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The view from a helicopter beats Google Earth

This morning we took a helicopter ride. It was a gift from M for my birthday last year.

Here’s the footage. The chopper was very loud; we had headsets to talk with, so you can’t hear most of our commentary. I’ll add a few captions, but no doubt you may spot stuff I didn’t.

Unfortunately I didn’t check the camcorder settings beforehand; it was on a setting for indoor tungsten lighting, and everything came out looking very blue. I’ve corrected the colour a bit using a filter, but it may not be spot on.

Funniest thing to watch for at the end: at the helipad were a bunch of young blokes in matching “JC” t-shirts (not “Jesus Christ”, as I first thought, but “Justice Crew“), and a film crew. They were waiting for Grant Denyer, and as we landed, they were waving at us and posturing for the camera. I guess that makes me @FakeGrantDenyer.

A couple of minutes later the real Grant arrived in another red helicopter, and they filmed it all again. Watch out for it in the promos for the next series of Australia’s Got Talent.

Grant Denyer and Justice Crew filming a promotion for Australia's Got Talent

Anyway, the helicopter ride was a heck of a lot of fun.

By Daniel Bowen

Transport blogger / campaigner and spokesperson for the Public Transport Users Association / professional geek.
Bunurong land, Melbourne, Australia.
Opinions on this blog are all mine.

6 replies on “The view from a helicopter beats Google Earth”

Looks like fun. I watched the whole clip hoping our building would get a gig, but no. While I know there was some cut outs, the chopper seemed to move very quickly. A great way to get to places more quickly than by car or pt. Probably would not work so well if there were a few million of us doing it.

I enjoyed the video and I recognised all of the areas you flew over and most of the sites you pointed out with the captions.

@Andrew, apart from that parking-wise it doesn’t scale up, the cost is apparently hundreds of times that of car or PT travel!

Yes there was a bit of editing, though most of the actual footage shot from the air is there (I didn’t have the camera running constantly.) It was about 30 mins flying all up.

What a great experience. Did your tummy feel OK? That would stop me going up in a chopper (or light plane)

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