What Was This Helicopter Doing?

[Brigand]

At the weekend I spotted this Squirrel out the window in Ashford, Kent. It flew over the town centre, spent a moment hovering over an area of housing, then slowly went back the way it came. It was only around for a few minutes at best (that I could see). The following day, two of them of similar colour went back to the same spot, flying slowly over the area then back off again a moment later.

At first I thought it was an older police helicopter, but the lone Squirrel had a rectangular chest on one of the skids, rather than a camera pod. I don't think the second one the following day had anything.



A Google of the registration brings up this charter company, http://www.excelcharter.com/page/gbpri so I assume it was from there, but I wonder what it was doing over Ashford. As you can probably see from the picture above, the box on the skid didn't seem to have any hole or similar in it for cameras, sensors or whatever, so its a bit of a puzzle to me.

Anyone have any ideas what they could have been up to?

[z4RRSchris99]

been In that chopper.

they do alot of filming and photography for property developers and gov infrastructure contracts

[Brigand]

I suppose they could have been taking pictures of the area with handheld cameras, they didn't hang around very long though!

[CharlieCrocodile]

Saw the same helicopter over Colchester last Friday, assumed it was for Google Maps or something.

[hurstg01]

New Funeral / ashes scattering service for pilots

[Brigand]

A couple more of these choppers flying about this weekend, different Squirrels but still the chest on the skids. They seemed to either be following the tracks for the railway station or it's surroundings.