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Hawk Mountain Hate

Started by NineteenTen, December 28, 2016, 11:15:52 PM

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NineteenTen

I'm new to CAPTalk and I've noticed a lot hate towards the hawk mountain ranger school NCSA. Where's this all coming from? I haven't noticed any of this in my squadron.

Luis R. Ramos

Because a lot of Hawk Mountain graduates came back with an attitude.

"I am a Ranger, so I have more knowledge than you," or "I am better than you."

I never noticed it, but many in here did, and reported so. Do a search on Hawk Mountain and you will able to see these threads.


Squadron Safety Officer
Squadron Communication Officer
Squadron Emergency Services Officer

EMT-83

Ditto. Hawk Mountain has some great programs, but the attitude that comes home with cadets makes the value questionable.

PHall

And yes we know the Hawk Mountain Cadre is not "teaching" this.
But "Hawk Mountain Attitude" seems to be fairly common among attendees.

NineteenTen

That's elitist attitude is pretty common when it comes to NCSAs and anything military though. There's always gonna be that guy that things they're better than others because they went to a certain activity.

KASSRCrashResearch

Nearly all of my interactions with cadets so far have been at Oshkosh several years ago before I started trying to become involved with CAP myself. 

I had one up there pull the "Well, I'm the most qualified person in this conversation" and point out that had been through "Ranger school".  That was his response to my pointing out that he didn't understand a very basic point on land navigation well enough to avoid misapplying it (he was making fun of another cadet who had gotten lost during some field exercise back home or something).

I looked at him, smiled and went "So how was Eglin and Benning?"
"Huh?"
"Exactly.  Unless you have an actual Ranger tab, no one except you cares."
"But it's a big deal."
"Did I stutter? If you want to be perceived as being trustworthy and competent you need to drop the holier than thou attitude.  Full. Freaking. Stop."

I have complete faith in the continued absurdity of what ever is going on.

KarolOpelski

The Ranger attitude took a bad turn five, ten years ago. Haven't seen the same problems recently.

However, cadets in my wing generally do not go to HMRS unless they are cadet officers. This may have prevented some problems related to maturity.

Starbux

#7
Discussions like this crack me up, I guess the world keeps turning since I was a cadet in the 90's.  Our wing only had maybe one or two that ever went to this.  I only saw the attitudes once at COS, where there would be a whole collection of them at one time. They would all kind of congregate among themselves and sort of created a "mafia."  There was one group that synced activities together through that summer.  They were all well known in the nation, they were sorta the "super stars" among themselves. 

I always considered this attitude to be a sign of insecurity.  In fact one of these kids at COS was hyper jealous of me and one other guy for having pilot wings.  He even had a CAP-RAPO call our units to verify if we legitimately earned them.  Back then pilot certs were not the plastic card that they are now, they were flimsy laser printed certs.  We never carried them in our wallet, I kept mine clipped to my log book.  This guy would not shut up about it after the fact.  Somehow in his head he thought that we thought we were one upping him.  He was kind of a mental case.  Myself and the other pilot never once projected ourselves with our aviation quals.  I mean, I joined back then because of the flying aspect first and the leadership part as a close 2nd.

Jaison009

#8
Years and years of history...Even before I become a cadet in 96 there were challenges with the attitudes and perceptions. I knew a lot of PJOC, APJOC, HMRS, Oshkosh NBB, NESA (then NGSAR), and COS guys and very few had an issue. The COS guys had a better and deeper understanding of leadership (always wanted to go to COS), the PJOC and APJOC guys were quiet and did their thing. The NBB guys definitely looked out of place with their berets but that was not my battle and most knew their ES and GT stuff, and most of the HMRS guys stayed humble. Some didn't and they lost respect in the wing.  I almost fell into it for a minute as a teenager after completing R1 requirements and my DCOC (SSG with 5th SFG in the real world) and Squadron Commander (wife to CSM of 5th SFG) set me straight pretty quick. I always wanted to go to NGSAR but never worked out. It always amazed me they came back with only a patch and went back to work and GTs were better for it.

Starbux

#9
Quote from: Jaison009 on February 15, 2017, 02:35:29 AM
... the PJOC and APJOC guys were quiet and did their thing.

