10 posts tagged “civil air patrol”
I started the month of June off right with my final Mission Observer training flight with the Civil Air Patrol. My husband and I suited up in appropriate uniforms and bundled ourselves off to the regional airport, where our stalwart Mission Pilot was waiting with another MO trainee. I was scheduled for the second hop of the afternoon, so I chilled in the flight planning room while M went up with the MP and other trainee to knock out his first Mission Scanner (backseater whose primary responsibilities in a nutshell are looking out the window and keeping a log) flight. The wait gave me a chance to look over the gouge for the GPS in the Cessna 172--old and busted in comparison to the new hotness of the G1000 in the glass 182, but certainly adequate to its task.
A little over an hour later, M poked his head in the door to let me know they were back from the first hop and I should get my stuff together. I was excited not just to go flying again, but that we were going to be flying together as something other than airline passengers for the first time. Of course, we'll be even more excited about it when he completes his MP qual and we're both sitting in the front seats, but this was a good first step. Out to the airplane we went, and after the MP gave me some coordinates to plug into the GPS, we strapped in and got going.
I felt comfortable with the 172's GPS pretty quickly; one advantage of the slightly more primitive set-up is that there are fewer functions to master. The real meat of this particular flight was using the direction finding system--the analog version, with fiddly little needles instead of my nice, darn near idiot-proof Becker with its clear, simple digital read-out. Finding an ELT (practice beacon, in this case) signal with those blasted needles is indeed, as the squadron's saltier fellows warned me, more of an art than a science. I got comfortable enough making the requisite near-constant minute sensitivity adjustments and figuring out approximately where the signal might be coming from, but I am by no means a DFing artist yet. That will come with practice, but I'm not afraid to admit that given my druthers, I would much prefer to be in the right seat of the 182 if a real mission popped up.
Our training objectives met, we headed home and arrived to find that the fuel trucks had just quit for the evening. That turned out not to be such a bad thing, since it meant I got to see what it was like to fuel the aircraft ourselves instead of just radioing the truck out to do it for us. It's not too different from filling up a car, if you had to attach a grounding wire to your car, climb a ladder to get the nozzle up to the tanks, and measure your fuel consumption in gallons per hour rather than miles per gallon. By the time we taxied back to the tie-down spot to secure the aircraft, I felt thoroughly educated.
Our MP was satisfied enough with our performance to sign off on our training paperwork: pending approval up the chain, M was a qualified Mission Scanner and I was a qualified Mission Observer. Woohoo! At our squadron's weekly meeting the following Thursday, the skipper called me up front and center to present me with my first set of CAP Mission Observer wings.
After having my event canceled twice for nasty weather, we finally got out my first Mission Observer training flight last week. It happened to be a gorgeous afternoon, just perfect for flying--doubly so with CAP footing the bill. Some of my squadronmates put together a really nice little exercise for me. The exercise literally couldn't have gotten off the ground (ha! I crack myself up) without the pilot who took time out of his day to conduct this training, but I was touched that another member was willing to drive all the way out to the airport just to give me someone on the ground with whom I could practice comms. That was a huge help for me, since talking on the radio is one of my shakier, more nerve-tweaking tasks. I know I'm not alone in that, though; a pilot once told me that you can know exactly what you're going to say, have it all planned out in your head, and still pushing the transmit button can have the side effect of turning your brain off. Practice, practice, practice, right? I'm a lot more comfortable with it than I once was, at least.
Speaking of radios, a certain husband of mine who came along to hang with the guy on the ground, took the opportunity to get me back for the last time I talked to him on the radio when he was in an airplane. Imagine my surprise when I ask for a radio check and I hear M's chipper voice pop back with the very words I sprung on him when he was a wee bit busy trying to get his jet situated for a touch-and-go: "Roger ball, sweetie!" As he was quick to point when I (sweetly and gently) socked him in the arm after the flight, at least we were still on the ground and I wasn't being graded by an LSO on my carrier landing abilities when he decided to exact his revenge. I'll concede that point, and it did work just fine as a radio check, but the remainder of our radio communications were thoroughly professional.
This flight was in the fancy, brand-new-off-the-factory-line, glass-cockpit Cessna 182T, and the main thrust of the event was to prove that I can wrangle G1000 well enough to be of actual use to a mission from the right seat. I had been briefed on a set of coordinates that I was to enter into the GPS as user waypoints, which I did while we were taxiing to the runway before takeoff. Once we were in the air, I could select my first waypoint and hit the Direct To button and point us in the right direction. So, so slick. I could have easily entered in a bunch more points as a flight plan and had the autopilot fly the search pattern for us. Ain't technology grand?
