4 posts tagged “emergency services”
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...
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.
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.