PJOC was an interesting and unique activity when I went through it.  One thing for sure is that you were humbled afterwords.  It was unique in the sense that it was one of the few activities that was completely isolated from the CAP fiefdom.  Until 1998 there were no CAP SM's present ( I was actually one of the first male SM chaperones at the NM one in 98).  It was all ran by joint spec ops personnel and overseen by the CAP-USAF RAPO's.  Everyone was on an equal playing field, no matter who you thought you were.  Since it was all AD and Reserve personnel running it, there was no National, Regional or Wing politics.  If you were the golden star of your wing and region, you were nothing at PJOC.  They made a point of it.  Whether you had one stripe on your collar or multiple diamonds, the cadre made a point that everyone's rank to them was Cadet.  They showed it too.  They did things like find a reason to fire a C/Lt Col who was in charge and replaced him with a C/SSgt.  They gave out participation trophies in the form of push ups and flutter kicks and your "Safe Space," was the spot you were doing push ups and flutter kicks.

The funny thing I didn't even really want to do it as a cadet because I was a C/Lt Col at the time and knew that would get me extra attention.  My friend convinced me, so I went to it.  It was exactly as I expected.  I came out of it with a weird dual sense of accomplishment.  On one hand I did things I never tried before.  At the same you woke up to the realization to a world that you were not as good at everything as you might have thought.

If anyone wonders.  Yeah I was fired, but before I even showed up.  I was given permission, at a price to be one day late, due to coming in from another national activity that overlapped.  Lets just say they took it as an opportunity to make an instructional point, LOL :D

Jaison009

I always wanted to do it but as a big boy and a cadet officer, there was definitely no way I was submitting myself to that hell and NM sucks no matter how you look at it.  ;D ;D ;D

Quote from: Starbux on February 16, 2017, 12:30:54 AM
Quote from: Jaison009 on February 15, 2017, 02:35:29 AM
... the PJOC and APJOC guys were quiet and did their thing.

PJOC was an interesting and unique activity when I went through it.  One thing for sure is that you were humbled afterwords.  It was unique in the sense that it was one of the few activities that was completely isolated from the CAP fiefdom.  Until 1998 there were no CAP SM's present ( I was actually one of the first male SM chaperones at the NM one in 98).  It was all ran by joint spec ops personnel and overseen by the CAP-USAF RAPO's.  Everyone was on an equal playing field, no matter who you thought you were.  Since it was all AD and Reserve personnel running it, there was no National, Regional or Wing politics.  If you were the golden star of your wing and region, you were nothing at PJOC.  They made a point of it.  Whether you had one stripe on your collar or multiple diamonds, the cadre made a point that everyone's rank to them was Cadet.  They showed it too.  They did things like find a reason to fire a C/Lt Col who was in charge and replaced him with a C/SSgt.  They gave out participation trophies in the form of push ups and flutter kicks and your "Safe Space," was the spot you were doing push ups and flutter kicks.

The funny thing I didn't even really want to do it as a cadet because I was a C/Lt Col at the time and knew that would get me extra attention.  My friend convinced me, so I went to it.  It was exactly as I expected.  I came out of it with a weird dual sense of accomplishment.  On one hand I did things I never tried before.  At the same you woke up to the realization to a world that you were not as good at everything as you might have thought.

If anyone wonders.  Yeah I was fired, but before I even showed up.  I was given permission, at a price to be one day late, due to coming in from another national activity that overlapped.  Lets just say they took it as an opportunity to make an instructional point, LOL :D

LATORRECA

#11
Hmm... Ranger School, it always caught my attention, however the opportunity raised and I prefer to attend NESA. Less attitude and more instruction I guess. NESA was good. May be one day I attend to Hawk Mountain after the military of course to see how it is. PJOC is also in my list just to see how the AF train their guys.

Top

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Starbux

Quote from: Jaison009 on February 17, 2017, 03:13:50 AM
I always wanted to do it but as a big boy and a cadet officer, there was definitely no way I was submitting myself to that hell and NM sucks no matter how you look at it.  ;D ;D ;D



I don't blame you.

Starbux

#13
Quote from: LATORRECA on February 17, 2017, 07:12:49 AM
Hmm... Ranger School, it always caught my attention, however the opportunity raised and I prefer to attend NESA. Less attitude and more instruction I guess. NESA was good. May be one day I attend to Hawk Mountain after the military of course to see how it is. PJOC is also in my list just to see how the AF train their guys.

