This Big LED Billboard Goes Where Its Needed – Towed By Chopper
April 28, 2025 by Dave Haynes
Hat top Nick Coston, who had this on his Substack page …
This hits me as slightly nuts, but a new digital OOH media play is using a helicopter to lift and tow around, by wire, a big, rigid two-sided LED display that is readily visible to people on the ground.
This is a little bit like those old-school towed aerial banners, a little bit like helicopter water bombers, and a little bit like those waterway barges that have an LED billboard on them, visible to people on the shorelines.
Heli-D is launching in the US this week at an OOH conference in Miami, and is already operating in, of course, Dubai. The value proposition is that a mobile LED display can go where the crowds and events are, and be unavoidably visible in ways that fixed or billboards on trucks at ground level cannot be.
The superstructure for the twin display is roughly the shape of a sea container, with a substantial gap between the opposing faces. The unit itself is made up of rigid mesh LEDs – the ones that have horizontal grids – and the structural material is carbon fiber, so it would be lighter than other kinds of materials used for LED cabinets.
Heli-D says it has full FAA approval in the U.S. to fly as close as 250 feet to viewers on the ground. I am assuming that means the flights plans never allow the chopper-display combo to fly over residential areas or anywhere else where there might be people or critical infrastructure. I’m not questioning the safety record of the company or its gear, to be clear, but unexpected things happen here and there in the air, on waterways and roads.
There are lighter LED displays out there – even LED on tarp-like material – but I am guessing you actually need some weight and form to keep a display from flapping or twisting too much while airborne and moving.
There’s also the sustainability side of this, as I don’t think helicopters that can lift and tow things are going to be overly fuel-efficient.
Here’s a video ..
Miami and Dubai, classy
Does the sign assembly have it’s own power generator? Kind of a neat idea!
Good question. No idea!
On the Heli-d home page video, you can see 3 generators on the rig powering the boards.