I was feeling pretty confident that I knew what I was doing and was showing it to the pilot's satisfaction when the radio crackled. It was our guy on the ground giving us a new set of coordinates and directing us to go there and tell them what we saw. Apparently those sneaky guys planned that little surprise for me when I was taking one last bathroom break before going out to the airplane (very important--ain't no relief tubes in a Cessna, not that they'd be real useful for me in any case). I'm rather pleased that I wasn't thrown off my stride too much; it's nice to know I'm capable of responding quickly to the kind of thing that probably happens quite often in real missions.
One more task remained in this training flight. As we turned back towards the airport, we heard a distinctive trill on our direction finding equipment telling us that a practice beacon (simulating an Emergency Locator Transmitter) was active somewhere in the vicinity. We have something called a Becker DF in the airplane that points the way to such signals, but the pilot cannot see it very well at all from all the way over in the left seat. The person in the Mission Observer position can see it perfectly, though, so it was my job to point us towards the (practice) emergency signal. The pilot put the autopilot in heading mode, meaning that one could change the direction of the airplane just by turning a knob right or left. Turn the knob I did, and lo and behold, the plane went where I wanted it to go! It turned out that where I wanted us to go was over a boat storage facility where the pilot had placed a practice beacon before coming out to the airport. He said those are good places to look on real missions, as boats have emergency beacons just like planes that can go off accidentally.
Things were pretty much wrapped up at that point, so we returned to the airport, landed, taxiied back to our spot, and filled out a bunch of paperwork. M came out to greet us and see how the flight went; I can't wait until I get to go flying with him. (He can't wait, either--he hasn't touched an airplane in over a year, thanks to a backup in the C-2 training pipeline and an overall cut in flight hours across the Navy.) My next flight, whenever we can squeeze that in, will be in the Cessna 172--no fancy-schmancy glass cockpit there, but I am expected to know what I'm doing in the right seat of any aircraft CAP might fly. I might even get to look like one of the cool kids in my very own flight suit--there was a size 34 Short in the depths of the squadron storage room, and they were more than happy to give it to the only squadron member who could even hope to squeeze into it. I picked up some big black leather boots at the surplus store, so now I just have to sew on the appropriate insignia and veclro for patches and stuff before I, too, will have the privilege of smelling like sweaty Nomex. Oh, the glamour of flying...
Warm Weather: I don't care what Punxsutawney Phil said about six more weeks of winter--spring is definitely in the air. This past weekend was sunny and glorious with highs in the low 70s. I helped M wash the car, so we've been enjoying the shiny blue brilliance over the past few days. We also tried out a new sushi place with a fantastic "bento box" lunch deal and spent some time at a local park. That place was hoppin': teenagers tearing it up at the skate park, young kiddoes screaming gleefully at the playground, kite-flyers flying kites of all colors at the top of the hill, and walkers, joggers, dog-walkers, and stroller-pushers making the circuit around the lake. I love that this park used to be a landfill, and now it's the place to be for all the locals who want to soak up a little outdoor fun.
Star Trek: For the first time in a while, M and I remembered that SciFi shows Star Trek: The Next Generation on Monday nights. So, we watched four hours' worth of my beloved TNG last night. Four hours. It was decadent, even if I did refrain from having any "Tea, Earl Grey, hot."
Hangar Dance: M and I are going back in time for Valentine's Day this year by attending a 1940s-themed "hangar dance" at a military aviation museum. What could be better than listening to a live big band and dancing amongst all manner of really awesome airplanes (the vast majority of which are restored and still flyable)? M is going to look classically snazzy in his Service Dress Blues, and I'm wearing a vintage 1940s suit from my grandmother--with bright red lipstick. I found out about the dance through a fellow Civil Air Patrol member who also happens to volunteer at the museum, so I knew there would be at least a few acquaintances there, but I just found out that a buddy of ours is also going. He'll be wearing the eminently historical Aviation Working Greens, which he has been campaigning hard to save from the Navy's scrap heap. I can't wait to see what the other dance-goers come up with.
