +/- some margin of error the earliest and latest the helicopters should be anywhere.
Although I'm personally more interested in the plane circling above them for 4 hours :) It makes sense to have it, and has anyone a link to one of it's daily routes?
>>Sometimes these images have been filmed during spring.
The helicopter shots are always live.¹ There is however some prerecorded drone footage, filmed earlier in the year, that gets shown alongside landmarks of particular interest.
Whether or not you get to see this prerecorded footage depends on which feed your broadcaster is picking up. Domestic audiences watching on France Télévisions get to see all of it, but international broadcasters are given a feed with fewer prerecorded “heritage shots” (as well as a feed with no prerecorded material at all).
¹ The director can cheat once in a while, opting to time-shift a particularly beautiful landmark shot by a couple of minutes, but only if it would otherwise go unseen due to race action taking precedence.
I'm sure this is a hugely hard thing to pull off, but the photos provided are at least in a couple of cases quite misleading due to the perspective of the camera.
The cameras are pretty huge, since you want both close ups but also very large field views, e.g. to show the peloton and landscape, so you need to be far away with a powerful zoom.
https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/how-the-tour-de-france-go...