CAWG moving 4 aircraft to NVWG & AZWG

[a2capt]

The real agenda? scuttlebutt from a certain source was posted. Seems it's bunk. Then it's being backed by these same facts, and I won't deny them, that a couple of IC's are responsible for most of the missions in southern California, etc.. and that 'these aircraft hardly ever fly', etc...

There's more than two sides to every story.

But as equal as that is fact, the fact being, take a look at how many first timers and what not respond to missions and then never do it again, particularly with regards to their locale and who's likely having been the IC.

Pretty interesting indicator that something is broken.

Go back and look at the same mission traffic and responses when others make the call.

Arguing facts? Get off the Couch and look at all of them. It's pretty eye opening.

[wingnut]

Nowhere does it say 30 minutes to have an aircrew in the Air, thats for an IC to respond to the WAMO, and take the Mission from the AFRCC.  I have been told by AFRCC that if they have an ELT in Texas it is up to the AFRCC to find an IC. We in California have 24/7 WAMOs they find an IC, We have a good IC system here

As for the same ICs doing missions YOUR CORRECT, these same guys bust their butts (Sorry Ron), and we all admire and respect them for what they do (Personality clashes aside). But with that said we are in a morale crisis that will continue for awhile. All of us are acutely aware of the number of false ELT activations here,  its crazy. We have had at least a dozen ELTs going off in US Military assets, and the sad thing the Military have sometimes refused to respond to Military ELTs going off at night (With our guys driving for hours to get there). Reality check here.  Our people are burned out, we need to recruit more pilots and DF personnel, but HEY I have yet to be reimbursed for missions from months ago. Another factor to consider is; Our Southern California has one of the largest number of pilots yet is having a problem recruiting actvive members why do they join and quit???

One more small detail, who in the heck is up at 2am watching the email alerting system. I want to go back to on call aircraft with phone alerts. Internet is great but if you start calling pilots and crew, Human reaction is not to refuse, it is more personal and more professional to call an on call alert crew. If a squadron can't pull call, switch with someone who can, if a squadron can't respond give them some options and if they still cannot respond "PULL THE PLANE"

Oh yes talk about CREW REST, if your a worker bee, spend 16 hours awake, you cannot respond to a 2am request to fly after  3 or 4 hours sleep.

[calguy]

Thanks...

Ever done WMAO duty?  Two things ring true...
Almost all the 24/7 ICs will turn the mission down
The others listed as N&W and Days turn it down during those periods.
Duarte, Wordsworth and Keilholtz was ALWAYS take the missions and our WMAO Coordinators has specifically told us NOT to call them first as to not further burn them out.  These other guys waste all of our time.

Broken? YES  Where is the leadership?

In another thread a good example was made and I will try it here.

Your flying from Crescent City (NoCal) to Imperial (SoCal) and leave at 8 a.m. for a 4 hour flight in the middle of December.  Your VFR flight plan call for a 4 hour flight to arrive at noon.  But wait...You crash!  Its 10 a.m.

Your ELT goes off but the first SARSAT pass won't go by again until 13:30.

The FAA does an ALNOT and doesn't complete it until 1 P.M.  They call the AFRCC a short time later.  No Sarsat hits, they try to call the CAWG WMAO at 13:30 but get an answering machine.  They leave a message.  Nearly 20 minutes later, the WMAO calls and takes the mission but the WMAO is on the freeway.  He waits till he gets home.  Now it 14:15.  The WMAO goes down the list and cannot find an IC...all the same excuses, can't do it, no answer, voice mail.  It is now past the deadline and you call on one of the default Wing staff ICs, it's Keilholtz...good thing.  Its now 15:00.   After the IC calls the AFRCC and gets briefed it is 15:15 The IC puts out one page, 20 minutes later a second request.  At 16:00 he calls the group alerting officers and ask them to locate an aircraft.  Why?  Because many of our folks are not on the paging system.  Its now 16:45 before they locate a crew...but it is dark and they can't get to the airport for two hours due to traffic and they will need one hour to preflight the aircraft. Now they won't fly over the mountains at night because it is unsafe.  Remember the CAWG message last week?  No penalties for not wanting to fly!  Now we have to wait till the next day to fly but a Pacific storm is coming in.  We will not be able to fly for the next few days.  You, your wife and children wait in the cold, wet airplane with multiple injuries for the non CAP first responders to get on the mission.  When they arrive two days later, they have all died from exposure.

If you crash, who is going to look for you?  Can you count on CAP?

We need to look at our mission and accept the mission and fix our problems or get out of the SAR biz.

It is only fair to those we have been entrusted to serve.

Think about it!

[Flying Pig]

By calguy...
How many folks in aircraft crashes have died while waiting for CAP to ramp up? 

Are there any stats for this?  We are a volunteer organization of people who have jobs, vacations, etc.  Im not sure how you plan to staff aircrews with people who are living within minutes of the airport sleeping in their flight suits?

