I attribute a 1,000 spot downturn since 2022 to the platform change from Twitter to Telegram and our website. I expect this year's election will see an uptick in resident helicopter queries around security flights as we saw in 2020.

Unknown spots were up this year. Air Force 1st Helicopter Squadron UH1N continue to dominate our data set, demonstrating the necessity of tracking these types that not even the FAA has data on.

Interestingly, news helicopters only make up "the tip of the iceberg" while Park Police spots grew dramatically since last year.

This year our radio transcription program included 32 uses of the undocumented helicopter route across NW "split the P's" between prohibited zones of the Naval Observatory and White House/National Mall (highlighted in red).

The most common route was 1 (133) that follows the Potomac and Anacostia converging at Haines Point and the most common zone was 2 (113) over NW and NE DC.

We mapped 141 Air Force "Musel", 109 Presidential "Nighthawk", 37 Coast Guard "Blackjack" and 35 Army "PAT" and 34 Park Police "Eagle" helicopter radio calls.

The total transcriptions were down from over 1000 in 2022 as we transitioned the program to Telegram, where the user experience is much better, but the user base is smaller than Twitter. If you'd like to try it yourself, click here to join a private group that is testing OpenAI Whisper transcriptions to separate helicopter calls from DCA approach traffic or type "/radio" in CopterSpotterBot to hear the latest traffic from DCA tower.

DC Police's Carjacking Dashboard.

We also track air-to-air helicopter radio that is almost exclusively used by DC and Prince George's County Police helicopters to coordinate aerial assets. Very occasionally (as it is only used when two police helicopters are operational) this gives residents insight into police helicopter operations, descriptions of vehicles, suspects and their bailouts into buildings and wooded areas.

In May I had meeting with Congressman Beyer and Congresswoman Norton's staff to discuss ADS-B exemptions, noise reporting programs and how we can better inform residents of aircraft operations. One hard to quantify improvement was we have seen much better reporting of Arlington Cemetery flyovers via AlertDC since Norton's team reached out to them.

After my meeting with Congresswoman Norton's team, she wrote a letter to DoD, DHS, Park Police (Dept of Interior), and FAA to inquire about the use of ADS-B exemptions. We intend to follow this up with a comprehensive investigation into military ADS-B exemption use since the law's 2020 inception.

At this year's Def Con I was able to attend Harley Geiger's Policy Hacking Workshop. I now have alerts configured for regulations.gov for anything pertaining to ADS-B policy so the next time military exemptions is elgibile for comment I can submit my reporting.

Congressman Beyer, working with Congressman Connolly and commercial helicopter lobbyists from the EHRC and HAI announced a pilot program for a new helicopter noise complaint system. On April 25th, 2023 the results of the pilot program were announced along with changes to the FAA helicopter route chart and a commitment by neighboring municipalities to adopt the system and its cost from Federal tax payers. This privatizes an existing FAA complaint system and makes previously public data opaque to residents and reporters.

Because of lackluster coverage by mainstream outlets I decided to write up a comprehensive report here.

The Sikorsky VH92A has continued testing to replace the president's VH3D.

As Alexander Soule reported in July: "They're already in service for some of the presidential missions," said Paul Lemmo, president of Sikorsky, during a Connecticut Business & Industry Association forum late last month. "Right now there's a mix of the new aircraft and the old aircraft, and over the next year or so we expect the VH-92 to take over completely."

The mysterious Customs and Border Patrol S-76s written about on The Drive have been officially retired from their position in Manassas. We have seen new CPB AS350 liveries (white with single blue tail stripe) in the area since the retirement.

As Stephen Losey reports for Defense News: "The first two field-ready MH-139A Grey Wolf helicopters are now in final assembly and Boeing said it expects the long-awaited delivery of the first of these helicopters to the Air Force in mid-2024." It is expected that these will join the Air Force 1st Helicopter Squadron's aging UH1N Hueys, changing the noise profile of DC's most prevalent helicopter operator. If and when these are rolled out broadly in the D.C. area it will be a challenge for our computer vision program as they are the same body type as Maryland State Police's AW139 helicopters.

Late last year spotters noticed a new helicopter, N2171C, which was confirmed to be visually identical to MPDC's existing AS350s. MPDC's Office of Communications confirmed to Alan Henney, "MPD's Falcon helicopter got assigned a new registration number. It is the same helicopter."

Late last year spotters noticed a new helicopter, N2171C, which was confirmed to be visually identical to MPDC's existing AS350s. MPDC's Office of Communications confirmed to Alan Henney, "MPD's Falcon helicopter got assigned a new registration number. It is the same helicopter."