What is data heard on TV helicopter shots?

[jaded]

During coverage of today's plane crash, a live feed from a helicopter circling the crash site had some sort of data being sent on an audio channel. Check out this clip to hear what I'm talking about. I've heard this in the past when, for example, a local news reporter is talking over this when using helicopter shots provided by national news feeds. I'm not sure if it's telemetry from the helicopter (thus I'm potentially in the right forum!) or video related (e.g. time code - and therefore not in the right forum). Sounds sort of like AFSK1200, but I can't get it to decode. Does anyone here know what this is?

 

[W8RMH]

I think that noise is generated by the helicopter engine/electronics. I hear it in the background from our police choppers when they are using the radio.

 

[jaded]

While I do hear what sounds like background noise in one channel, the other, much louder channel has the data, and it's definitely data -- take a look at the waveform zoomed in:

 

[ChrisP]

I can't find a sample audio file, but it might be IRIG time code, not SMPTE time code...

- Chris

 

[ScannerDude244]

That's a microwave downlink sending video back to a tower or news van

 

[rdale]

That's a microwave downlink sending video back to a tower or news van

Why would the video cause audio to play in addition to the video?

 

[Ray-D-O]

Here is my wag-gps data from the helo to their link receiver to tell their microwave dish where to point for the video feed from the helo. Remember-wag.