Helicopter Recording

So a few months back I wanted to try out my Rode Blimp and NTG-3 so went to my local (small) airfield. I wasn’t really expecting to find much, but what I did come back with was a load of Helicopter recordings. I think someone was having a lesson so they kept flying over the airfield which led to some great fly-by recordings.

I also almost caught a plane taking off right over me, but a member of the public started chatting to me about what I was doing and whether any planes had taken off today (I think he was a plane spotter). Luckily I managed to stop him talking just as the plane started it’s taxi toward me although, not so luckily, the guy got back in his car and slammed his door just as the plane was overhead. At this point, there was nothing I could do but hope for a chance at another plane, which unfortunately, never came.

Here’s a quick sample of a helicopter flying past me overhead:

Motorway Recording

After finally fitting a stereo pair of NT5s into my blimp, I decided it needed to be tested, so I drove to the local motorway bridge that runs over the M40 to record some car passes from above.

I ended up sitting on the top of the bridge with the X-Y pair pointing down towards the road, which meant that the left facing microphone was directed towards the outgoing traffic and the right facing microphone was directed towards the oncoming traffic. I left the recording running for around 45 minutes so I could get a decent amount of audio. I also managed to get some car horns as some people who drove by saw the deadcat so naturally had to cause a ruckus! Although, this worked to my advantage and gave me some interesting sounds.

Here is a short sample of the recording:

I went out to get some general driving atmos of a motorway, and although it wasn’t my intention, I ended up getting some cool sounding horns as well (unfortunately, not in the preview clip!)