RK
So for the past six months or so I’ve been working on a project to list the registration numbers, stations, helicopter type and branding of the various news helicopters in US. I have 117 helicopters listed most from the US and half a dozen from Canada, the UK and Australia. I also have on the list some helicopters where there contracts were not renewed or replaced (that are striked through) along with stations that have dedicated backups (or ones branded as a second helicopter) and a few that get ferried around when needed. You can view the Google Sheets right here and if you have any to add here’s a Google Form. But I saved the sheets as JPEGs that you can view here:
I started creating this list after some tracking breaking news events and car chases on FlightRadar24. I thought wouldn’t it be much easier to be able to identify a stations helicopter if there are multiple in the air, such as a car chase. I was able to gather a lot of this information from Twitter, stations social media, simply watching FlightRadar24 and searching for the tail numbers on Google Images. Some came from the form submissions but one user at TVNewsTalk, blizzard59, submitted probably 20 helicopters to this list.
I believe this list is mostly complete where in 2013 TVNewsCheck estimated there were between 100 and 120. I have no reason to believe that the number has grown as more stations have been relying on drones or discontinuing there use. Reportedly before the recession there were about 180 helicopters flying.
I work natively for this list an Excel (Sheets didn’t do the things I wanted it to) and have had some issues with copying data over, for example if I inserted or copied a row for a new helicopter or updated it and went to resort the column for some reason not all of the contents of that row would move with it. So there maybe some differences or may appear off. If so let me know
I started creating this list after some tracking breaking news events and car chases on FlightRadar24. I thought wouldn’t it be much easier to be able to identify a stations helicopter if there are multiple in the air, such as a car chase. I was able to gather a lot of this information from Twitter, stations social media, simply watching FlightRadar24 and searching for the tail numbers on Google Images. Some came from the form submissions but one user at TVNewsTalk, blizzard59, submitted probably 20 helicopters to this list.
I believe this list is mostly complete where in 2013 TVNewsCheck estimated there were between 100 and 120. I have no reason to believe that the number has grown as more stations have been relying on drones or discontinuing there use. Reportedly before the recession there were about 180 helicopters flying.
I work natively for this list an Excel (Sheets didn’t do the things I wanted it to) and have had some issues with copying data over, for example if I inserted or copied a row for a new helicopter or updated it and went to resort the column for some reason not all of the contents of that row would move with it. So there maybe some differences or may appear off. If so let me know
Last edited by Rkolsen on 28 February 2020 1:14am