The KSFO Helicopter Flies in the Cow Palace

This is an unedited recording of a stunt pulled off by KSFO in 1970. The station's traffic helicopter was wheeled into the Cow Palace and air personality Carter B. Smith rode in the co-pilot's position as traffic pilot Edwin Carr flew the copter inside the arena.

Carr would claim he'd set three indoor helicopter flight records: altitude, speed and endurance. At one point, he handed the controls to Smith (although Carr makes clear that he was still fully in control of the copter).

Why fly a copter in the Cow Palace? KSFO publicists said they'd heard that there were plans to conduct an indoor copter flight in a new convention hall in Atlantic City, and they figured they'd do it first.

There were clearly technical challenges for KSFO engineers, who had set up a live two-way radio feed to carry audio from Smith and Carr back to the radio station for recording. In several portions of the recording, one or the other of the participants is largely inaudible.

The recording is on a reel of 1/4" audio tape held in the archives of the Bay Area Radio Museum and Hall of Fame and digitized by volunteer Andrew Wlburn.