"Air One" COS

[MountainMoose]

I have recently heard COS comms( believe it one was of the mutual aid under cover TG's) with an "Air One" which is obviously some sort of air ship/helo. Does anyone know who this Air one belongs to? I heard CSP Sat night air to ground units chasing motorcycles but they did not refer to them as "Air one"

 

[MountainMoose]

UPDATE: after doing some poking around on google it appears DPD has an airship called "Air One" but I didn't think it was in use anymore? And why would it be down in the springs

 

[natedawg1604]

AirOne is indeed a Helicopter long used by Denver PD. Last I knew it only runs a few days a week, on the weekends in the Metro area. I would suggest checking flight tracking website archives, I don't know the callsign offhand but you could probably find it with some digging.

 

[MountainMoose]

AirOne is indeed a Helicopter long used by Denver PD. Last I knew it only runs a few days a week, on the weekends in the Metro area. I would suggest checking flight tracking website archives, I don't know the callsign offhand but you could probably find it with some digging.

yea was thinking that! Thank you. I had no idea it would be in this area! Interesting

 

[Spitfire8520]

I have recently heard COS comms( believe it one was of the mutual aid under cover TG's) with an "Air One" which is obviously some sort of air ship/helo. Does anyone know who this Air one belongs to? I heard CSP Sat night air to ground units chasing motorcycles but they did not refer to them as "Air one"

UPDATE: after doing some poking around on google it appears DPD has an airship called "Air One" but I didn't think it was in use anymore? And why would it be down in the springs

It depends on the talkgroup you heard them on. If it was a Denver Metro talkgroup, then someone might have dragged the talkgroup into the area (against best practices) and you were hearing operations in the Denver Metro area. Air1 almost always stays in the Denver Metro area unless there is an mutual aid request from another agency for exceptional circumstances. It is unlikely to leave the Denver Metro area for surveillance.

If you are sure that you heard them operating in Colorado Springs, then it is possible that it could have been a federal asset.

Some recent media covering Air1:

Denver Police Air Support Unit: Mountain High

Denver Police Air Support Unit’s team of just three officers combine years of policing experience and expert flying to provide vital air cover to their colleagues on the ground.

verticalmag.com

AirOne is indeed a Helicopter long used by Denver PD. Last I knew it only runs a few days a week, on the weekends in the Metro area. I would suggest checking flight tracking website archives, I don't know the callsign offhand but you could probably find it with some digging.

I think Air1 is up in the evenings Tuesday through Saturday. Flight tracking is not very reliable for Air1 as they operate under the law enforcement ADS-B exemption allowing them to disable it when being used for law enforcement. The only time their ADS-B is on is when it is performing a maintenance flight to/from/at Century Helicopters, Inc. in Fort Collins.

 

[Troop]

Also...CSP Fixed wing is usually called out as CSP AIR on mutual aid channels.....Airborne 1,2,3 on main channels, and Kodiak 2,3 on ATC....

 

[wtp]

MountainMoose, look for a personal message, top right of this page.

 

[David628]

@MountainMoose

I heard this also, check this article out.

Southern Colorado law enforcement utilizes air support to recover stolen vehicles
Southern Colorado law enforcement utilizes air support to recover stolen vehicles | KRDO

 

[BinaryMode]

I think Air1 is up in the evenings Tuesday through Saturday. Flight tracking is not very reliable for Air1 as they operate under the law enforcement ADS-B exemption allowing them to disable it when being used for law enforcement...

There is no filtering with websites like adsbexchange and the likes. One could also run their own ADS-B capture apparatus at home. In other words, there's always a mode S signal...

 

[Spitfire8520]

There is no filtering with websites like adsbexchange and the likes. One could also run their own ADS-B capture apparatus at home. In other words, there's always a mode S signal...

I think that the law enforcement exemption might also cover Mode S. Denver has great MLAT coverage, so a Mode S aircraft should show up on ADS-B Exchange.

They might be operating with Mode A/C because you can sometimes see them as an unknown TIS-B aircraft when the airspace is busy. My point is that it is not very reliable to track because one cannot reliably identify a Mode A/C aircraft, the ID changes every single time they fly, and TIS-B is not always broadcast based on how busy the airspace is.

 

[abqscan]

There isn't always a mode S signal. Law Enforcement and the military are exempt from having to use Mode S in controlled airspace in the US. DPD thinks bad guys are watching the movment of their helicopter and thus turn off their Mode-S transmissions. This is why we can't see Air-1 on adsbexchange as it isn't a filtering issue.

