Welcome to The Hangar Z Podcast, brought to you by Vertical HeliCASTS, in partnership with Vertical Valor magazine.

Listen closely for your chance to win awesome prizes from Heli Life! Throughout 2025, every episode of The Hangar Z Podcast will reveal a secret word. Once you catch it, head to contests.verticalhelicasts.com to enter!

The 2025 Blades of Valor Tour continues in Las Vegas, Nevada, visiting the Las Vegas Metro Police Department (LVMPD) Air Support Unit. 

LVMPD has an incredible hangar located on North Las Vegas Airport. This unit covers 8,000 square miles of Clark County, Nevada, with a population of 2.3 million. Seventy percent of Nevada’s population resides inside Clark County. 

Add 40 million visitors a year and this unit has a great deal of responsibility in both patrol functions and search-and-rescue.

With only five aircraft, they flew over 4,000 patrol hours and responded to 91 rescue calls in 2024. It is not unusual to complete a rescue in the snow-covered mountains, respond to a rescue in Lake Mead, and then handle a pursuit, all in the same shift.

Our conversation with pilot Blake Farris and tactical flight officer Brad Bear was fascinating. We discuss training, unit dynamics, the mixed fleet of aircraft, mission profiles, and the full time search-and-rescue team located inside the hanger facility.

Brad shares an impactful story of working as a patrol officer, where having skilled air crew overhead kept him safe. He knew exactly where he wanted to work someday and now, he is living that dream.

Be sure to watch for the article by Brent Bundy about Las Vegas Metro’s air support unit in Vertical Valor magazine .

Special thanks to Airbus and Massif for the incredible support of this year’s Blades of Valor Tour. We could not do this tour without them.

Thank you to our sponsors Airbus, CNC Technologies and Metro Aviation.