I'm a light sleeper, especially in the mornings. Unfortunately I live close enough to a highway (the BQE) and some major arterials to end up getting woken up or kept up by helicopter noise occasionally. I'm not close enough to these things to hear traffic noise, but helicopters don't have to be very close to make lots of noise.

I used to live near midtown Manhattan, and every holiday season would bring the daily drone of helicopter noise as the mechanical birds hovered over midtown for long stretches filming the throngs shopping and skating and just walking about.

Now, at least I know where to complain. The Eastern Region Helicopter Center takes your complaints. Whether or not they can restrain the news chopper pilots, I don't know. But at least I can tell someone about it... (unlike 311, which tells you to call the NYC EDC, which doesn't know anything about this. Ah, the runaround.)