Helicopter crew experienced a near miss with a drone which required evasive action.

Attributes
ACN	1339471
Time
Date	201603
Local Time Of Day	1201-1800
Place
Locale Reference	MFE.Airport
State Reference	TX
Environment
Flight Conditions	VMC
Light	Daylight
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	Helicopter
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 91
Flight Phase	Cruise
Flight Plan	VFR
Aircraft 2
Make Model Name	UAV - Unpiloted Aerial Vehicle
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 91
Flight Phase	Cruise
Person 1
Function	Pilot Flying Single Pilot
Qualification	Flight Crew Rotorcraft Flight Crew Instrument Flight Crew Multiengine Flight Crew Commercial
Experience	Flight Crew Last 90 Days 90 Flight Crew Total 2700 Flight Crew Type 500
Events
Anomaly	Conflict NMAC Deviation - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Miss Distance	Horizontal 100 Vertical 0

Narrative:

While conducting a routine aerial mission in the vicinity of the mcallen international airport a near miss occurred with a suspected privately owned drone aircraft. While performing low level helicopter operations; the non-flying crewmember saw an object at the same the altitude as our aircraft. The pilot banked the aircraft to the left to avoid the object. As the object passed off to the right of the aircraft; within approximately 100ft of the aircraft; it was observed that it was quadcopter drone type aircraft. Drone is suspected of being flown by an on duty [government] agent; who was not authorized to conduct aerial surveillance operations. No further actions were necessary and the aircrew continued mission without incident.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Helicopter crew experienced a near miss with a drone which required evasive action.

Narrative: While conducting a routine aerial mission in the vicinity of the McAllen International Airport a near miss occurred with a suspected privately owned drone aircraft. While performing low level helicopter operations; the non-flying crewmember saw an object at the same the altitude as our aircraft. The pilot banked the aircraft to the left to avoid the object. As the object passed off to the right of the aircraft; within approximately 100ft of the aircraft; it was observed that it was quadcopter drone type aircraft. Drone is suspected of being flown by an on duty [government] agent; who was not authorized to conduct aerial surveillance operations. No further actions were necessary and the aircrew continued mission without incident.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.