Mysterious helicopters have been circling Los Angeles | Hacker News Reader

Mysterious helicopters have been circling Los Angeles

thedrive.com

189 pointsjosephjrobison180 comments

Portland didn't have helicopters that I'm aware of, but at the height of the multi-month riots over the spring, summer and fall, the Air Force was flying one of these[1] Special Operations Surveillance Planes that they denied were doing any "surveilling." It's interesting that the flight paths happened to coincide with the locations of where the riots happened to be occurring that day and Portland had a No-Fly Zone restriction in place.[2]

[1] https://theintercept.com/2020/07/23/air-force-surveillance-p... [2] https://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-protest-flight-res...

> multi-month riots over the spring, summer and fal

There were no multi-month riots this summer. Multi-month protests, yes. But not riots. The riots were much smaller in number and generally only lasted a few days at any one location prior to order being restored (here in NYC we had a few nights of looting that could be described as a riot). Even the infamous 1992 LA riots only lasted a week. Multi-month riots would be downfall-of-society level.

Not sure what media you watch but before I went to bed, I watched Portland livestreams of very violent "protests". These went on every night for weeks and I watched people throw Molotov cocktails and shoot mortars at law enforcement. Call it what you want, but this shit was happening for over 100 nights in a row.

You see what you want to see. Classic confirmation bias. I watched the livestreams, and most of the time it was a lot of running and massive amounts of tear gas, and occasionally police brutally escalating violence against those protesting police violence. I think it's rather telling that you describe fireworks as mortars to try to make them sound more threatening.

I haven't seen any videos where a BLM protestor beats a fallen cop with an American flag, or kills a cop. Both of which happened during the violent far-right insurrection on January 6. I have seen many more credible stories about data and studies showing that violence from far-right extremism is a much more dangerous current problem than far-left extremism.

I will continue to call last year's protests what they were, remarkably peaceful world-wide protests against police brutality and for police reform. And I will call the Jan 6 event what it was, a deliberately stoked violent insurrection against the US government in an attempt to overturn the results of a democratic election, on the basis of nothing but lies and grievance. We should strive to accurately describe things as they are.

Here are a few examples of violence in portland:

Molotov cocktail(fire bombs) thrown at officers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H86W82Bgpq4

Molotov cocktails thrown at court building https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMkTfGlM-f0

Man hits a federal officer with a hammer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7vlKbR3Gcs

Protestor knifes a black trump supporter https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2020/07/man-knifed-in-back-...

You specifically went looking for instances of violence at the protests, and you found a couple. This is the very definition of confirmation bias: you have a conclusion, and then went looking for supporting instances.

You didn't look for data about how much violence there was relative to other protests, or injury statistics, and you certainly didn't look at comparisons between right wing and left wing violence. You started with the conclusion you needed. You need the protests to be violent to confirm your world view, so you went looking for some instances to try and support your conclusion.

However, nothing in your paltry few examples refutes anything I said. Given the vast numbers of people participating in the protests, and the length of them, they were remarkably peaceful.

On the other hand, a tiny fraction of that number of right-wing violent lunatics concentrated in DC on Jan 6 and in one day committed more violence and slaughtered more law enforcement officers than at all the BLM protests combined. BLM protestors want police officers to stop killing people, the Jan 6 insurrectionists came looking to violently overturn the results of the election, and are feeling emboldened to commit more violence in the next week.

I hope this helps you stop and think.

FWIW I think you may have confused me with the op of this thread. I don't actually disagree that most of the BLM protestors were peaceful, as BLM did not explicitly encourage property crime and violence. Antifa however did, and the worst crimes were mostly committed by antifa members and not BLM.

There is alot of odd cognitive dissonance in your comment which I appreciate proves your own point, you were presented with evidence that goes against your own world view, but instead of "stopping and thinking" you just decided to outright dismiss it instead of acknowledging it.

You stated you didn't see any evidence of violent assaults on police officers in portland, yet I gave you an example of a protestor assaulting a police officer with a hammer and instead of addressing it, you resorted to projecting a false narrative of ad-hominem and assumptions of my world view which are actually incorrect.

The funny thing about human biases is they actually effect us all, including you, and thank you so much for proving this. Its made my argument here easy.

Hopefully you take some time to "stop and reflect" how cognitive dissonance can corrupt your own world view when your presented with evidence that goes against it.

I agree it's misleading here, but people (in my area at least) commonly refer to the big professional-tier fireworks as "mortars".

