RWS 94 – News Helicopter Ops Over Los Angeles with Larry Welk

Rotary Wing Show - Interviews from the Helicopter Industry

For 24+ years Larry Welk has been flying news operations over Los Angeles and is President of Welk Aviation.

Electronic news gathering or ENG is the term that those in the helicopter news corner of the industry use to capture their operations. As a platform to provide real time on-scene video at short notice over a city nothing so far beats a helicopter.

As consumers of news media we have become pretty accustomed to streamed live aerial video these days. And if it’s not video itself then part of living in any sizeable city in the modern era is the experience of a radio station traffic report from an overhead helicopter.

For news stations it probably doesn’t hurt them to have a flying billboard decked out in their station colours and logo flying overhead too.

When it comes to big cities and news helicopters – Los Angeles in the USA probably has some of the most recognisable operations – in part from the co-location of Hollywood and the onscreen productions that come out of there.

AS350 over Los Angeles in the news role. Requires some thinking about where to head towards in the event of a critical emergency.

There are upward of 12 million people in the greater LA area and it is the 2nd largest city in the US after New York.

I couldn’t find a recent quoted figure but there is something crazy like 8 million vehicles registered in the city. You can imagine the popularity of the morning and afternoon traffic helicopter updates.

For the last 24 years Larry Welk has been involved in news coverage above LA. Larry is President of Welk Aviation based in California and which has a number of subsidiary helicopter operations.

I was introduced to Larry by show listener Tom Magill who reached out and suggested Larry as a guest. Tom is a Cinematographer who got his own helicopter licence in the early 2000’s and worked with Larry at times as an aerial camera operator. Thanks Tom!

Some snippets from Larry’s bio – he has over 17,000 flight hours, served 2 years as president of the Professional Helicopters Pilot Association which has just renamed to the Southern Californian Rotorcraft Association and has even been shot at on the job.

Larry has received two Emmy nominations, one Emmy award, a national Sports Emmy award, two commendations from the City of Los Angeles, recognition from the National Broadcast Pilots Association and the Greater Los Angeles Press Club.

Larry takes us through range of topics related to electronic news gathering. We chat about:

• The Early days of news flying before video downlinks
• Building flight time
• The normal daily routine for traffic patrols and news aircrew
• The transition from the pilot being the on air talent to a team and crew effort
• Introduction to LA airspace
• Training process to become a news pilot
• Safety considerations for flying over the urban environment, and
• The importance of learning everything to do with the mission or the role that the helicopter is being used for and to not just focus on the helicopter control or piloting.

Larry Welk flying a news configured H125 helicopter

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Links from this week’s episode:
Support the podcast on Patreon
Welk Aviation – Larry’s company that includes Angel City Air, Western Helicopters and Summit Helicopter(Powerline Operations). You can find out more about the different operations they conduct on their site.
Welk Aviation on Facebook.
Tim Tucker’s Blog – Tim is the Chief Instructor at Robinson Helicopter Company. His blog has a number of very informative essays on helicopter topics.

News coverage extends into the night with crew shifts. The morning crews are in early to pre-flight before launching on the daily traffic reports.

The job revolves around getting this bit of kit to where the customer news stations need it.

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