Drones doing domestic duty

[N Harmon]

I don't know about you but the 406 mhz took away 90% of our missions. We used to do at least 1 ELT gig a month. Now, we're lucky if we get 2 a year.

The point is that 406MHz did not kill Civil Air Patrol, and neither will UAVs.

And I may be in the minority here, but I am happy there are fewer bogus ELT missions. The reduction in those has made it possible for me to be able to commit to those mid-week longer duration missions, because they are rare.

[RiverAux]

I don't know about you but the 406 mhz took away 90% of our missions. We used to do at least 1 ELT gig a month. Now, we're lucky if we get 2 a year.

The point is that 406MHz did not kill Civil Air Patrol, and neither will UAVs.

Never said it would kill CAP, just push us out of one of the few ES missions that CAP is really suited to perform. 

I've also had a rather difficult time finding crews during the work week for the Army support project I've been working on the past 2 yrs.  CAP is a fair-weather, part-time, mostly weekends force, which renders us useless for most serious LE work.

People forget that 2% or fewer of CAP members participated in anti-sub and other "active service" missions during WWII and that such long-term full-time missions have never been what we specialize in.  Sure, we can pull off some month-long missions every now and again, but we are part-time volunteers and that isn't going to change.  Now, if we had 100,000 adult members we probably would have enough that we could essentially provide full-time volunteer support of one kind or another, but that isn't likely.

[Buzz]

Personally I still dont know why the AF didnt buy their own C206's and just let military pilots fly them

Because we are a fraction of the cost, and there aren't enough military pilots to do the job.  We fly for operating cost, they fly for operating cost plus pay, benefits, housing, personal safety equipment, etc.

[jpizzo127]

I remember joining and hearing members talk about how CAP would not exist in a couple of years. It made me think twice about whether I really wanted to join. That was in 1995. Since then every new change in requirements has come with people saying such-and-such is going to put us out of business forever. Recently it was the 406MHz ELTs. Now apparently it is UAVs.

I don't know about you but the 406 mhz took away 90% of our missions. We used to do at least 1 ELT gig a month. Now, we're lucky if we get 2 a year.

One a month? CAWG was averaging one a day. Now we're down to maybe 5 or 6 a month.

You're talking the entire California wing. I'm talking about a single squadron. Either way, your numbers are down 84% too.

[jpizzo127]

That is a good thing isn't it?

No, absolutely not. That's a terrible thing. It's eroded our operational readiness. Even though non-emergency ELTs were what we were looking, it allowed our aircrews and ground teams to get real world practice, and maintain proficiency with the costs absorbed by the AF. It was also a huge morale booster.

So in short, no the loss of the 121.5 mission was a terrible one in my opinion

[jpizzo127]

I don't know about you but the 406 mhz took away 90% of our missions. We used to do at least 1 ELT gig a month. Now, we're lucky if we get 2 a year.

The point is that 406MHz did not kill Civil Air Patrol, and neither will UAVs.

And I may be in the minority here, but I am happy there are fewer bogus ELT missions. The reduction in those has made it possible for me to be able to commit to those mid-week longer duration missions, because they are rare.

The 406 may not have killed CAP but it's another nail in the coffin. There's no way in my opinion to spin the loss the ELT mission to anything but a negative.

In my experience as a squadron commander, the 4-8hour ELT hunt had no effect on us being able to man a longer term mission, so I'm forced to disagree with your second point as well. As a single squadron, we never got more than 2 ELT hunts in a single week, so perhaps that the reason we never suffered from crew exhaustion.

[lordmonar]

That is a good thing isn't it?

No, absolutely not. That's a terrible thing. It's eroded our operational readiness. Even though non-emergency ELTs were what we were looking, it allowed our aircrews and ground teams to get real world practice, and maintain proficiency with the costs absorbed by the AF. It was also a huge morale booster.

So in short, no the loss of the 121.5 mission was a terrible one in my opinion

There is no such thing as "real world" practice.

You don't use false alarms and Non-emergency call outs as training.

[Spaceman3750]

That is a good thing isn't it?

No, absolutely not. That's a terrible thing. It's eroded our operational readiness. Even though non-emergency ELTs were what we were looking, it allowed our aircrews and ground teams to get real world practice, and maintain proficiency with the costs absorbed by the AF. It was also a huge morale booster.

So in short, no the loss of the 121.5 mission was a terrible one in my opinion

The 406 transition is absolutely a good thing - better coordinates for actuals and fewer false activations. Anybody who says that the 406 transition was a bad thing has lost sight of the point of distress beacons.

[ammotrucker]

 
[/quote]


Unless you want us during normal work hours...for months on end....


