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The current voluntary proposal in front of the tour helicopter operators is 2 miles out and 5,000 feet high with diversions to waterfalls where no one lives. You know if they just followed the Hawaii Air Tour Procedure Manual Page 13 and flew at 1500 AGL Above Ground Level over my house I don't think they would bother me so much. New York almost banned them completely but reached a compromise of half the number would be allowed. They are considered essential commuter traffic there.
Do you wonder what they do to our park? The park rangers don't like them and they receive complaints from people who visit the park. Park biologists and common sense tell us that the birds and animals in the park are just like us and follow the sound the helis make. They say that when animals are distracted in the wild that they can become prey much easier. There are endangered birds in the park. Do you think it's a good idea to fly helis over them?
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Maybe I am not directly under a flight path but I do regularly get helicopters directly overhead. Usually it doesn't bother me. The couple of times that green harvest was hovering a couple of hundred feet up did bother me a lot though.
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Ino,
it is free to post here and I am curious why this is the first post for HICop here, where there are many here who share your concerns.
Keep posting. Is there a membership? Strategy? meetings? This issue has been discussed many times here on punaweb over the last decade.
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Bananahead,
You may not live in a direct flight path, but I do and the helicopter noise SUCKS!
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We just formed this group after meeting with Gov. Ige at his "town hall meeting" recently at UHH. At the time about 2 months ago they said "What helicopter problem"?
There is a membership and we do have a strategy- We first met with the FAA who told us there has never been an enforcement action on this island in last 10 years and at first said hardly anyone ever complains. Then stated that there were 179 current complaints. They also gave us a page out of their regulations stating that helicopter pilots can fly as low as they like.
We will have meetings in the future but right now just we're trying to get the word out with a voting guide found here;
hicop.org
These people have pledged their support if elected.
We know there is strength in numbers and even though they made our representatives mad with the " you don't have jurisdiction" and telling them there was "nothing they could do about it". Please contact your rep. anyway with your concerns- Mahalo! State Sen. Kai Kehele has been Awesome!
Do I enjoy bringing this up time and again?- absolutely not!! It is affecting how much time I can give to the various causes I have supported since I have lived here. I much rather just live in harmony and one reason we're taking time is to allow the helicopter pilots to voluntarily do the right thing. I know I will probably have to move as I'm under a direct flight path. I'm retired so I don't get a break like you would if you went to work everyday. I'm at my house alot which of course just now is starting to display my eight years of hard labor- I thought I would die here. It's gotten so bad I actually have to leave when the cruise ships get here.
We had an overflight 2 days ago at 6:13 am that woke us up.
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quote:
Originally posted by Lee M-S
all aircraft have transponders.
><(((*< ... ><(("< ... ><('< ... >o>
Yeah but the ADS-B are not required at this time !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_..._broadcast
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Every single Hawaii tour helicopter must have a transponder;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transponder_(aeronautics)
Do you think they could get lost and nobody would know what happened to them? My radar station will be just like flightaware.com will be recorded by my antenna. I'm just days away from being operational and will post when it is.
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I didn't know such technology existed for the average Joe. If it does then I would be very interested to see just how much traffic there was and just how low they flew. Since I have never heard of this before I am kind of skeptical.
By "such technology" I mean anything that can interrogate transponders and accurately report altitude like ATC can. Not all aircraft are required to have transponders, depending on the airspace they are operating in, but all turbine helicopters would have them.
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Ino, is the Flight Aware data available online to the public--could we see what is there now?
Can you give us a link?
><(((*< ... ><(("< ... ><('< ... >o>
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Aloha Lee
You can see the commercial flights here;
http://flightaware.com/live/airport/PHTO
You can buy data here;
http://flightaware.com/live/airport/PHTO/history/buy
When my station is complete- it will be linked up so anyone can see the data;
http://flightaware.com/adsb/
My station will be the first private ADS-B ground station on the Big Island. I will take advantage of their Enterprise account and to do so I must agree to make my data public- I'm just waiting for a cable which is in transit.