There's no avoiding it anymore: today is just going to have to be a laundry day. Sigh. I'm trying to muster up some of the excitement from those heady days after we first got our own washer and dryer, but about all I can manage is low-key (yet abiding) appreciation for the fact that I don't have to schlep my dirty clothes out of the house to a set of shared machines. I do like having clean clothes/sheets/towels/what-have-you, and the subsequent piles of clean, fresh textiles does come with a sense of mild household accomplishment, but the process isn't exactly high on the ol' mental stimulation scale.
Hunting down Emergency Locator Transmitters is rather higher on that scale. A couple weeks ago, my CAP squadron had joined another area squadron for the classroom portion of Urban Direction Finding (UDF). This past Sunday, we met again at the airport for a practical exercise. The leader of the exercise hid a practice ELT (which transmits on a different frequency than the real thing) in a park, and we all piled into the CAP van (after a thorough vehicle inspection, also part of the training) to go find it. Once in the area, we set up our direction finding equipment and got a little first-hand experience with the art and science of using it to triangulate the position of the elusive beacon.
The Urban in UDF means that rather than gallivanting through the wilderness like Ground Team members do, we were training to look for these things in a well-populated (and often paved) environment. In our area, that means I can expect to be called at some point to track down accidentally-activated (as 97-99% of the hits we get are) ELTs aboard any one of the local Naval bases. The experienced members who were leading the training or participating in the exercise just to get requalified had some good stories about particularly tricky missions, like the time my commander spent a lot of time (getting increasingly confused and frustrated all the while) tracking down a signal that seemed to have moved with every reading they took. They chased that thing for miles until they finally saw the problem: the readings they were getting pointed them directly at a ship that was heading out to sea. All they could do was wave goodbye as it went past. Guess deactivating that one just wasn't in the cards.
I'm still working on my Mission Observer qual, as I'm keen to be as useful as possible on the aircrew side of CAP emergency services, but it was worthwhile to get a look at things from a ground perspective. The folks in the plane absolutely have to be able to coordinate effectively with the people on the ground who can actually get to the site of whatever it was we were looking for and take care of it. It'll be interesting to help out on real UDF missions in the future; I need one more--training or actual--to complete my qualification.
I have been shockingly lazy about updating my Vox with anything related to actual recent events in my life. I have meant to, you understand, but I get it into my head that this-and-such deserves a detailed, well-thought-out entry, and I never quite catch hold of the motivation to crank one out. Then it feels like too great an amount of time has passed and I give up all hope of getting caught up. This go 'round, though, I am telling myself that it is still only January and that's in plenty of time to catch myself up on the year today. So, in abstract form for possible future entries in greater detail, what we've been up to in the year to date:
The Commissioning of the USS George H.W. Bush: Thanks to a father-in-law who ensured that we received an invitation, M and I had the privilege of witnessing our country's newest aircraft carrier come to life. I can't compare the experience to anything else I've ever seen, except to say that it definitely ranks up there as one of the coolest.
Z's Bar Mitzvah: Almost exactly thirteen years after M's own bar mitzvah (memorable for a massive blizzard that snowed everyone in and made his family leery of all wintertime events forevermore), his cousin Z celebrated his ascension to religious adulthood. Not only did this young man do a fantastic job with the intricacies of leading a Shabbat morning service, but he spoke with grace, humor, and insight about growing up African American in his adoptive Jewish family. The service and the celebration that followed recognized the multitude of cultural influences that have shaped him into the person he is--an intelligent, loving young man whom I am glad to call my cousin.
The Inevitable Bit About Civil Air Patrol: Yep, I'm back in the swing of CAP things after the holiday break. Last week, my squadronmates and I were guests of another local squadron for some Urban Direction Finding training. We learned the theory of how to use radio equipment to locate emergency beacons in non-wilderness areas. Around here, the practical application of this skill usually involves going to one of the local military bases to find and deactivate ELTs that have been set off accidentally. Next weekend we're going to do a short exercise with practice beacons to show that we know how to use the locator equipment. Mission Observer (aircrew) training is still in the offing, but it's nice to get an idea of the bigger picture of the emergency services CAP provides. It ain't all about the airplanes all the time.
All right, even if I never actually get around to writing another word on the above subjects, I can at least consider myself caught up for having mentioned them! In fact, I'm caught up enough to talk about today. It's actually off to a pretty good start for a Monday: dinner's already in the slow cooker, I've run the dishwasher, and my friend Annie is coming over for coffee or tea and perhaps even rum cake modified from this Pioneer Woman recipe, if I'm feeling motivated. Even though I'm still lazing about in my PJs, I feel like I could get motivated enough for cake.
