Helicopter Buzzes Wal-Mart

In article .com,
wrote:

"I think your altitude estimation skills need a bit of practice. "

Could be. My vision is distorted, and I only had a few seconds to grab
this shot.

"It looks to me like the chopper is at least 200 feet up."

I believe the helicopter was within 100 feet of me when I took the
photo. It looks small, so you might think it is farther away.

The apparent width of the helicopter, which looks like a Hughes
500, seems to be at most 1/8 that of the back of the SUV, which
should be roughly the same size (allowing for measuring
imprecision). That means it's at least 8 times further
away. Presumably you could measure the distance from where
you were standing to the third parking space. At the stores
I've been at, that would be on the order of 100 feet. That
would put the helicopter at around 800 feet away. It would
be a simple matter to determine the altitude by measuring the
height of the apparent position on the light pole and
multiplying by the appropriate factor (since for government
work the pole and the SUV are the same distance from the
camera). It looks like maybe 30 feet, which would give an
altitude of 250 feet.

Of course, if it was one of those Dangerchopper things that
only hold a single pilot for a brief shining moment until
they wind up in a field, it would be probably four
times closer and lower. That might be well under a hundred
feet up (remember that I tried to estimate the *minimum*
altitude and distance).

In either case, his estimation skills seem like they might at
least plausibly be good. It would be interesting to carry
out more precise measurements, but what would be the point?
Maybe the pilot is on the group and can tell us how high
he was.

As for Walmort, the camera thing seems like a good reason
not to shop there. They're probably worried about competitors
checking their prices (they'll throw you out if you're writing
down prices too, I bet) and as a dinosaurian company they're
too slow and stupid to realize that ten percent of their
customers have cameras in their cell phones.

Mike Beede