Venting about attitudes

[smgilbert101]

As a mentor, I judge people by their actions, not what they wear.  I adjust my expectations (cadet or senior member) based on an individuals training and experience.  

Personally, I don't care if they wear the beret if they were awarded it as part of a challenging course. Although it was hard to really, really swallow at first, the Army decided long ago that the beret just a hat.  I retired my "real beret" in the mid-80's when I hung up my Army uniform for the last time.  Cadets in other organizations (ROTC, military schools, blah, blah) wear berets all the time.  Army ROTC has had a "Ranger" program for cadets for a very long time.  As an instructor of that particular program, I can assure you that they were most certainly not up to Army Ranger standards or qualifications.  It is a program designed to teach leadership/field skills to cadets.  Although I prefer that they do not use the term "Ranger", can can learn to live with it. I've learned to live with the pizza boys in the black berets <grrr>.

In CAP, I just ask that they do not:

1. Wear an Army Ranger tab.
2. Wear any patches, flashes or crests that either belong to or have belonged to military Ranger programs.  There isn't a CAP program in existence that comes close.

(My head would probably explode....)

As for Hawk mountain, I personally have mixed feelings about the program.  If they want patches fine, hats, whatever.  Just pick something and stick to it.  The so-called Hawk mountain arrogance is a leadership issue.  Personally, I haven't seen much of it at all.  Let's be honest, the arrogance appears in other cadet activities as well.  Is anyone really going to tell me that members of a cadet honor guard / drill team can't be arrogant?  Isn't arrogance a fairly common trait among aircrew?!?

They may not be anything more than CAP merit badges to some, but they are excellent motivators.  Cadets should be allowed to be proud of their accomplishments.  If you want well trained, well educated, members there needs to be some sort of recognition.  Who's going to spend hundreds of dollars to attend courses that have no meaningful reward later.  

The military has a long standing tradition of awarding badges/patches for accomplishments. Why can't we? Like the military, our uniforms are our resumes.

[Duke Dillio]

Sua Sponte SARGRUNT

I was gone before the blasphemy took place. I still have the original Black Beret w/ 3Batt and my crest...

I need to go calm down.

A "Hollywood Ranger" here SGT Savage.  I served from 1995-1998 before getting injured on a jump.  Couldn't hold jump status anymore so they moved me to bright, sunny Korea.  Then, I went to Fort Carson where the "blasphemy" took place.  I still wear my scroll under my BDU pocket.  Shhhh, don't tell anyone.

[afgeo4]

Again

Use the word "Ranger" alone, and some folks will think "Park Ranger"

But use the word "Ranger" and attach a guy in BDU's to it, and the image the comes to mind is "killer."

After all, why would the kiddies be so attached to it if it didn't have that warrior connotation?

My guess is that if we made all Hawk graduates wear Park Ranger uniforms instead of BDUs, they'd be screaming to change the name....

hmmm... you may be onto something, but I don't care about the name. It doesn't bother me. I wouldn't care what they were called because a famous english guy once said that a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.

[alamrcn]

No one mentioned the "Course Ranger" ... as in Golf? You know, the guy/gal that comes around on a supped-up cart and tells you to put your shirt back on or to stop peeing in the woods.

Since the term "woodsmanship" was used so often at Hawk, I took the title "CAP Ranger" to have more a kin to a National Park Ranger. Would wearing one of those hats be so bad?!!  But please, not the shorts and over-calf socks.

Welcome to the Dam tour, I'm your dam guide... Mr Ranger.

-Ace

[afgeo4]

Plus I think everyone is forgetting the Powerpoint Rangers. They're a huge influence on CAP, probably more so than Hawk Mountain ones.

[JC004]

Plus I think everyone is forgetting the Powerpoint Rangers. They're a huge influence on CAP, probably more so than Hawk Mountain ones.

Absolutely.  I'm making fancy new CAP themed PowerPoint templates for various uses.  My biggest fear is that they will be abused and we will have to suffer more PowerPoint.

[floridacyclist]

I told the cadets at Comm Camp that I was sentencing them to death....by Powerpoint.

I had several of them tell me that course was every bit as tough as Hawk only academically so. They all passed though.

[Dragoon]

I think the name does matter, and is part of the problem of "attitude"

By equating a wilderness SAR course with commandos, you create perhaps a little more of the macho warrior stuff than you really need.  Ranger = bada$$ and all that.

At least when Army JROTC and ROTC units use the term for advanced training, they are actively trying to promote that kind of attitude - after all. they are feeder systems for the U.S. Army.  Today's Army cadet may be tomorrow's killer.

But CAP isn't in that business.  We don't need a warrior ethos.  We need a SAR professional ethos.  Speaking as a soldier,I think  the two are a little bit different.

Some have said "we can't change the name - deal with it."  Well., the name almost died a few years back - the first time PA wing came forward to ask the NB to approve all their bling.  They not only got shot down, they had to change the name of the school to omit the term "ranger."

But, of course, our current Commander kind of backpedaled on that one.  And also on the issue of our SP-beret wearing Oshkosh plane parkers.