Katrina and the Fossett search exhausted a number of wings of aircrews, and highlighted that we are not prepared for large-scale, long-term taskings. I've also had a rather difficult time finding crews during the work week for the Army support project I've been working on the past 2 yrs.  CAP is a fair-weather, part-time, mostly weekends force, which renders us useless for most serious LE work.
[/quote]

I disagree from at least my Wings standpoint.  I had over 125 members working over a 3 month time-frame on Deepwater.  There was NO lack of manpower thgoughout the event.  So maybe your Wing might have aproblem, but not all Wings do.

[Spaceman3750]

Unless you want us during normal work hours...for months on end....


Katrina and the Fossett search exhausted a number of wings of aircrews, and highlighted that we are not prepared for large-scale, long-term taskings. I've also had a rather difficult time finding crews during the work week for the Army support project I've been working on the past 2 yrs.  CAP is a fair-weather, part-time, mostly weekends force, which renders us useless for most serious LE work.

I disagree from at least my Wings standpoint.  I had over 125 members working over a 3 month time-frame on Deepwater.  There was NO lack of manpower thgoughout the event.  So maybe your Wing might have aproblem, but not all Wings do.

That's where the silver hair patrol side of the house comes in - how many pilots, observers, ICs, mission staff, etc in the southern tier of the US are retirees and therefore have no problem volunteering during normal hours - I doubt in my wing we would be capable of such an extended operation, simply because it's too cold here for the young at heart .

Besides, things on the magnitutde of DWH, Katrina, Fossett, etc tend to draw resources from around the country - you can bring in whole ground teams or aircrews on a GA8, buy them a ticket on Southwest, or reimburse the fuel for a caravan of vehicles.

[JeffDG]

Unless you want us during normal work hours...for months on end....


Katrina and the Fossett search exhausted a number of wings of aircrews, and highlighted that we are not prepared for large-scale, long-term taskings. I've also had a rather difficult time finding crews during the work week for the Army support project I've been working on the past 2 yrs.  CAP is a fair-weather, part-time, mostly weekends force, which renders us useless for most serious LE work.

I disagree from at least my Wings standpoint.  I had over 125 members working over a 3 month time-frame on Deepwater.  There was NO lack of manpower thgoughout the event.  So maybe your Wing might have aproblem, but not all Wings do.

That's where the silver hair patrol side of the house comes in - how many pilots, observers, ICs, mission staff, etc in the southern tier of the US are retirees and therefore have no problem volunteering during normal hours - I doubt in my wing we would be capable of such an extended operation, simply because it's too cold here for the young at heart .

Besides, things on the magnitutde of DWH, Katrina, Fossett, etc tend to draw resources from around the country - you can bring in whole ground teams or aircrews on a GA8, buy them a ticket on Southwest, or reimburse the fuel for a caravan of vehicles.

Right there, I think we need to split response int phases.

Phase I:  Initial response.  Every warm body that's available in the group or wing gets a call, and they cobble together a response for a week-ish
Phase II:  Sustaining.  Grab resources across the region and nation.  Establish a rotation of people in and out of the incident.  Need to start thinking of this as soon as the incident goes beyond the standard 1-2 day ELT search, and start putting out the call for help.

One advantage of having standardized training standards is that we can pull in people from other wings/regions and put them to work.  Is it seamless?  Hell, no.  Is it possible?  Definitely.  I think we proved the fact that we could rotate people in and out on DWH.  Maybe we need to exercise multi-wing more often, maybe we need to exercise changes of command and general staff once in a while.

[arajca]

Maybe we need to exercise multi-wing more often, maybe we need to exercise changes of command and general staff once in a while.

Blasphemer! Heretic! How DARE you suggest that our ICs can't run a mission for weeks on end without relief?! or that one wing can do everything?

Actually, that's been brought up by several people multiple times, only to be shot down by the very ICs who need would benefit from it.

[N Harmon]

In my experience as a squadron commander, the 4-8hour ELT hunt had no effect on us being able to man a longer term mission, so I'm forced to disagree with your second point as well. As a single squadron, we never got more than 2 ELT hunts in a single week, so perhaps that the reason we never suffered from crew exhaustion.

I am glad to hear that. Personally, I get a limit amount of paid time off from my employer. Through their good graces they have allowed me to take some of that time on as short of notice as needed when called up by CAP. Many people have similar arrangements, and prior to the 406 cut-over those ELT missions really cut into that time. Time I would rather spend helping people actually in distress.

[jpizzo127]

That is a good thing isn't it?

No, absolutely not. That's a terrible thing. It's eroded our operational readiness. Even though non-emergency ELTs were what we were looking, it allowed our aircrews and ground teams to get real world practice, and maintain proficiency with the costs absorbed by the AF. It was also a huge morale booster.

So in short, no the loss of the 121.5 mission was a terrible one in my opinion

There is no such thing as "real world" practice.

You don't use false alarms and Non-emergency call outs as training.

