Thanks for the explanation. Lotta of good info there....True in some venues, you would need pretty much full line of site of the chopper from the TV tech area in order to get your live signal back, if the chopper disappears behind a part of the hill / trees you could loose signal.
Just finished working with some chopper cams at the Volvo Ocean Race in Ireland, they truely offer the best shots and for a DH race they would fill in the sections we cant see. What I'd love to see is a chopper shot of a section followed by a ground camera slo-mo replay of the section you've just seen, rather than just the same section again slowed down. Chopper affords rob and co-comm live action chat and then the slo-mo gives them the opportunity to really scrutinize the line / bike / rider / pink jersey! Really would give a huge range of chat if your not seeing the same thing again just this time slower.
I reckon that above all the cost of putting a chopper cam onto a wc race would be so dear that unless the budget increased to meet it you would have to cut nearly all the course cameras to afford it. (unless someone in the UCI accounting department has a spare chopper lying around they wanna loan out??)!
As for beaming out onto a satellite, if the tech area is in a valley the sat truck can't see out, therefore streaming it out onto the web can be the the best option / cheapest, there are other ways of doing it but other in tv world means $$$$$$