Its a pretty good system CAP has.  There are always things that can be improved.  We have a SAR team with my department who takes probably 3-4 hours to get on scene and ready to go.  It can be an hour or more if one of our aircrews need to be called in. In most cases, we WILL NOT start a night time mountain search in the helicopter and thats with NVG's, a search light a FLIR and a very nice moving map system.   Guess what.  We wait until sunrise to start up in the bird.  Our Sheriff pilots have 25,000 15,000 and 2,000 hours respectively and a big majority of that is flying in the Sierras.  We dont fly SARs in storms either and our pilots are the final decision on whether they fly the mission no matter how much the IC wants us to go.  There are no penalties for a pilot who decides the mission is not safe or he is not comfortable flying it.  Do you think their should be penalties?  It isnt that there are no penalties for not wanting to fly, its there are no penalties for determining as the PIC that you are not going to fly.  There is a difference.

Are you involved in SAR outside of CAP at all?   I hate to take the the wind out of our sails but we dont blatantly risk our lives looking for people and Im sorry if you were under the impression that we did or were somehow required to.  We take risks of course.  Flying at treetop level in the Sierras is risky but I dont think Id call it dangerous.

It seems some people want CAP to be able to respond to searches like fighter pilots on alert.   Its a little extreme to throw the scenario of a mountain storm into the loop because thats not something we can control.  Im not exactly sure who you are comparing us to when you talk about our response times or our willingness to fly into the mountains on a search in IFR weather?

[Larry Mangum]

California is not alone in that only a handful of the rated IC do most of the missions,  IC's and other senior mission staff type are not immune for the 90 /10 rule in which only 10% of the people do the majority of the work.

[calguy]

Gee...our guys don't want to search during VFR on a weekend.  Listen to the pages?  First page, second page, third page.  The other night the weather was VFR over Julian, winds aloft at 10,000 were 25 knots.  The terrain over that area is to the east and west from sea level, rolling hills to Julian at 3000 feet to the VFR at 4000.  Hardly "mountain" flying.  
Searching requires risk.  I am sure the IC put folks out on the ground at 2 am.  That has risks.  Air ambulance fly at night, without NVG or FLIR in the mountains all the time.  OES expects CAP to find an IC within 30 minutes of the AFRCC giving the WMAO the mission.  Much of the time they cannot find an IC.  Why?  24/7  Just what does that mean?  24 % of the time I will take 7 % of those missions?  Thats 2 % of the time...thats about right!
After the 30 minutes, OES expects CAP to have identified which resources will be enroute.  They expect a UDF team to be on the road in 30 minutes after accepting an assignment.  Unreasonable?  Doable?  For aircrews, they expect them to be at the airport within one hour.  Is this not reasonable?  That is 2 hours after the AFRCC gives CAP the mission.  And you and most other pilots think this is not fair to our members.  
I know some of our folks can be on the road with 5 minutes of a page.  So we can do it, but we don't want to.  You hate those guys because they make many of us look bad.  The crash in Cajon Pass was located in less than 5 hours from when the guy crashed and a little over 3 hours from when CAP got the mission.  It was found by a CAP member from San Diego, about a two hour drive.  Can't be done??  Sure it can, but only if you want to.  These guys all work, have family but when they signed up for S&R they knew it would take a priority in their lives.  
Volunteer firefighters get up at all hours to help people for a number of non emergency reason.  But they still respond.
Excuses  Excuses Excuses.
Lets blame everyone else and make them look bad so we can keep our aircraft that we won't fly 90% of the time when requested.  
Lets move them to unit that will.  Our squadron has wanted one for years, have qualified crew members and they will drive 40 miles to get an aircraft that is just sitting there.  2 A-1 missions a year?  Move the airplane and let their folks drive 40 miles.
You are putting your needs before the organizational needs.
Seems like a waste of money for Fresno to buy NVG, FLIR, maps and the like and not fly at night.  I bet when they wrote the request that they used flying SAR at night in the mountains as  one of their justifications.

[SoCalCAPOfficer]

Although I have stated I will make no further comments regarding this thread, I just realized something that needs to be said.   I would like to say to "calguy", I believe I know who you are (Are your Initials  S T ? ) and why you have this agenda.  You have put in a lot of hours on SAR missions and you probably believe that the majority of us are not supporting you.  Actually, most people acknowledge the work that you and those other two you keep referring to are doing.   What riles most of us is that you expect CAP to be something it cannot ever be as a volunteer organization, and you constantly belittle the efforts of other volunteers who do not have the time or the resources available to do what you and those other few dedicated people are able to do.

There are reasons why some squadrons are able to take more missions than others.   Some squadrons are lucky enough to have qualified retired Mission Pilots available.  Some squadrons are in more affluent areas and their members are more able to foot the large expenses associated with financing these mission while waiting for months to be repaid.  Some squadrons have better df units (Beckers).  There are numerous reasons and differences among squadrons.

Some members, such as myself,  have family problems .  My wife has terminal lung cancer and is on hospice care at home.  This limits the amount of time and finances I can put into going out on these missions.  Before I can go on a mission I have to find someone to stay with my wife.  In spite of this, I have flown a Sarex and two A-1 missions as observer; and as UDF team member have  found and disabled five ELT's since she has been sick.  Of those only two were ever posted showing my efforts.  I do this in addition to my responsibilities as Squadron Commander because I love CAP, my Squadron and our Mission.   However, to some, this is not enough, to them I can only say, "sorry you feel that way".

