
The helicopter team that films the Tour de France - mhb
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/07/how-helicopters-bring-us-amazing-views-of-the-tour-de-france/
======
tomglynch
Have a read of this article also, it graphs the flight paths of these
helicopters:

[https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/how-the-tour-de-france-
go...](https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/how-the-tour-de-france-goes-from-
cycle-to-screen/)

~~~
ape4
Looks like bicycle wheels

------
dmix
> 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.

~~~
AareyBaba
Los Angeles car chases.

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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7K3dZmrcriU)

~~~
toomanybeersies
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?

~~~
AareyBaba
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!

~~~
dmix
It’s funny because it’s almost always in LA. And they rarely get away but they
still keep trying. Once there’s a helicopter it’s pretty much over.

------
rconti
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.

~~~
playworker
A good piece on F1 helicopter piloting:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOpMPBxZYZc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOpMPBxZYZc)

~~~
orbital-decay
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.

~~~
jdhawk
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

~~~
andrepd
>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.

~~~
Swizec
Maybe it’s part of the sport and averages out? I bet they don’t get ti
complain about the weight of cameras on board either.

Organizers get to make the rules. If heliwash means more spectators, then so
be it as long as it doesn’t impede safety.

~~~
Infernal
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.

~~~
Swizec
I did not know that. That’s neat.

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.

~~~
jdietrich
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.

------
gregmac
> 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?

~~~
plq
$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.

~~~
GordonS
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.

~~~
joshvm
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.

~~~
GordonS
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.

~~~
bagacrap
But drones have a much greater chance of crashing I would think.

~~~
henvic
Curious... Do you have data to back up your claims?

* about more professional drones

~~~
jdietrich
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.

------
bibinou
Here's a small video on the helicopters:
[https://youtu.be/2iiQiXsQDWU?t=14](https://youtu.be/2iiQiXsQDWU?t=14)
(warning: LOUD)

on the relay plane:
[https://youtu.be/6by7a6FPZ58?t=14](https://youtu.be/6by7a6FPZ58?t=14)

------
xpuente
I think WRC helicopter teams are way more impressive.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7h0OxsCCwA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7h0OxsCCwA)

~~~
dyyni
Here's another clip to illustrate the speed:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_0RME99Iik](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_0RME99Iik)

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24gttghh
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.

6 months seems satisfactory!

~~~
hanniabu
Just hearing this stuff, I would never imagine this production is profitable.

~~~
Someone
Need not be _that_ expensive. Lots of the preparation and training can be done
on the ground, even outside simulators.

Let’s say 10 top pilots, each a year’s wages, additional costs for flying,
etc. 10 to 20 million euro?

The TdF doesn’t sell tickets, but the organizer makes a healthy profit
([https://inrng.com/2017/11/amaury-sport-accounts-
finances/](https://inrng.com/2017/11/amaury-sport-accounts-finances/), of
which likely half or thereabouts from the Tour de France.

(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...](https://www.outsideonline.com/2397117/aso-bumps-marquee-womens-races-
world-tour)) )

~~~
jaclaz
I would say much less than that.

Only as a data point the Italian TV valued in 2017 8.5 millions Euro for 4
years[1] (again Italian but not too bad via google translate):

[https://www.repubblica.it/tecnologia/2017/01/08/news/elicott...](https://www.repubblica.it/tecnologia/2017/01/08/news/elicotteri_geostabilizzanti_e_droni_la_rai_stanzia_8_5_milioni_per_produrre_il_ciclismo-155637160/)

[1] Covering, beside the Giro d'Italia, also a few other national cyclism
events.

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benj111
Saw the tour de France when it came to Yorkshire.

Slightly weird at one point as I was looking down at a flying helicopter.

~~~
FigBug
I had the same experience on Col du Tourmalet. I heard the helicopter but
couldn't see it until I looked down.

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762236
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.

~~~
ucs
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.

------
fbelzile
Probably a naive question, but why don't they use multiple drones instead?
Wouldn't that be much safer and cheaper?

~~~
brianwawok
1) Copters have been around a while, drones have only gotten "good enough" in
the last 5ish years

2) Its ~30 12 hour days of racing, I am not sure drones have that kind of
capacity. Would need many many drones and some complex rotations.

~~~
mft_
It doesn't detract from your point especially, but the Tour de France
comprises 21 stages and the average stage is around 4-5 hours.

~~~
ucs
Furthermore, the helicopters covering the Tour are not flying for 4-5 hours
straight; they make scheduled refueling stops during the race.

------
rodolphoarruda
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.

Edited for grammar.

~~~
tcmb
I was thinking the same, found this one: [https://www.cyclist.co.uk/in-
depth/391/riders-in-the-storm](https://www.cyclist.co.uk/in-depth/391/riders-
in-the-storm)

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’."

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gregkerzhner
The helicopter gets so close to the racers! Wouldn't the wind from the blades
affect the riders?

~~~
rocqua
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.

------
Someone
_”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.

~~~
etaty
Sometimes these images have been filmed during spring.

~~~
ucs
>>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.

------
alex_young
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.

------
11235813213455
Can't they use a drone nowadays? cheaper, less polluting and can fly closer
without disturbing riders

That's what they use in sailing races

~~~
Voloskaya
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.

~~~
aembleton
Have two drones.

~~~
Voloskaya
I don't think you realize the weight of the cameras they use to shoot in
ultrahd, with crazy parallax effects and relay the feed to a plane.

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rsync
Where can I see the video ?

I am hoping for something like the MacOS screensavers that I can just leave
running ...

~~~
hollander
Check Eurosport. It truely is beautiful what they show us.

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_pmf_
I used to watch it for the landscape views, but I felt somewhat decadent doing
so.

~~~
andrepd
Why decadent? In my experience, a good chunk of people watch it for the views
;)

~~~
bagacrap
In fact more French watchers say they tune in for the views than for the
sporting value.

~~~
Bayart
Roland Garros and Tour de France is our traditional summer background
soundtrack.

------
protomyth
I wonder what actual camera they are using. Cineflex has a variety of options.

------
mercules
Do they paint the helicopter differently for every Tour de france?