Looking back on 2008, what were the highlights of your year?
Here we are, starting the fifth day of 2009, and I'm still "looking back on 2008." I guess there hasn't been much of import to report so far this year, which is just fine with me because last year at this time we were running around like headless chickens trying to get ready for a buddy's wedding and prepare for the move from South Texas Town #1 to South Texas Town #2 at the same time. That was not one of the year's highlights, by the way. These were:
M's winging: The culmination of flight school and my husband's designation as a Naval Aviator was a time of joy, giddiness, and relief. Getting to celebrate with M's folks as their son's hard work and accomplishment were recognized was absolutely wonderful.
Adopting our two cats: Sure, there's been some property destruction, an emergency trip to the animal hospital, and some distinctly unpleasant messes to clean up, but we can't imagine life without Vera and Valentine. They provide such affection, entertainment, and liveliness to our household. And hey, if we manage not to screw up our feline charges, maybe we won't do too badly with kids someday.
Honeymooning in the Bahamas: Nearly two years after we signed the ketubah and agreed to embark on this crazy marriage venture together, we finally squeezed a solid week of leave out of the Navy for a honeymoon. We met some interesting people (including a tiny, foul-mouthed pistol of an activities coordinator and a sketchy, overgrown frat boy in his forties who tried to "adopt" a set of sisters in their twenties). We had some amazing experiences (the dolphin encounter, walking through the mangroves to Gold Rock Beach) and some experiences I don't care to repeat (the bonfire, the semi-submersible), but the best part of the whole trip was simply having a week for just us, no other obligations or worries that the squadron was going to call to tell M to come in on a day off. I hope we can manage more such getaways in the future.
Getting involved with CAP: In 2008, I went from having maybe heard of this Civil Air Patrol thing once or twice (but not having a clue what it was all about) to being an active volunteer with my local squadron. Through CAP, I not only went up in a small airplane for the first time, but I got qualified as an aircrew member who can assist on search and rescue operations. I'm excited about what 2009 holds with regard to my CAP "career." In the early months, my squadron is going to continue to focus on getting people trained for various emergency services qualifications. I'm going to be working on becoming a Mission Observer (right-seater in the airplane), so I'm hoping to go flying again within the next couple of months. We should also be working on getting everyone qualified to be on a ground team, too, so we have multiple valuable assets to offer in an emergency. I'm glad to be a part of it, and I'm glad that 2008 brought me the opportunity.
So, 2008 was quite a year. I've got high hopes for 2009.
I took this a few days ago right after M left in the morning to go cram more C-2A systems into his head.
A curious event recently befell me, one that made me briefly wonder if I had warped into some sort of mirror universe: I came home from flying to find that my husband had dinner already cooking. Considering that I can't even count the number of times I've gotten dinner started while waiting for M to get back from an evening flight, that kind turned my world on its head right there. That is not to say that I object to this turn of events--quite to the contrary, I feel I could easily get used to it.
Long story short: Pending the right person's signature on the paperwork, I have completed all the requirements to become a qualified Mission Scanner. That means I can participate in Civil Air Patrol missions as a member of the aircrew.
Long story long: I finally got to go flying, and it was as awesome as I could hope for. Training flight #1 had me sitting in the back left seat of a Cessna 182T, looking out the window and keeping a log--the duties of a scanner, in a nutshell. Our pilot (a retired Tomcat backseater--go Navy!) took us through the procedures of getting out to a grid and flying a parallel search pattern and a route search. This flight was nominally part of a larger search and rescue exercise, but the way things worked out we didn't actually get much practice coordinating with the other participants. I was still thrilled just to be up there; this was my first time in a small plane of any kind, unless we're counting my "Taxi FAM" in the T-45 (I don't, as we stayed firmly planted on the ground). The weather got iffy later in the day, so we postponed the second training flight a few days.
The second flight was just as successful. This time I was in the front seat, so I had a much better view of the extremely slick Garmin G1000. I'll get to play with that more when I start my Mission Observer training. (Bonus feature: it gives me an excellent opportunity to tease M that my plane is nicer than his; I reckon the COD is as likely to see a glass cockpit in the near future as I am to sprout feathers.) We went through an expanding square search and a creeping line search. We didn't get to do too much with the Becker direction finder, but that one seems pretty self-explanatory. Oh well, I bet we can go practice ELT-hunting in one of the observer training flights.