This thread is a great example of how totally isolated news bubbles create totally different realities, each honestly and sincerely believed by their proponents. How do we get out of this?

stop consuming media, and focus attention on our own communities

Here's the best summary I have seen of what happened in Portland last year (at least, up through July):

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2020/07/20/what-you...

There was definitely some vandalism involved (and e.g. people shooting fireworks at the wall of a fortified building), but federal authorities were incredibly disingenuous in their descriptions of events and justifications of escalation.

Most of the dangerous violence was police-on-protestor.

Here are a few examples of violence in portland done by protestors:

Molotov cocktail(fire bombs) thrown at officers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H86W82Bgpq4

Molotov cocktails(fire bombs) thrown at court building https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMkTfGlM-f0

Man hits a federal officer with a hammer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7vlKbR3Gcs

Protestor knifes a black trump supporter https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2020/07/man-knifed-in-back-...

That site leans left-wing. I wouldn't consider them necessarily a good source. You might as well quote Fox news on a right-wing event.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/bellingcat/

Honestly, that comparison is very disingenuous just from the information on the site you just linked:

Fox News: "Overall, we rate Fox News strongly Right-Biased due to editorial positions and story selection that favors the right. We also rate them Mixed factually and borderline Questionable based on poor sourcing and the spreading of conspiracy theories that later must be retracted after being widely shared."

Bellingcat: "we rate Bellingcat Left-Center biased based on story selection and positions that moderately favor the left. We also rate them High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and a clean fact check record."

These are vastly, vastly different forms and scales of "bias." They are nearly incomparable.

From your source, Fox is further right than Bellingcat is left, and Bellingcat is much better on factual reporting. I understand what you're saying about getting news about conflicts from a particular point of view, but your source seems to contradict the analogy.

Trying to compare Bellingcat, which publishes things like investigations into the downing of MH17, to Fox News. That is terrible.

Fox News has entertainment departments, fought in court to have Tucker Carlson lie to his followers with impunity. They republished incitement to ramming attacks.

Bellingcat.. They just do investigations.

If you want to try to break things down into black and white left vs right, at least try to do it with comparable organizations. Or even better, try to refute the substance of the article instead of going to a media bias site to see how you feel they land on the political spectrum.

Even the site you linked has them listed as "left-center" with "high factual reporting." How is this grounds to outright dismiss them? The slightest degree of "leftness" makes you want to exclude sources? Do you have any factual reason to be doing this, or is this your personal bias towards right wing content forcing you to seek means to exclude information you don't like the looks of?

Violent protests that did not lead to the death of a single police officer.

I mean, how violent could they have been.

My personal experience (not as a participant, but rather someone who observed a few protests from a distance) was that they were peaceful until the cops would engage with the protestors to impose the curfews that many cities had established.

And then the violence was largely 1 sided.

> Violent protests that did not lead to the death of a single police officer.

I did some quick fact checking, just for my own peace of mind. I view the George Floyd protests as overall peaceful, but it's good to question one's understanding. So for what it's worth Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests_in_Portl...) lists one casualty. I'm guessing that was the August 29th event, which wasn't a police officer.

So yeah, seems you're right, and that's an important fact to keep in mind. 7 months of protests with only one dead, in an area people keep arguing is the worst of the BLM protests.

> and shoot mortars

Mortars? Are you sure about that? What kind?

Edit: Oh "fireworks mortars". Ffs. Just say fireworks.

They were professional fireworks. They were exploding at street and building level multiple times last year. The most recent was downtown on New Years.

Man if you think that's bad, you should've seen what many neighborhoods in major cities were like every night for a solid month leading up to July 4th last year. Aerial fireworks everywhere. There were even some structure fires as a result.

Not protest-related, mind you. Just idiocy-related.

I don't think you understand the severity of what antifa was doing in downtown Portland.

Mortars or fireworks? That said, I agree that there were certainly protests that consistently became violent at night time for the span of at least weeks, maybe months.

> Mortars or fireworks?

“Mortars” and “fireworks” are overlapping categories.

https://fireworks.com/products/aerial/reloadable-mortars

When someone says "I watched people throw Molotov cocktails and shoot mortars at law enforcement", the obvious implication is that we are talking about the type of military hardware pictured and described at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortar_(weapon) being used to intentionally injure or kill a group of people, not a toy version intended for making a celebratory burst of color being launched against the side of a building.

There was at least one molotov cocktail captured on camera in September landing in the street between a group of protestors and a line of cops, though it is not clear whether anyone was injured by it.

> When someone says “I watched people throw Molotov cocktails and shoot mortars at law enforcement”, the obvious implication is that we are talking about the type of military hardware pictured and described at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortar_(weapon) being used to intentionally injure or kill a group of people, not a toy version intended for making a celebratory burst of color being launched against the side of a building.

