15th May 2021 - HA-BOC - Tour de Hongrie 2021 camera helicopter
The 2021 'Tour de Hongrie' bicycle event took place over 5 days from Wednesday 12th May until Sunday16th May. The fourth stage was held mainly in the Mátra area on Saturday 15th May, and once again, I was able to meet up with the pilots and camera technicians at Pipis-hegy, near Gyöngyös. Last year, Gazelle HA-LFN did the work, but this year the filming was done using MBB 105S HA-BOC. The bright orange colouring of the helicopter was very welcome on this mostly cloudy, and sometimes rainy, day. The work was undertaken by HIDROPLAN NORD kft, based at Hajmáskér airfield, near Veszprém. The company is owned by father, Lajos Sörös Snr., and son, Lajos Sörös Jnr. Despite being mindful of time schedules, Lajos Jnr was happy to feed me various interesting snippets of information during the afternoon. For instance, this 105 is the only one of its type based in Hungary, and is a 'stretched' version, giving more room and comfort for the crew. Lajos is always vigilant when it comes to fuel levels, as the engines stop after 2 hours and 10 minutes! He also said that the Mátra is not his favourite place to fly a helicopter as there are so many obstacles for low-level flight, and, as the area is dominated by forested hills, there are not many places to 'put down' if a fault occurs. At the end of the day, Lajos and colleagues were anxious to leave Pipis promptly as bands of heavy rain were moving in from the west, meaning that some avoiding action would be needed.
During last year's visit, I noticed an unidentified aircraft flying circles above the Mátra all afternoon, at about 16,000 to 20,000 feet. It was in position on this occasion, too, and Lajos also answered this query: this was Beech 200 King Air F-HFRF, owned by the French company, AERO-SOTRAVIA. which is based at Melun-Villaroche Aerodrome, south-east of Paris. The aircraft has equipment on-board to beam the TV images from the helicopter (and also, presumably, the camera motorcycles) back to the TV companies. After the final stage of the 2021 Tour, held on the streets of central Budapest, F-HFRF departed from Budapest just after 1600, arriving at its home base around 1930, cruising mainly at 28,000 ft.
During last year's visit, I noticed an unidentified aircraft flying circles above the Mátra all afternoon, at about 16,000 to 20,000 feet. It was in position on this occasion, too, and Lajos also answered this query: this was Beech 200 King Air F-HFRF, owned by the French company, AERO-SOTRAVIA. which is based at Melun-Villaroche Aerodrome, south-east of Paris. The aircraft has equipment on-board to beam the TV images from the helicopter (and also, presumably, the camera motorcycles) back to the TV companies. After the final stage of the 2021 Tour, held on the streets of central Budapest, F-HFRF departed from Budapest just after 1600, arriving at its home base around 1930, cruising mainly at 28,000 ft.
Links to the 2 mentioned companies: