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Does anybody know where Snohawk has been ? Haven't heard it or seen it in a long time. When it's operational its flying over my house every weekend as I live right next to paine field.

It was flying around my place this weekend....However I never heard anything on the scanner from them. They were doing some low slow passes. Must have been looking for something specific.

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I thought Snohawk was based out of Arlington the only time that I have seen it at PAE " paine field" is when its taking on fuel.

I seem to recall it was out of Gold Bar?
But from time to time Snohawk can be in the air for days at a time just working normal calls. Seems like it more often at night. When in the air, I will hear them randomly switch TG's based off the area they are in. I suspect this may be a budget thing. Meaning when extra funds become available for whatever reason they put Snohawk in the air.

With that said, it of course gets called out for Search and Rescue and other calls that warrant use of the chopper.

I monitor SCSO South 90% of the time. And I probably miss most of the time it's in the air as for like you mentioned, it's based somewhere other than South County. There is no mistaking the sound of it however.

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SCSO has two choppers.

Snohawk 1 -

http://www.myaviation.net/search/photo_ ... d=00816666

and

Snohawk 10

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6050 ... %20021.jpg


Afaik snowhawk 10 is not used for observation like snohawk 1, just SAR. I have never seen snohawk 10 in my neighborhood. I used to see snohawk 1 on a weekly basis flying over my house. I used to see it so frequently I was driving out of my driveway one night and it was shining its spotlight on my car :bowdown: I live in a pretty bad part of Good ol' Everett.

SNOHAWK's are based near Hwy 2 and Hwy 9. You will find them initially on SO North.

I heard that Snohawk is down for maintance for awile.

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born to be wild

"Snohawk Down"

Is that a bad Warren Miller movie?

As Mark pointed out, the S&R helo, a Huey (primary Army helo used in Vietnam), is based at Taylor's Landing, which is just east of the intersection of US2 and SR 9. Use maps.google.com, put in Snohomish, WA as the search phrase and then zoom down to the area east of SR 9 and just west of S Machias Rd. And you will see the image. Plus you should see a label Snohomish County Volunteer Search and Rescue. Taylor's Landing is named for a nationally recognized SnoCo sheriff's deputy in search & rescue ops and developing new techniques, John Taylor. See brief write-up at http://www.blogofdeath.com/archives/000615.html

Sgt. Taylor's successor is Danny Wikstrom, callsign Robert 1. Danny came to my rescue one summer when we were campground hosts on the Mtn Loop campgrounds when someone threatened me.

Snohawk 1 was active in the last few days. When it is headed up US 2, it flies pretty much right over our house north of Monroe. It's pretty loud. When it is headed for the Mountain Loop, I can still hear it, but not as loud as its flight path is north of me. Her primary freq is 155.415. So, the base for Snohawk 1 is not Paine but Taylor's landing.

Dennis. Thanks for all the good info....

One last question. I hear Snohawk go to an "Alpha10" status from time to time. Anyone know specifically what that means?

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I haven't heard the Alpha10 before so I will pay more attention. My first thot is maybe the helo is practicing being a target for the A-10 Thunderbolt Warthog. That wouldn't make sense tho.

As for maintenance, it is a Huey and sometimes there can be challenges getting parts for this Vietnam-era helo. It's common for helos in heavy usage situations to get a pretty thorough maintenance check every 50 hours. And this involves taking part of the helo apart to check for various things that could go wrong. One time camping near Concrete, there was a helo working timber hauling. I met the aircraft tech for it and he told me he does maintenance every 25 hours (every two days!) and it took him from about 9PM at night to 4AM in the morning taking various parts of the helo apart. That helo was flying at sunrise to sunset hence the two-day maint. frequency.

When you drive by Taylor's Landing you can see another stripped down Huey on a tower. They use that to train S&R folks for rappeling down to lost hikers and the like.

Both Snohawk 10 and 1 are up at Taylors as previously reported.

Snohawk 10 was involved in a night Search and Rescue up near Granite Falls Wednesday night and could be heard on the SAR VHF freqs. Was on SCSO North for a time on Thursday.

As previously stated, you can generally hear Snohawk report on SCSO north at takeoff, then report switching to whatever SCSO channel for the area they cross into. Working frequencies are usually the SAR frequencies, but at times the bird will hop onto another channel for coordination with an agency. If there's a technical rescue for Fire, you may hear the bird on Fire East or Fire North.

Also helpful to listen to Harvey, Arlington, and First Air CTAF frequencies, as Snohawk reports being in the airspace. (Note, at liftoff, Snohawk is in the Harvey Field airspace.)

I saw Snohawk 10 flying around Bothell two weeks ago as well, then up towards Paine Field. Bird was looking sharp.

You could call the SAR base to verify, but I suspect that Alpha 10 signifies "Alert 10" and that the bird can be manned and flying in 10 minutes...

One of the Snohawk birds is on SCSO E TAC right now.

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The phonetics indicate times:

Alphas are minutes
Bravos are hours
Charlie indicates the helo is grounded (due to weather or other factors)

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President-in-Exile, Seattle Area Radio Communications And Scanner Traffic Intercept Crew (SARCASTIC)
Don't feel bad if you can't use your STD100/200; there are still people using Digital Frequency Search!
Bunnery definition for the under-fives