I…disagree.

If I heard “small arms and mortars”, I’d think of the military weapon. (Or “rockets and mortars”, without other context.)

If I hear “molotov cocktails and mortars”, though, I’d think of either the fireworks or some improvised device, but not miltary hardware unless there was some other contextual indication favoring the latter. While its obviously not impossible for a group to both be using Molotov cocktails and have access to military heavy weapons, that’s not really, to me, the normal association.

well aren't you one special little snowflake

Don't do this here, please.

What's the difference when it blows up in your face? Throwing explosives in urban centers is unacceptable and violent.

Mortars are a hell of a lot more lethal any consumer firework. So, yes there is a difference. Mortars also need to be used at range (100s of meters to kilometers) to be effective. I highly doubt mortars were in use.

> Mortars are a hell of a lot more lethal any consumer firework.

Well, some mortars are. Other mortars are consumer fireworks.

It's almost like, in the interest of clarity, we should use specific, non-overly-broad words that can't be misinterpreted. The use of the word "mortar" here is clearly causing problems, so how about "aerial firework" and "combat mortar"?

Good point, I wasn't thinking of actual military mortars. But I think "mortar" often means consumer firework in modern parlance.

I think there might be a lot of people here (my self included) that literally didn't know that about fireworks in modern parlance. It's because talking about fireworks just doesn't ever come up in my life. But I think "mortar" is commonly known as a military kind of weapon even if you know nothing about fireworks.

I was unaware of that terminology applied to fireworks. Good to know!

Well US Army mortars tend to be 60-107mm in calibre and designed for anti-infantry use while fireworks are generally designed for aesthetic effects. There is certainly some overlap in the capability of fireworks and mortars to render damage to individuals and groups but this is generally a very limited shared range of effect, with mortars being explicitly designed to kill or incapacitate human targets.

What's the difference between mortars and fireworks? Damage. Suggesting people were dropping a plate, siting a mortar and undermining a building is a much stronger image than "Some bro threw an M-80 near some stuff." I am not downplaying the violence as I wasn't there, just pointing out the difference.

There were 30 riots declared by police in Portland alone between May and November (and many more since then). They have a detailed breakdown of riots, fires, projectiles thrown , arrests, ect.

https://www.portlandoregon.gov/police/article/765145

Lot of riots got "declared" here in Seattle too, usually after the cops rushed a stationary peaceful group, and many breakdowns of projectiles and aggression by protestors were publicized by police. But a huge amount of it turned out to be fabricated, exaggerated, or embellished.

These were not fabricated events in Portland. In fact the mayor restricted what the police could do and how far things had to escalate before the police could do anything. Lasers, fireworks, fires, bricks...not much was off limits to the rioters every single night for months. You can claim the group was stationary and peaceful...but there were agitators mixed in and causing problems. There are tons of videos showing the violent tactics being used by rioters...but usually the only ones to make the MSM are when the police responded. Antifa...yes they exist...were well organized and restricted journalists from documenting everything unless they wanted them to. Even the local news reporters were harassed and assaulted by them.

There were also instances found where the agitators turned out to be agents provocateurs.

Source? I have not seen any confirmed incidents of agent provocateurs. The news would have went batshit crazy if such a thing was actually confirmed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/29/umbrella-ma...

This is probably the most popular example, but there's plenty of YouTube videos showing people popping up at places to tear down window barricades, smash them and run. They aren't there to protest. They're there to stir shit up and exploit human psychology.

A crazy city council member claimed fires were started by cops in Portland...without evidence and despite contrary evidence showing them being started by the protestors/rioters.

You see the bias inherent in trusting the police on this issue though, right? It's in their best interests to declare any protest against them a riot because it excuses more violent actions on their parts.

There were more than 120 days of protests detailed in the above link, only about 25% of which were classified as riots. There were live streams from these protests and riots every night, many of which include numerous incidents of explosives being hurled at police and fired being lit. Its not an issue of trust - the hundreds of archived videos containing thousands of hours of live footage of these many protests and riots is easily available to anyone who wants to examine the proof with their own eyes. This isn't an issue of ideology, its a matter of documented history and objective reality. One can argue about whether the riots were justified or not, but not over whether they happened - they did.

Portland doesn't sound like a very nice place.

The push to change how the city responds to violence came after dozens of people vandalized businesses on New Year’s Eve, spray-painting buildings and breaking windows. At least three people were arrested and police declared the event a riot.

