Taken in 2014 or 2015, I built two different newsgathering helicopters for the Miniland TV market. The one that’s in the background is Chopper 2 HD for the SBS O&O in Miniland. The copter itself is based off Lego kit 6553 (Crisis News Crew Outback theme, released in 1997.) I had this kit for many years. Like many of the kits I had built, I destroyed and built my own. In fact to be honest, this set was one of the better realistic news copters Lego had ever made. It’s based off the Bell 206 helicopter; of which is one of two major modern helicopters American stations use. I actually want to rebuild it again (as well as the tiny SNG van that was included)
About half of the pieces are related to 6553, especially on the belly area.
In the foreground, is SkyFox, to the Fox-O&O like station. It was all black.
Both helicopters crashed. And minifigures died. In 2017, BSBS-TV lost Chopper 2 and two of their crew, a pilot and a young videographer to manipulate the gyroscopic camera. They crashed near Elizabeth, a city just northwest of the city. Poor weather was the blame according to the Minifig Transport Safety Board; copters are not supposed to fly. The footage of the Chopper 2 crash came from SkyFox. The following year, in mid 2018, SkyFox crashed and killed a minifigure; Chopper 2 didn’t return to the air till the end of 2018 with a similar Bell 206 copter..
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