Helicopters of DC

the ROTOR Act failed because the Pentagon said they don’t want to be accountable to the FAA or the American public and half of Republicans were cool with it.
Don’t fly out of DCA or any other market that shares airspace with the military (good luck)

If you got caught up in the Epstein files and America’s latest foreign war you might have missed the Pentagon’s threats to a private company for not providing technology to make autonomous death robots and tools to surveil U.S. citizens.
#ImWithClaude

🚽 📦?

Sky crane, my favorite!

Airlift at Georgetown Hospital this morning - 8am

CopterSpotter HelicoptersofDC's crowd-sourced heli tracking system.

To my dismay, the failure of the House to act makes DC’s helicopter self-reporting system CopterSpotter.com more important than ever.

If you are for aviation transparency let’s start with the monthly release of the PlaneNoise reporting system you implemented to bypass FAA’s own system and obfuscate the publicly available noise reports.

Military Should Consider ADS-B Out for D.C. Helicopters On February 6th Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), Chairman of Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation, left an NTSB briefing on the…

By comparison @eleanornorton.bsky.social penned “the Holmes Letter” at my request which was cited by Senate 5 times while grilling a brigadier general - who is more PROACTIVE about DC’s helicopter problem and flight safety?

medium.com/@helicopters...

Unfortunate I told the Congressman’s Chief of Staff that military misuse of ADS-B was a problem on April 28, 2023 @militarytimes.bsky.social @defenseone.bsky.social @twz.com

House Republican Leadership Defeats Aviation Safety Legislation As Family Members Of Crash Victims Look On

Read my full statement:
beyer.house.gov/news/documen...

Instead they waited until families flew in to honor their loved ones to break their hearts as they looked on today from the House Gallery.

Johnson engineered this defeat, voted against the bill, and closed the vote as Members were still voting – needlessly underhanded and disgraceful behavior.

Mike Johnson and his leadership team should be ashamed of the way they treated the families of the victims of last year's tragic air collision.

The ROTOR Act passed unanimously in the Senate, the DOD and Speaker Johnson had lots of time to raise issues constructively.

[AlertDC] The U.S. Military will conduct an Aircraft Flyover in the NCR over Arlington National Cemetery on Tuesday, February ... evb.gg/n#5zgrre6xbk3

NTSB issues final report on Flight 5342

www.ntsb.gov/investigatio...

I recently got moved on a nearly full flight (737 I think) from the back row RIGHT side to one of the front rows RIGHT side for “balancing” how much does this same side balancing front to back matter?

Hackers' Almanack

The DEF CON 33 Hackers’ Almanack translates a year of hacker research into plain language for policymakers—covering offensive AI, cybercrime, authoritarian surveillance, and critical infrastructure vulnerabilities.

Read more:
harris.uchicago.edu/sites/defaul...

@jettip.net is a hero

if you're ever curious about helicopters in the NCR, may I suggest this guide from @helicoptersofdc.bsky.social

I miss contributing to their crowdsourced project and am proud of all the work the community has done documenting ops and pushing for safety reforms pre (& post) DCA

CopterSpotter HelicoptersofDC's crowd-sourced heli tracking system.

Copterspotter.com is our web app for submitting spots and browsing our data 🥰 thanks Ian!

Report: Microsoft Hands Over Keys for BitLocker-Encrypted Data to FBI Microsoft tells told Forbes that it receives around 20 such requests for BitLocker keys every year.

Windows is ☠️

1/ They did it again. More ADS-B spoofing drawing images in ADS-B Exchange. x.com/TheIntelFrog...

1 year ago an Army Black Hawk struck #Flight5342 on approach to DCA. There were no survivors.
We have yet to achieve meaningful safety reforms as a result of this tragedy.
I created this interactive timeline to track the progress:

cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timelin...

NTSB finds deep, systematic failures In DC midair crash The U.S. National Transportation Board (NTSB) has released the probable cause of the Jan. 29, 2025, midair collision of a regional jet and a U.S. Army UH-60L Black Hawk helicopter.

verticalmag.com/news/ntsb-fi...

NTSB Board Meeting on Flight 5342 YouTube video by HelicoptersofDC

Stream the NTSB Board Meeting on Flight 5342 here

www.youtube.com/live/ntuuLoJ...

Our thoughts will be on Patreon and BlueSky, where we’ve created a “starter pack” of DC and global aviation journalists worth following.

go.bsky.app/3RCv4BD

For years we’ve clung to hope the platform would once again find its “north star,” but that hope has faded.

CopterSpotter HelicoptersofDC's crowd-sourced heli tracking system.

-Government transparency for anyone but himself
-Freedom of speech as defined by anyone but himself

You can find us first and foremost on Sam Rees’s incredible CopterSpotter.com where we will never be deplatformed.

We can no longer ethically support our content being seen alongside misinformation, AI revenge porn, and ads that support an owner who is openly adversarial to:
-Flight trackers
-The trans community
-Federal employees
-Immigrants despite being an immigrant

CopterSpotter HelicoptersofDC's crowd-sourced heli tracking system.

It’s with a heavy heart we announce we are leaving Twitter. Since 2020 we have created creative projects, celebrated their milestones, found collaborators and made real life friends there. But the site has not represented our values as Washingtonians for a while now.

The NTSB will hold a public board meeting on Jan. 27 to determine the probable cause of the midair collision between a PSA Airlines regional jetliner and a U.S. Army Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
www.ntsb.gov/news/press-r...