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2021/01/mayor-ted-wheele...

Wheeler was five minutes into a dinner at Cafe Nell with a friend when a small crowd began yelling obscenities at him and soon pushed their way into the outdoor tented area where he was seated, according to Jim Middaugh, the mayor’s communications director, who was briefed by the mayor on the incident.

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2021/01/mayor-ted-wheele...

It was quite nice the last time I visited, but that was pre-covid and pre-george floyd.

How about that one day protest at the capitol?

The PPB were renting N50TV (FOX livery and all) for a while and using it to hunt people walking home for enhanced harrassment. The owners of that helicopter didn't feel great about being associated, so PPB moved on to other rentals out of Port Orchards, WA.

Through the summer it was possible to watch C172's on ADSB squawking as IDAHO33 and IDAHO44, circling at 3000ft. They haven't been visible on ADSB in months. I have a great view of the areas they often circle over. They're still active, they're just not squawking. As recently as yesterday afternoon, in fact.

I noticed the police helicopters in the bay area were only showing up as mlat reports on adsbexhange a couple months ago as well. Easy to spot but weird how they suddenly stopped squawking. Are they exempt now?

I live in inner southeast Portland. There were helicopters flying above my place many nights during the protests. Unsure how low they were flying given how really loud they were.

Reminder that with a ~$25 software-defined radio (SDR) dongle you can receive any aircraft’s ADS-B signal, complete with position, altitude, velocity, and flight ID:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Dependent_Surveillan...

https://www.rtl-sdr.com/adsb-aircraft-radar-with-rtl-sdr/

I contribute ADS-B data grabbed with SDR to Flightradar24. It's pretty sweet because they give you their Business subscription plan (the highest one, $50/month) for free.

I think you may need at least a free account to see the stats, but in any case these are my two sites:

https://www.flightradar24.com/account/feed-stats/?id=5024

https://www.flightradar24.com/account/feed-stats/?id=23968

Why not https://www.adsbexchange.com ? FR24 filters out military planes.

Just want to second adsb exchange. I was using fr24 for a while and I think someone on here suggested adsb-e and it's a godsend. Living in the DC area, I see lots of fuckery where military helicopters that don't even show up on fr24 at least leave these weird artifacts on adsb-e.

Note I live on the flightpath between the WH and Camp David, and the Marines practice this run A LOT. I only found this out once I started WFH every day due to the pandemic.

Sometimes it's a lone helicopter, sometimes they are in a trio. But FR never shows anything and ADSB-E at least shows an artifact that essentially appears as a drone with no tail number.

I think the correct question would be: why not both.

Since if I had to make a choice, I would single out Flightradar24 too, since the (iPhone) app is just great.

Just to show I wasn't making empty promises, I am now also feeding ADS-B Exchange:

https://www.adsbexchange.com/api/feeders/?feed=ndZezh8wKD8NV...

You can also use the same hardware to feed to Flightaware simultaneously and they’ll give you a free enterprise account.

Thanks for the tip, that actually never occurred to me. (No really, I'm not being sarcastic.)

I'll definitely set that up.

There were issues a while ago relating to the MLAT setting, but I set it up a month or so ago on the pi-aware distro feeding to FA first, and then just ran the FR setup utility after that with no issues.

Obviously I’ve no real need for either of them, but its nice to have for something I was going to run anyway!

Would you mind giving an overview of the hardware you use? Thanks.

Not at all. At home I have a cheapo Adafruit RTL-SDR ($22 at Microcenter https://www.microcenter.com/product/463176/adafruit-industri...) running on an unused Gigabyte Brix. At my parents' I have a similar SDR on a Raspberry Pi. They're both indoors on the highest floor.

I have a LimeSDR as well that I screw around with sometimes, but really any basic receiver will get the job done.

I'm planning on checking out adsbexchange and FlightAware based on the comments.

The setup on the Brix: https://photos.app.goo.gl/dJmvM3R9u3eGpggP8

Project Loon balloons on Flightradar24: https://photos.app.goo.gl/b8wDkTn6XaRmUWGw6

Thank you so much!

I see on the Brix you're just using the stock antenna, which is encouraging given I have perennial issues with reception on other devices.

Now to buy some gear...

And even without an SDR radio, you can head over to https://adsbexchange.com and explore aircraft live in your area!

Do any informed US readers here know what are the implications of the FAA ADS-B privacy ICAO address program[0]? Will this reduce the possibility for hobbyists to have oversight over such flight operations?