So aircrews don't use ELT hunts to practice using the DF, the GPS, filling out paperwork, WMIRS?
Ground teams don't get more proficient at doing their paperwork, learning how ELT signals behave in different environments, practice ELT use?

I'm sorry but I could not disagree with your statement more.

[jpizzo127]

That is a good thing isn't it?

No, absolutely not. That's a terrible thing. It's eroded our operational readiness. Even though non-emergency ELTs were what we were looking, it allowed our aircrews and ground teams to get real world practice, and maintain proficiency with the costs absorbed by the AF. It was also a huge morale booster.

So in short, no the loss of the 121.5 mission was a terrible one in my opinion

The 406 transition is absolutely a good thing - better coordinates for actuals and fewer false activations. Anybody who says that the 406 transition was a bad thing has lost sight of the point of distress beacons.

From the perpective you're using you are absolutely correct. The 406 is better at saving lives and that's what we're all after at the end of the day. I agree 100% the 406 is a giant step forward for those in distress.

The point I'm making is the 406 took away one of our missions and that is detrimental to the survival of CAP. We have lost business. Would I go back to 121 ELTs. Of course not. But no one can deny, CAP's real world utility has been diminished.

[jpizzo127]

In my experience as a squadron commander, the 4-8hour ELT hunt had no effect on us being able to man a longer term mission, so I'm forced to disagree with your second point as well. As a single squadron, we never got more than 2 ELT hunts in a single week, so perhaps that the reason we never suffered from crew exhaustion.

I am glad to hear that. Personally, I get a limit amount of paid time off from my employer. Through their good graces they have allowed me to take some of that time on as short of notice as needed when called up by CAP. Many people have similar arrangements, and prior to the 406 cut-over those ELT missions really cut into that time. Time I would rather spend helping people actually in distress.

I see your point. The reason it worked for my squadron is the fact that we have 40 seniors, all mission qualified. And all we get here is ELT missions. In 7 years, I've only had 1 acutal, so we can rotate our crews, and spread what used to be alot of ELT gigs around.

[lordmonar]

That is a good thing isn't it?

No, absolutely not. That's a terrible thing. It's eroded our operational readiness. Even though non-emergency ELTs were what we were looking, it allowed our aircrews and ground teams to get real world practice, and maintain proficiency with the costs absorbed by the AF. It was also a huge morale booster.

So in short, no the loss of the 121.5 mission was a terrible one in my opinion

There is no such thing as "real world" practice.

You don't use false alarms and Non-emergency call outs as training.

So aircrews don't use ELT hunts to practice using the DF, the GPS, filling out paperwork, WMIRS?
Ground teams don't get more proficient at doing their paperwork, learning how ELT signals behave in different environments, practice ELT use?

I'm sorry but I could not disagree with your statement more.

ES is an emergency.  It is either practice or it is real world.

End of story.

The loss of the 121 hunts only means that when we do get called out we are more likely going to be called out on a real downed aircraft. 

Less BS false alarms means we are not wasteing our people's valuable time.

[jpizzo127]

That is a good thing isn't it?

No, absolutely not. That's a terrible thing. It's eroded our operational readiness. Even though non-emergency ELTs were what we were looking, it allowed our aircrews and ground teams to get real world practice, and maintain proficiency with the costs absorbed by the AF. It was also a huge morale booster.

So in short, no the loss of the 121.5 mission was a terrible one in my opinion

There is no such thing as "real world" practice.

You don't use false alarms and Non-emergency call outs as training.

So aircrews don't use ELT hunts to practice using the DF, the GPS, filling out paperwork, WMIRS?
Ground teams don't get more proficient at doing their paperwork, learning how ELT signals behave in different environments, practice ELT use?

I'm sorry but I could not disagree with your statement more.

ES is an emergency.  It is either practice or it is real world.

End of story.

The loss of the 121 hunts only means that when we do get called out we are more likely going to be called out on a real downed aircraft. 

Less BS false alarms means we are not wasteing our people's valuable time.

Patrick,

I can see we're not going to agree on this, so I'm just going to let it go at that.

You have your opinion and I have mine.

However, remember that just because you decree something, and finish your sentence with "End of story" does not make it so.

All the best-

[lordmonar]

Okay.

My point...which you seemed to have missed....is that readiness is a fucntion of training.  We should not be using real missions for false alarms and non distress ELTs as a way of keeping up our readiness levels.

If the current real work load is not enough to keep up our compentcies in ES skills.....we need to increase our training and make sure that is as close to real world as possible.

Losing all the 121.5 mission missions....simply means when we are called out it is more likely that we are called out because someone is really in trouble.

If you think this basic assumption is wrong....then like you say...we are not going to agree.

[jpizzo127]

Here's an argument against drone usage..

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/virus-hits-drone-fleet/

When CAP planes get a virus, its usually cleared up with a shot of penicillin.