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I am so excited! WSP in conjunction with other agencies are doing an emphasis patrol in the valley on LERN tonight and I heard the WSP dispatcher call Smokey 4!!

(This may seem lame to all of you, but I've never heard a Smokey unit before!!)

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The Smokey units is the airplane section of WSP

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I have heard the smoky units several times, never knew they were air units. Now I know who's talking. Always thought they were just another WSP car.

Up until 2 years ago they were known as "Air x". Then someone came up with the bright idea of calling them 'smokey' units. I prefered the 'air' designator myself.

Used to have 2 units stationed in Yakima until they moved to Ephrata a couple of years ago.

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I hear Smoky-3 & Smoky-4 over here pretty regular.

I spoke to Smoky-4 on MARS one night when someone was dropping paver bricks onto I-5 from the Denny Way overpass.

Question: How many air units within King County ?? How many does Seattle PD have/use ?? Thanks --MTM

I'll bet the air is full of them today and many others also.

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Jim N7UAP - Bellingham, WA / InterceptRadio.com

The Seattle P.D. has ZERO...
The King Co. S.O. has Guardian-1, which is a Bell-407 used for patrol, & Guardian-2, which is a UH-1 used for S.A.R.
Guardian-1 is in Pierce County assisting them, unknown if any of the WSP fixed-wings are assisting.

King County actually has 4 helicopters in their fleet based at Boeing Field. They have Guardian 1 which is a Bell 407, Guardian 2 which is the Bell UH-1H Iroquois (205 Huey), 2 extra Bell OH-58A Kiowa's (206 Jet Rangers) which are used when Guardian 1 is out of service.

Snohomish County has 2 helicopters and they are a Hughes OH-6A Cayuse (Magnum P.I. style) and a Bell UH-1H Iroquois (205 Huey). These are either based at Paine Field or Airlington Airport.

Not sure if Pierce or Thurston County has any helicopters for their Sheriffs Departments. As for cities, none have their own and Guardian 1 is called in to any King County city when needed and has been heard on MARS quite frequently.

As the story goes SPD used to have a small fleet of air units until a wind storm blew them all to pieces at Boeing Field. I think they weren't tied down.

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Comments, views, opinions - and trails of destruction - are my own.

Back in the 1970's, Seattle PD had at least one, and possibly two Hughes 300C's that were equipped with pontoons. I seem to recall one had a malfunction near Foster Island near the west end of the SR 520 floating bridge and had to make an emergency landing on the water. I think it also caught fire. Not sure what happened to the other one. There was a 3rd helo. Air 3, a Bell OH-13G, was involved in a midair collision just north of Boeing Field. Both officers in the helo and 2 persons in a Cessna 150K were killed.

That accident happened on June 21, 1974.
NTSB data shows the helo tail number was N9790,
and that of the Cessna was N562QL.

A Bell 47G with tail number N9790 is listed on the FAA aircraft registry as being owned by a person in Lake Stevens. This helo was formerly owned by Snohomish County. The model is simular but not identical to the Seattle helo.

The Seattle Police Dept Fallen Officer page has more details.
Officer James St. Delore was the pilot and Officer James M. Forbes was the observer.

Thurston County has/had a Bell UH-1.
That program may have been "mothballed" due to budget issues. Pierce County has/had a fixed wing plane that had been upgraded with FLIR using Federal money, but that program has also had budget issues.

The WSP Air units had used a radio designator of "Smokey" on the Seattle Media CTAF 122.775 for several years, I guess WSP decided to make it official.

Smokey 3 and 4 are Cessna 206's, with FLIR camera
and microwave video downlink capability.
Some of the funds for that came from the Fed's.

In addition to traffic enforcement, those 2 planes are used to support the Navy and other Federal agencies, as well as WSF VATS.

Kerwin

I often hear the "smokey" units not only on WSP freqs. but on something like LERN or MARS. usually LERN. I believe the one I hear the most is "smokey-4"

Pilot had to bring it down with a malfunction. Landed in the mud next to the, then city dump (UofW parking lot) - north of Foster Island. In landing it tipped on it's side. No injuries, except to the Air Program as the pilot's girlfriend was aboard - Sunday afternoon and all. 460.075

I've heard Smokey 4 or 5 in our area a couple times. Was interesting listening to them do speed control with the troopers on the ground.

Spoke to Smokey 4 once on the phone.

They bagged one drunk-ass sob, and real quick.
Those guys are really good.