[0] https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/equipadsb/privacy/

This was a similar ordeal in Minneapolis in 2020. When news choppers weren't circling the George Floyd memorial, it was National Guard and State Patrol scanning for civil unrest, or more recently, State Patrol's investigating carjackings:

https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-news/more-than-40-arres...

I live next to the autonomous zone and the helicopter traffic frequenting our neighborhood always triggers me. During the protests on December 30th we had State Patrol lights shining in our windows.

With all the surveillance and military response to events happening in the country right now, I'm definitely curious to see what these choppers in Los Angeles are up to.

Similarly, there's been an increase in helicopter traffic in Western New York. But, we do know why. It's Canadian snowbirds trying to skip the border shutdown to head to Florida https://www.wgrz.com/article/news/local/canadians-buzz-throu...

They can still fly to come down here (but if they want to bring their car, they need to ship it down). It is packed with Canadians down south Florida.

>but if they want to bring their car they need to ship it down

This is why the helicopter flights are so popular. They're literally just flying across the border with the shortest possible thing that could be called a flight, because air travel is allowed. And they're getting their car (or more often, RV) towed across the border, because cross-border towing is also allowed. The shortest possible flight means the shortest possible tow.

Many have also jumped the queue to get free COVID shots (Tampa had a recent news report). One couple said they booked shots (4 weeks in the future) for their friends who are still in Canada (they will travel down shortly). Not sure how this is permitted although it makes scientific sense (anyone can transmit).

The US is currently well ahead of Canada in per-capita COVID delivery.

> The US is currently well ahead of Canada in per-capita COVID delivery.

The US is actually well ahead of most of the world, especially when you factor population and geography [1]. Sure, Israel has crushed everyone, but I think we can all agree there are exceptional circumstances which make this easier in Israel than in most other countries. Other success stories have been largely small, wealthy countries.

It's a shame that the US media is so politicized as to not recognize Operation Warp Speed and the men and women - from researchers, to logisticians, to clinicians - who have made this possible. It has been an absolute miracle of human achievement and will hopefully be celebrated by historians, since the current generation refuses to do so.

---

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

This is pretty remarkable. I wonder why numbers in so many European countries are so much lower?

I heard on NPR that the EU as a whole is ordering the vaccines so there's probably a bit of red tape holding things up.

It's probably a rounding error after one considers that there are probably some Americans in Canada, but Canada has three vaccinations (not just 3 doses) per citizen while the US only has 1 and change. It would be a bummer if Canadians were consuming the more limited US vaccinations in meaningful numbers. I'm "picking on" Canada here because while America has a lot of medical tourism from South America, it tends to be out of necessity (worse medical infrastructure and so on) as opposed to impatience.

But the vaccines are not getting into arms. In theory there are 3 vaccines and if others are approved and ramp up production (like Oxford) then the rate can increase. Right now, that is all theoretical and total coverage is scheduled for early September 2021. That does not include children (<16) since I am not sure there is a children's variant.

Nevertheless, it's still vaccines that other countries can't use, and presumably other countries weren't expecting to provide Canadians' vaccinations when they were purchasing their vaccination stock.

Probably this will be discontinued now that the US will require a negative COVID test prior to entry via air.

Given the up to 10k they are paying for flights and to have their RVs driven across the boarder (yes, commercial drivers can cross in RVs) a few hundred dollars for a covid test won't be an issue. Private covid tests in canada cost about 250$.

The helicopter flight is $1200 for up to 3 pax: https://greatlakeshelicopter.ca/flights-to-the-u-s-a/ and an RV shuttle looks to be $1600.

You have to pay $250 in Canada for a covid test?

Private COVID tests.

There’s an upper limit to testing capacity, and optimistically the government allocates that capacity in the way it thinks it will do the most good.

They’re worried about processing tests from care homes, healthcare workers, suspected positive patients, outbreaks, etc... not old people that want to go to Florida for vacation.

But that doesn’t preclude finding a private company that will test you, but the government isn’t going to pay for non-medically-necessary medical treatment and testing from a private company.

In the US I just went to a local er and got a 30 min response quick test for 25$ because I felt like my throat was a little itchy, not for any real reason. Are you saying that this wouldn't be an option in Canada? That seems really surprising to me

A 30 minute rapid test (aka: lateral flow / antigen test) isn't a reliable way to test for Covid. These tests return a high rate of false negatives. You need to get a lab PCR test if you want an accurate result.

Most countries that require Covid tests before travel require a PCR test for that reason.

If you experiencing symptoms, the test is free and available through the public system.

Yes, but how soon do you get results. Is it instantaneous or do they call/text your the results?

In case you're actually curious (even though this is like two weeks later): Despite never leaving the house I woke up with little to no smell/taste the other day and while it was likely some random sinus infection or something, given the vulnerable people I live with I isolated and immediately got tested.

Went online and scheduled an appointment for an hour later. (They had sooner, but I took that one.) Drive through test. Just had to provide my usual identification for healthcare (provincial health card), but there was no screening as far as whether I really needed it since the labs aren't really backed up right now.

About 20 hours later got a text with the result in the middle of the night.

From "Maybe I have covid?" to getting a PCR test result was 21 hours and $0. A antigen test would only take an hour or two, but be much less accurate. As far as PCR testing, no complaints here. Only had to spend one night sleeping on the couch in the basement before knowing I wasn't going to infect and kill my family.

Depends on which test you get but I've seen people who work for me get both same-day results and results within 72 hours.

Certainly it's an option in Canada. You call the 811 line and say "I coughed" and they have you in for testing later that day. I've done it twice since March. The only use-case for private testing I can imagine is if you need to schedule a test on demand for a border crossing or other specific situation.

This is not normal in the US in my experience.

Most countries that I know of (even the ones with famously socialised health care) won't actually give you a certificate with the info you need for travel, like passport number and ID verification, for free even if general public testing is free.

Thank you, this makes a lot more sense to me then not being able to get a test

He specified private COVID Test. I assumes that means that it is for someone who is not covered by the nationalized health system or that it is a situation not covered by insurance. Typically insurance in the US will only pay for testing if you have symptoms or known contact. If you require testing for travel or occupational purposes, you or your employer would usually foot the bill. Healthcare workers have special exceptions. Probably Canada is similar.

These passengers were still subject to quarantine requirements (enforcement may be a different story). There are no direct flights between Toronto and Buffalo so the helicopter charters were filling this gap, while also skirting the physical border closures.

You think people who can afford to fly on helicopters can't get a covid test?

When I lived in Northern Virginia I saw a lot of helicopters flying over my apartment building, and not just the usual news and police helicopters. More than once I saw 4 uh-60s flying over in formation, and some uh-60s and uh-72s with a distinctive black and gold stripe color scheme. I did some research online and found that there were people in this region fascinated with identifying and cataloguing all of these aircraft, almost like bird watching. I found out they were likely stationed at the Pentagon. The black and gold ones are VIP transport helicopters, meant for transporting members of congress and cabinet members, particularly for evacuations in an emergency. I also saw marine one a couple times, though since it was alone I believe it didn't have POTUS in it at the time (when POTUS is actually in there they fly several identical helicopters in formation so you don't know which has the president). My apartment was roughly under the direct route between Andrews AB and DC, and pretty close to the pentagon, my guess is it was a convenient route for training and drilling.

Yep, there's even a "helicopters of DC" Twitter account which is really interesting.

There is no single Marine One helicopter. The squadron has several identical helicopters, but they only get the "Marine One" call sign when the President is on board. At other times they use different call signs.

Similar reports of helicopters in my community were aerial inspections of the electrical grid being conducted by So Cal Edison.

The most curious part to me is that all these photos of the helicopters were taken by cameras without rolling shutters.

Having serendipitously dipped a toe into the avgeek waters, it doesn't seem so surprising to me. In a major metropolitan area, you can bank on people listening to ATC traffic and camping out near airfields with good-enough cameras at almost any time. In the avgeek world, one can earn both personal satisfaction and kudos for novel aircraft, so they are especially desirable.

Even a beginner is likely to have an imaging system that is plenty good, with a mechanical shutter. The atmospheric shimmer in the third image suggests that it was made with a longer lens; probably not a beginner.

The President of the United States can't fly over Britain on a secret trip without getting photographed by a semi-retired IT manager: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/dec/27/air-force-on...

It is really great to see distributed citizen-journalism happening.

It is super cool that there is a community around this

I read that as "disturbed citizen-journalism" and, honestly, it'd still work.

I don't think we can draw that conclusion.

Its the middle of the day with no cloud, so there is plenty of light. That means we can up the shutter speed to the point where rolling shutter is negligible.

I have a nikon d7000, which has a rolling shutter. Its only really noticeable when I'm recording video, or when there is _lots_ of movement inside the shutter time. at 1/3200th of second, thats a lot of movement.

The D7000, like all system cameras, has a mechanical shutter it uses when taking photos. Even though technically ”rolling” as well, it is much faster than a typical electronic shutter due to the way a CMOS sensor must be read out. Phone cameras have no physical shutters and use e-shutter all the time, but your D7000 only resorts to it when shooting video.