We all would like to be able to get to the plane and take off within a half an hour.  However, life gets in the way and it cannot always be done.    I ask that members of my squadron do as much as they can, I do not ask them to bankrupt themselves, lose their jobs, or risk their lives needlessly.   So far I am happy with the effort put forth by my squadron members.   I am proud of them and I will not stand by and have them insulted without response.    Hopefully this will be the last comment you hear from me on this subject. (But you never know, something else may come up).

Before I could post this something else came up.  The plane that was found in the Cajon pass was not just stumbled upon by someone from San Diego.   A ground team leader from another squadron along with my DCC were on the way to Nellis AFB with some of my cadets when they picked up the ELT signal in the Cajon Pass.   It was reported but they were not assigned to the mission.  There were CAP resources right there, but someone had to come from San Diego, why was that?

[Flying Pig]

 Air ambulance fly at night, without NVG or FLIR in the mountains all the time.

Seems like a waste of money for Fresno to buy NVG, FLIR, maps and the like and not fly at night.  I bet when they wrote the request that they used flying SAR at night in the mountains as  one of their justifications.

Really?  Who?   The CHP will not fly into the mountains at all after dark and they are EMS.  Im curious who else does?  Skylife doesnt fly into the mountains at night.  I never said we didnt fly at night.  We fly 365 days per year until at least midnight.

In fact we are the only law enforcement agency in the central valley that will fly into the Sierras after dark.  We have flown into the mountains at night on SAR for extreme circumstances and have rescued several people from mountain tops and stranded boaters on lakes that are over 8000 msl.  But we weigh the risks.  Our primary missions are law enforcement and SAR and they have located many people over the years.  But keep in mind not all SAR is done in the mountains.  Making accusations about my agency falsifying requests for equipment is a little out of line.

[calguy]

It was reported but they were not assigned to the mission.  There were CAP resources right there, but someone had to come from San Diego, why was that?

Maybe because they couldn't find it.

[calguy]

Really?  Who?

Mercy Air for one flies at night in the mountains.  Sadly, they crashed one in the Cajon pass at night as well as Baker at night.  Sure, its risky business, but so is responding to any incident, in the air or on the ground.

Police can go into a building with a hostage or wait outside.  Firefighters can fight fire from outside or can go inside.  Choices?  Risks?  During the Fossett search we had crews flying into Bishop at night.  Was that a bad choice?  If we didn't fly at night, we wouldn't  have had crews at Bishop until noon.  Our crews could have only flown for an hour before they had to fly back home before dark.  Waste of time?  The only reason most people stayed at Bishop was because of the free lodging that the IC was able to get.  Otherwise, it could have been another Big Bear fatality.

[RiverAux]

I always enjoy watching people argue over whether CAP members are "First Responders".  It is such a generic term and has different definitions depending on who is using it and in what context that it is in an argument that is impossible to win no matter which side you're on in any particular spat. 

[PHall]

Really?  Who?

Mercy Air for one flies at night in the mountains.  Sadly, they crashed one in the Cajon pass at night as well as Baker at night.  Sure, its risky business, but so is responding to any incident, in the air or on the ground.

Yeah, they crashed flying VFR through Cajon Pass in IFR conditions returning to their base in Victorville.
They were "scud running" just like the guy in the PA-28 that just crashed last week.
If they had a patient on-board when they crashed there would have been a hue and cry for their licence to be pulled because they endangered their patients.

[flynd94]

Calguy,

Let me start off with who the H#LL are you.  I am an IC in CAWG, Keith Stason is the name.  I handle my fair share of missions.  I have done 9 missions as an IC this year alone.  I avg 25 missions a year the last 2 years.  I feel I do my share.  I also go out and, fly/play UDF.   I know more about the IC system in CAWG than you do and, those who take the majority of the mission's can say NO.  Also, how many of the IC's have jobs?  I know I can't run a mission when I am at work.  Its pretty hard when I am in my cockpit at FL370 and, my pax would probably prefer I concentrated on flying the aircraft I was in.

Yes, the list sucks but, you must remember that we are all volunteers.  We have lives outside of CAP.  I refuse missions all the time.  Maybe I am tired, had other plans.  Does this make me wrong, no it makes me a member of a volunteer organization.  I give enough of my time to CAP and, would like to have a life outside of it.

You need to get off your soap box of bashing CAWG and our leadership.  No other wing in CAP handles the amount of missions we do.  Have you ever looked at the amount of aircraft/pilots (GA) located in CA.  Its mind blowing, yes it would be great to have more members but, we don't.  We do a [darn] good job with what we have.

Time for you to become part of the solution or shut up and move on.  Yes, we have a MOU with surrounding states to assist in SAR efforts.  I have talked with our (CAWG) wing staff (CC, CV) about us losing airframes.  They laughed.  It ain't gonna happen.

Go back under the rock you crawled out from under.

Keith Stason, Capt, CAP
IC, MP, GTL  and a whole bunch more
I