With the completion of the two flights and a short course on CRM (Crew Resource Management, a topic with which I was already familiar from helping M study back in T-44 land), I became the first of the "new crop" of people in my squadron to finish the requirements for the Mission Scanner qual. The only trouble with being first is that now I have to wait until more people finish before we start the ground school portion of Mission Observer training. It's likely to be quite a while before I get to go flying again, but I'm already excited.
This mirror universe isn't so bad. I didn't even have to grow a goatee.
Have you ever volunteered for something? If so, what?
Yes, quite recently, in fact. (Where was the QotD when I was writing my big old post about joining Civil Air Patrol?) I'm still dithering about which specialty track I want to pursue, as that will have an influence on my "ground job," the things I will do for my squadron while not training for my aircrew position. Information Technology seems the obvious choice, as my computer science background ensures that I will have something to contribute, but there is a part of me that wants to try something completely new and different. I'm not particularly interested in playing tech support, for instance. On the other hand, the track is so new that I could have a great deal of flexibility in determining what the role of an IT officer in our squadron should be. Decisions, decisions.
What I am likely to do is select IT as my specialty track for now precisely because I have the requisite background to hit the ground running. My commander said there is nothing stopping me from switching somewhere down the road or even adding an additional specialty track if I decide I'd like to do, say, aerospace education in addition to or instead of IT. Learning how to be a scanner ought to satisfy the itch to do something other than manipulate computer code for the time being.
The eagle-eyed among you might have been able
to just make out something about a "CAP Open House" on the calendar
picture in my last post. CAP stands for Civil Air Patrol, and I am proud to be a new member of this volunteer organization.
My reading online led me to shoot an email to the commander of a local squadron, who invited me to attend a meeting and get a feel for what the unit does. I didn't know what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that the squadron is made up largely of retired Navy folks--aviators, NFOs, and otherwise. I must say, I felt quite at home almost instantly! I got a tour of the building and had a long chat with the squadron commander (retired Navy captain and former S-3 pilot), which ended with an invitation to come back next week. I did show up the following week and got a taste of some basic communications training before getting a membership packet to take home. Filling that out involved an adventure to the police precinct to get fingerprinted for the background check all CAP volunteers must pass, and then I was ready to submit my packet. National Headquarters processed it the following week, so I am officially a Senior Member as of a week ago yesterday.
One of the first things I'm going to do is get qualified as a Mission Scanner. The scanner is a member of the aircrew who sits in the backseat of the airplane and looks for the target (such as a crashed plane) in an organized way. I'm going to have to learn how to read charts and mark grids and how to communicate with the Mission Observer (the right-seater, who coordinates the mission and assists the pilot with things like radios) and the Mission Pilot (left-seater, who concentrates on flying the search pattern accurately and safely). I've wanted to go flying in a small plane for a long time just for fun, but I am truly looking forward to learning how to do something useful in an airplane. Not gonna lie, it also doesn't hurt that the Air Force pays for CAP mission flight time. A lot of pilots get involved because of that combination of getting to do something for the community while getting cheap-to-free flight time--no small consideration with gas prices the way they are these days.
Along with those quals, I'm also going to be progressing along what they call a specialty track, with professional development milestones along the way. As one gains more time in CAP and makes progress down those tracks, one gets promoted according to a rank structure based on that of the Air Force. My grade right now is Senior Member, and after six months and completion of some initial training, I will be promoted to the lofty rank of Second Lieutenant. Some squadrons are more formal when it comes to military customs and courtesies than others; my squadron happens to be pretty informal, probably precisely because so many of the members have "been there, done that" in their military careers.
Fun Fact: CAP members in uniform are required by regulation to salute members of the military of higher rank (though it's appreciated if they happen to feel like it, servicemembers are not required to salute CAP folks--we are civilians, after all). Technically, I am supposed to salute my husband if I run across him whilst in an Air Force-style uniform. Odds are, he'd fall over laughing, which would display a shameful lack of military bearing and lower the level of discourse all around. Tsk, tsk.
In any case, I am really excited about the opportunities I see in CAP, and I can't wait to start learning some of this cool stuff so I can do something for the community. If you want to read more, check out the page I have linked at the top or the very slick recruiting site at www.gocivilairpatrol.com. That one has some FAQs and videos and such to peruse.
