Helicopters

I heard that helicopter too, Andrew. A few weeks ago, also early hours of Wednesday, there was one flying round for about a hour and a half. I have no idea what they are doing - they aren't shining lights at the ground so they can't be looking for someone, they just seem to be idly flying around for fun. Drives me mad.

Police helicopters use forward looking infra red cameras so the light is not required at night. They are annoying yes, but only in the same way as police sirens.

No, they are much more annoying than police sirens - a helicopter circling overhead at 3am is much louder. As they move further away, they allow you to drop off to sleep, only to come back overhead a few minutes later and wake you up again. And what the hell are they looking for that takes an hour and a half? At least police officers on the ground give up after a few minutes.

Police helicopters are now an important part of urban policing. They can go where police cars cannot and hover overhead coordinating the cops on the ground. They use their cameras to see in the dark and crims cannot hide from them.

My point was that yes they are annoying - and so are police car sirens. But, if you or your property were being attacked, you would want the police there as soon as poss - sirens and all. The police may call for helicopter back up to help catch the crims - again if you were involved I suspect you would be happy to see the helicopters and you would hope they would not "give up after a few minute". The helicopters are now part and parcel of modern urban living!

Auntie Pat wrote:

No, they are much more annoying than police sirens - a helicopter circling overhead at 3am is much louder. As they move further away, they allow you to drop off to sleep, only to come back overhead a few minutes later and wake you up again. And what the hell are they looking for that takes an hour and a half? At least police officers on the ground give up after a few minutes.

Ear plugs.

Unfortunately I have been the victim of a crime where the police gave up after a few minutes!

Thanks for the earplugs suggestion, Jonathan.

Some people that we know have a roof terrace, in a very sunny part of the world (not SE1), and they're growing certain plants on the terrace that perhaps they don't want the authorities to know about, and quite often they get helicopters flying fairly low over their house. Sometimes they stick around for several minutes, and these people get very paranoid about who the helicopters are, and what they're doing.

Personally I don't think it's cops looking for people growing one or two hemp like plants, and it's more likely to do with any of the nearby, main road, railway line, airport, harbour or prison.

we sleep with our window's open, but I've never been woken up by excessive helicopter noise.