As a rule of thumb, it takes several milliseconds for a mechanical shutter to traverse the sensor plane, but it takes several tens of milliseconds for an e-shutter to readout the sensor. Shutter speed does not affect this; even at 1/4000s or 1/8000s or whatever the time difference between the top and the bottom of a photo remains the same.

While that's true, a smartphone even at 1/3200th will have a 30th of a second or so of rolling shutter.

Most cameras that can take good images of helicopters in flight have a mechanical shutter available.

Thats only there to protect the sensor. There will be an electronic shutter too.

Not really. Most interchangeable lens cameras do not have a purely electronic shutter, it's a very new feature.

Those that do, do not have it as the default mode. There is also the electronic first curtain shutter, but that is way closer to a mechanical shutter than to an electronic shutter.

Such as?

Citation needed.

Pretty much every single camera that has interchangeable lenses, and thus can mount a telephoto objective sufficient for taking good pictures of helicopters has a mechanical shutter. From the Sony alpha series, to Nikon DSLRs, to the Canon EOS line, and so on.

Probably taken with cameras with mechanical shutters? That doesn’t seem very curious.

For the past few years I've called Pasadena(I live in the general area) the "land of helicopters", but I didn't know that LA in general was seeing something similar recently. People keep telling me that Pasadena/SGV must be a good place to train helicopter pilots, but I don't buy it.

It's been a while since I've bothered to actually look at these helicopters, but a lot of them are pretty nondescript. Not obvious news or police helicopters. Multiple times a month I hear them circle around at night, but I never see anything in the news about an incident or a fugitive. When I ask on Nextdoor I never get replies despite it being loud enough to keep me up.

Then again, I just realized that "Helicopter Hell" is more alliterative. I think I'll call it that from now on.

I'm down in south Orange county. We have helicopters near our neighborhood a few times a week. It surprised me a bit when we first moved here. One of our neighbors is a retired deputy and I've talked to him about it handful of times and he isn't sure what the deal is, either. I lived in East LA for a while, so I've had a fair bit of exposure to the things. It's weird for sure.

The area above the SGV (Pasadena to Pomona area) is the Santa Fe Practice Area. A lot of first-time pilots, private plane or helicopter, practice and learn how to fly out of El Monte or Brackett (Pomona).

I've checked FlightRadar24 during the protests of June and it seemed like most of the tail numbers of the helicopters flying around the SGV were either Pasadena Police Department, LA County Sheriff, or a private (news?) helicopter. Lately the ones I've seen aren't showing up on FlightRadar24, oddly enough.

"Hellacopters"

There are reports of a person flying around LA airspace with a jet pack. Maybe that's why the helicopter is there, to catch that person?

How much does a helicopter cost to operate per hour? Whatever it is, it's probably not worth it to catch some guy in a jet pack.

Has anyone heard any more about the Los Angeles program to fly airplanes around the city during the day to record everything that happens, similar to what they did in Baltimore?

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-baltimore-secret-sur...

Ditto for San Jose lately. Lots of low circling at night.

Edit: Here's an example: https://fr24.com/2021-01-08/05:10/12x/EC20/2683abc3

I wonder if this is related to the mysterious jet pack man that keeps flying over LA?

Makes me wonder if those helicopters being "purchased" by Iraq was just OPSEC.

I would have expected them to have changed the number if that were the case.

It shouldn't be that other worldly in socal. This is the land of the helicopter, where Kobe (may he rest in peace) used to commute to the staples center on helicopter. Where elon musk also commutes by air rather than by his own tesla car. Where the LAPD flies at least two helicopters between 8am-4am every single day regardless of what the radio calls for. In fact, I'm working outside and hear one above right now, by the looks of it, its a small grey personal helicopter. Just after I wrote this I am hearing a second one, navy blue with a yellow callsign on the tail, probably another personal craft.

How many conspiracy theories people will create/associate using that story?

Black helicopters? Conspiracy? There's even a Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_helicopter

Now, just like every other conspiracy nut, I'd like to state upfront that I'm no conspiracy theorist. However, over the years "seeing black helicopters" has been an insult used by some. Yet I used to see them parked out in the open at the National Guard base along I-70 in eastern Indiana like 25-30 years ago. And here we have photos published by not-disreputable source. Make of it what you will.

Now I feel like watching every movie listed in the "Fictional representations" section

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_helicopter#Fictional_rep...

Are you saying that 25-30 year old helicopters from eastern Indiana are now circling LA?

I think it's pretty clear they are saying people would say you're a nutter for saying unmarked helicopters are used by government agencies yet he knew them to exist even back then. Not sure where you picked up that they were the same exact helicopters.

A flight all the way around greater LA while following freeways suggests a training mission. What they're training for is another issue.

Pretty much all helicopter flight paths going through LA follow freeways to navigate, that doesn't suggest anything.

I am reminded of former Governor Jerry Brown who released a swarm of whirlybirds dumping chemicals from the air ... throughout many California cities AND suburban.

I am amazed and appreciative at how quickly real, informative news hits the internet. Even if nothing comes from added aerial surveillance, the world knows it is happening.

The twitter account @SkyCirclesLA keeps track of these sorts of instances. Definitely worth a follow

Keep an eye on the helicopter colors. Are the unmarked helicopters circling the area black? Probably World Government. Not a good area for play that day.

Are they blue? That’s the Sheriff’s Secret Police. They’ll keep a good eye on your kids, and hardly ever take one.

Are they painted with complex murals depicting birds of prey diving? No one knows what those helicopters are, or what they want. Do not play in the area. Return to your home and lock the doors until a Sheriff’s Secret Policeman leaves a carnation on your porch to indicate that the danger has passed. Cover your ears to blot out the screams.

http://www.nightvalepresents.com/welcome-to-night-vale-trans...

Keep an eye on the helicopter colors. Are the unmarked helicopters circling the area black? Probably World Government.

We had a drug task force mass arrest staged a few years back. I swear the DEA and other agencies did everything they could to kick up the paranoia. It was unreal how they checked all the 'conspiracy nut' boxes in one operation.

They cut the internet and cell phones in the area. Real nice since we had an online class going. They drove around in black SUVs and, just so stupid, had black helicopters flying overhead. I guess they did arrest some people, but I question that too. I'm sure someone was super pleased with themselves.

I've definitely gotten the impression that some agencies really get a kick out of feeling like badasses on super-secret missions and the whole thing is just tax-payer playtime for bored cops who want to feel special.

The less useful they are the more they try and act important.

ATF, DEA, DHS, etc are always making big scenes because "look, we're doing things, we justify our budget" whereas the FBI just does their job without fanfare.

Even the FCC has been known to raid pirate radio stations alongside armed Marshalls in riot gear.

https://www.democracynow.org/2004/9/30/longest_standing_pira...

You gotta put on a good show for the "tough on crime" crowd plus how do you expect them to justify funding if they aren't geared up like they are staging a raid on a terrorist stronghold to arrest some 20 year old for a couple of grams of meth (or someone growing okra¹)? They are fighting the ”War on Drugs" after all.²

[1]: https://time.com/3479728/marijuana-okra-police/

[2]: I say this with as much sarcasm as I can currently muster

World Government? what's that?

Welcome to Night Vale is a fiction podcast in the form of a radio show from a remote small town in which all sorts of strange things happen — aliens, vast conspiracies, mad cultists, supernatural beings, etc etc. Straddles the line between dryly funny and legitimately creepy. It's worth a listen if you enjoy that kind of thing.

Oh boy are you in for a treat

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/New_World_Order_(conspiracy_theo...

The Illuminati, of course.

That was deliciously creepy...Reminded me a bit of this

http://www.scpwiki.com/top-rated-pages-this-month

Oh man, Welcome to Night Vale is fantastic. I’m glad to see a reference!

alert alex jones

hunting for the jetpack man i guess. In general with jetpacks and drones of all sizes, including human carrying, the airspace is to become more lively and entertaining with coming years - for example police in Japan is using drones with nets to catch drug carrying drones, so the drug traffickers started to use drones with nets to catch those police drones...

The route they took wasn't particularly close to where the jetbacks were spotted. I don't think it is that - although I don't know enough about aviation to know what they were doing or how rare of an occurrence they are.

As far as how rare they are - helicopters in LA are a daily occurrence. I used to live in Mar Vista, just a few blocks from Venice Beach, and they flew over our house every night. There were times when they flew so low they caused the water in our pool to ripple (though that was rare). Now I'm down in Westchester, and we get fewer, but they're still around frequently. I saw some yesterday, but think they were just regular LAPD, and not these particular ones. (And looking at the map of their route, they didn't fly over us.)

Helicopters are practically a native bird here, they are incredibly common. I've been working outside for the past hour and spotted my third flying overhead already in that time span. LAPD also always has at least two birds in the air for like 20 hours out of the day, but there are tons and tons of private operators and just plain old rich people who commute like this (most famously probably Kobe Bryant given he recently died commuting by helicopter).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com