Game time blimps & choppers

[martidav]

Monday Night Football...

I ran a rudimentary search here on RR. Either I overlooked the results or I was lazy; I didn't see much.

I live on a hill in line-of-sight of Seatac and Renton Muni. and can hear their towers warning of the traffic over downtown Sea.

Just wondering if someone more seasoned has a bead on blimps or choppers.

Tonight is a little unique as the news chops are/were covering the Occupy Seattle protests. I heard ONE, I think.

Please advise.

Regards,
D

 

[Stavro35]

I am very sorry I was unable to help you

 

[n5ims]

Quite often the communications on the arial coverage blimp/copter is done in two ways. The aircraft communicates using the standard airband channel for the area they're flying in (ATC or a standard Unicom channel) and the TV stuff is done over the standard microwave link frequencies (nowdays digital bidirectional links with IFB (director audio) on the uplink and broadcast video/audio and camera operator responses to the director on the downlink. The aircraft frequencies are pretty easy to monitor, but the microwave link isn't due to the frequency (2+ GHz) and specialized digital modes being used.

You may get luck and have some transmissions on standard scanner frequencies. At times these are listed in the database, but you may have better results doing a search on the FCC database for the stations in your local area. One of the options on the advanced search is for something like "Broadcast Auxilliary" that might give the best results. "RP" is the code for the "Remote Pickup" type of license which would have the broadcast audio. You may also search by licensee to see if they have standard business-band frequencies assigned as well.

 

[K7CAR]

There isn't anything in the RR database. Look up your local data base and you'll find 1,000's of frequencies. The News are in the 450-465 mhz range if I remember right. Easy to setup a search and see what's going on if you're in range.

News has remote stations out all the time. Mostly boring stuff and ques to the TV News cast. Traffic choppers aren't much better.