The only way we can see where Air-1 might be on adsbexchange is when another aircraft using Mode-S is flying near Air-1 and the FAA broadcasts a TIS-B target for them. But the target isn't identified, it just notifies the pilot that there is a target in their vicinity.

 

[BinaryMode]

MLAT receivers in groups of three or four in a small geographical area use triangulation to track aircraft. In other words, if an airplane is not using ADS-B to transpond as military aircraft sometimes do, MLAT receivers can still pick up their Mode-S transponder signals and establish a position and track for an aircraft as well as altitude and speed data.

Streufert said his website’s network of receivers includes 10,000 MLAT devices around the world. Because ADSBExchange.com doesn’t take flight tracking data from government or commercial sources, it can offer “unfiltered” flight tracking. But he doesn’t think his site poses any more risk than other open sources of data on military activities.

Open Source Flight Tracking Called Threat to Military Aircraft

Open Source Flight Tracking Called Threat to Military Aircraft

www.nationaldefensemagazine.org

If it's in controlled airspace it's being tracked because it has to. Unless the use of primary radar is solely used, which I doubt...

This is why when the B-2 or the previous operational F-117A went on a sortie, they first plan the mission in the FMS to mitigate as much radar as possible and the use of squawking was turned off for obvious reasons.

When you're in controlled, highly saturated airspace you're always going to need to use squawking and some form of surveillance interrogation for ATC operations. I have an App on my tablet that can read mode A and C with an SDR. I used it an an air show... Also, I've watched Navy SEAL operations off of Coronado. I see police choppers and civilian choppers over Vegas and California all the time.

Point is this: if you're over head you need to transmit something and it's not secret. Unless Congress mandates encryption, it's all open. Even then, if the future uses nothing but encryption, then MLAT, passive radar and fingerprinting can be used based on a transponder...

RADIO intelligence frequency - refers (RF) to fingerprinting the methodology - a form whereby of signal the
hardware intrinsic characteristics of the transmitter which are
unintentionally embedded in the transmitted waveform are
extracted to aid the identification of the transmitter hardware
by a passive receiver. Due to its unique ability to identify
transmitting device

Link.

If it were made illegal for the openness of such websites like adsbexchange to operate, then there's always IPFS...

 

[MountainMoose]

Also...CSP Fixed wing is usually called out as CSP AIR on mutual aid channels.....Airborne 1,2,3 on main channels, and Kodiak 2,3 on ATC....

yes, I've heard them quite often.

 

[MountainMoose]

MountainMoose, look for a personal message, top right of this page.

No message?

 

[MountainMoose]

It depends on the talkgroup you heard them on. If it was a Denver Metro talkgroup, then someone might have dragged the talkgroup into the area (against best practices) and you were hearing operations in the Denver Metro area. Air1 almost always stays in the Denver Metro area unless there is an mutual aid request from another agency for exceptional circumstances. It is unlikely to leave the Denver Metro area for surveillance.

If you are sure that you heard them operating in Colorado Springs, then it is possible that it could have been a federal asset.

Some recent media covering Air1:

Denver Police Air Support Unit: Mountain High

Denver Police Air Support Unit’s team of just three officers combine years of policing experience and expert flying to provide vital air cover to their colleagues on the ground.

verticalmag.com

I think Air1 is up in the evenings Tuesday through Saturday. Flight tracking is not very reliable for Air1 as they operate under the law enforcement ADS-B exemption allowing them to disable it when being used for law enforcement. The only time their ADS-B is on is when it is performing a maintenance flight to/from/at Century Helicopters, Inc. in Fort Collins.

definitely on one of the COS MA Tgs NOT Denver metro

 

[MountainMoose]

@MountainMoose

I heard this also, check this article out.

Southern Colorado law enforcement utilizes air support to recover stolen vehicles
Southern Colorado law enforcement utilizes air support to recover stolen vehicles | KRDO

Yes, think It was in relation to stolen vehicles or tracking the perps related to.

 

[Spitfire8520]

definitely on one of the COS MA Tgs NOT Denver metro

If this was MAC 11 on the 18th between 15:30 and 17:00, then it was CSP Air 1 flying N202SP working with Pueblo PD on the operation covered in the KRDO news article. They identified themselves as "CSP Air 1" a few times, but everyone else shortened it to "Air 1" when talking to them.

 

[BinaryMode]

I saw CSP in a jet doing circles over the area of a guy who had killed someone or someones and then killed himself in this area of the photo. All Coms were on the MAC channel including the plane I do believe. I think this was last year and the incident started in Loveland. It hit the nightly news.