Top

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I would say PJOC is more of an intense leadership lab environment.  The people training are no nonsense and they don't play games, they don't have favorites and they treat everyone equal.  I would put it close to AFROTC Field Training's expeditionary phase, with the exception the SOF personnel are much more professional then the clowns who become CTA's in ROTC.  You will learn that any preconceived notions you may have of military enlisted personnel are way off.  All of these instructors could easily be Officers. In fact I met one later in life who became an intel officer in the Air Force. 

The course is very basic in terms of practical use unless you do the advanced version.  Don't get me wrong you get some actual real world stuff out of it.  You get some basic med training probably on par with what you would get doing SABC.  They do some basic land nav, where you hike the woods several hours doing compass map ground off trail to a spot and then return.  There was a lot of knot tying instruction.  We did repelling off a hundred foot cliff.  A huge portion was SERE survival techniques,(No escape and evasion or resistance).  Building improvised shelters, finding edible plants, setting a snare and water gathering techniques.  No, you don't eat a squirrel.  You can eat a bug if you're into that sort of thing. 
Then lots and lots of PT.

Don't expect to get any "snake eater" type training.  You won't learn any combat skills or how operators do their thing. But it is good environment to see if the military is for you or if you need to reconsider how the world works and chose to make adjustments.  If you can't make it though this, then Academy BCT or AFROTC FT or OTS might not be the thing for you.  In fact maybe not even AF Basic, TBH.  If you go to it leave all your CAP Life behind.  Whatever you think you are and how good you think you are, don't bring that to this activity.  I would recommend everyone to accept a new position in the world for one week. 

LATORRECA

 Trust me not bringing any CAP mentality, however I will show up humble but with plenty of knowledge. I guess on what you just described it will be more about play grunt and reinforce what I have in the past 20 years as a grunt. Sound like a great opportunity. Still I will go to HMRS just to see.

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Starbux

#15
Oh I guess I missread you.  I assumed you were a Cadet based on the wording of, my bad I suppose your unit would have been a good clue.  PJOC is way different for SM's.  I was a chaperone 20 years ago.   I was able to do what I wanted with them or stay behind.  Obviously SM's are not hitting the deck, LOL.   I guess now that the activity is ran by SM's as the overseers vs CAP-USAF reservist.  I imagine an SM is more any other SM at a cadet activity.  I suppose what I said would be good to know for cadets going.

If you have a mil background in this stuff I imagine you would be able to assist in a lot of the stuff.  I don't know how it is now, when I went to it as a cadet and SM it was more joint.  We had one Army Ranger type and a Green Beret, if I recall as instructors.


Cheers.

LATORRECA

Danke schön....

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McDaddy2003

Quote from: KASSRCrashResearch on December 29, 2016, 12:59:17 PM
Nearly all of my interactions with cadets so far have been at Oshkosh several years ago before I started trying to become involved with CAP myself. 

I had one up there pull the "Well, I'm the most qualified person in this conversation" and point out that had been through "Ranger school".  That was his response to my pointing out that he didn't understand a very basic point on land navigation well enough to avoid misapplying it (he was making fun of another cadet who had gotten lost during some field exercise back home or something).

I looked at him, smiled and went "So how was Eglin and Benning?"
"Huh?"
"Exactly.  Unless you have an actual Ranger tab, no one except you cares."
"But it's a big deal."
"Did I stutter? If you want to be perceived as being trustworthy and competent you need to drop the holier than thou attitude.  Full. Freaking. Stop."

I ROFL when I read that. Personally if it were up to me, I'd remove the beret from NBB. Only recipients receive St. Alban's Cross on a solid black field cap.

McDaddy2003

Quote from: KarolOpelski on February 10, 2017, 01:06:06 AM
The Ranger attitude took a bad turn five, ten years ago. Haven't seen the same problems recently.

However, cadets in my wing generally do not go to HMRS unless they are cadet officers. This may have prevented some problems related to maturity.

They had attitude back WIWAC 98-03, I believe awarding special identifiers (medic, ranger, exc.) where maturity lacks may be a misstep.

FW

I have no idea why this activity has any residual "Hawk Mountain Hate".  For the last 15 years, it has been run very well.  The facilities have been greatly improved, the requirements are more in-sync with CAP ES qualifications, and the summer activity consistently attracts more than 200 cadets from around the country year after year.   Yes, it has its "traditions", however I wouldn't trade them for anything new.  It has been a motivating force for many successful individuals. You can't ask for more, IMHO.