But things that are done can be undone.  There's still hope.

[floridacyclist]

You wouldn't get any argument from me about changing the name as long as we could still train to the same level and standards. I don't see any reason to change it (No, I don't see my kids acting like Billy bad-boys...if anything, they really cleaned up their acts), but I really don't care either.

Incidentally, I still have my beret...but I earned it.

[afgeo4]

I completely agree with Dragoon on this one.

[Dragoon]

Advanced training is a good thing.  In fact, I think that's where the whole GTM 3 through 1 ratings got started - a way to convince folks to come back to NESA more than once and get better and better.

The implementation may suck, but the concept is valid.  Set a minimum operational standard to make sure you have enough people to do the job, then offer advanced traing and motivate folks to go beyond the minimum

I'd even go as far as to play around with the GTM badge to reflect the three levels.  We could even have multiple levels of team leader to motivate folks to do advanced GTL training.

But better to work within a single system (GT) than to create a competing system.

[floridacyclist]

It actually doesn't compete. Considering that the Ranger program had established standards long before CAP in general got around to them, they've done a pretty good job of incorporating the CAP standards in and combining them with what they had in place that in many instances goes beyond the bare minimum required by the standard GT training. When we do our weekends, we try to set a goal of one level increase in GT training plus the extra stuff required by Hawk...we just have to train a lot harder, stay up later, and get up earlier. Nothing happens at a slow pace; from the time you get here until the time you leave we try to keep things at a blur and keep the pressure on. Real-world ES can be stressful so there's no reason not to train that way, plus that's how we git 'r dun with limited time.

The second aspect that we ephasize at the trainings is how to teach and evaluate. I hate pencil-whipping, so we spend at least one class session each weekend going over how to properly evaluate...the meanings of the little P/F sections in the back of the taskguides, CAPF112, 113, and a few others or when it might be OK to deviate from the precise written evaluation protocol; folks still have to meet the performance standard, but sometimes we may allow a slight difference in the setup according to circumstances. We tell them that when they return home, whether folks like or hate the Ranger program, they will still be a bona fide GTM/L with more than the normal share of training and will be expected to spread the love.

When my two kids went to Hawk for the first time, they came back with GTM3 done and most of GTM2 and 1. I don't think they were in a competing system if they accomplished that much.  Of course, the teamwork and leadership training aspects can't be ignored either as these are emphasized much more strongly than in regular run-of-the-mill GT training. I've seen the results and changes in my own kids from this program and I am a convert. I also believe strongly that like any piece of higher-performance machinery, extra care has to be taken to control and direct their energy and enthusiasm or you will have an obnoxious spoiled brat who thinks their defecation is odorless and that's not what we want either.

Both have since attended staff training at Hawk and the 15yo was named the honor cadet - which he was unaware of at the time since he was on a Greyhound enroute to SUPTFC. They are  properly directed as I promised to remove them from the program if they were the least bit uppity. Since this past Summer, they (along with another cadet they dragged back to Hawk with them) have all done an awesome job of moving into leadership positions at the squadron level and contributing heavily to the rebirth of our squadron.

Change the name if you want, but we're having a blast with the program itself the way it is.

[ZigZag911]

Has any thought been given to completing NASAR SARTECH 3 qualifications?

I know there is an expense issue, and the title is not as supercharged as 'Ranger'....but it might be more descriptive of what our GTs actually do.

[floridacyclist]

We're working on a SARTECH II class in Pensacola next month

[davedove]

Has any thought been given to completing NASAR SARTECH 3 qualifications?

I know there is an expense issue, and the title is not as supercharged as 'Ranger'....but it might be more descriptive of what our GTs actually do.

I personally took the SARTECH II exam, just to take it.  That is just a basic knowledge qualification though.  You get into the real meat when you get SARTECH II qualification, although the skills are much the same as CAP's GT training.  I do want to get the SARTECH II some day, when my schedule permits.

[floridacyclist]

I understand that the compass course is a lot tougher. A field of poles with numbers on each of them...you have a list of bearings and distances. As you reach each place you believe to be a checkpoint, you write down the number of the pole you think you're supposed to hit and then follow the next course...after it's all over, they check your list.

Miss one and the rest are wrong too.

[isuhawkeye]

Another advantage of SAR Tech is that the evaluation is un biased. 

I got my eyes opened when we sent a group to test. 

We were not nearly as proficient as we thought we were

[floridacyclist]

Anohter of our goals is to be able to field a NIMS-types WSAR team. I'm pretty sure we can stand up a type III team...and can support a type II. We just need to get some SARTECH testing out of the way first. I think the key will be getting one of our people instructor-certified so we can do our own testing.

Same thing with medical...I'm hoping to go to SC in November for Wilderness First Responder. To me, that class not only makes sense from the SAR standpoint, but also for anyone who spends any appreciable time in the woods with kids, or even in the case of a societal-collapse..what some might call TEOTWAWKI - The End Of The World As We Know It. It simply sounds like the most bang for the buck for dealing with emergencies when medical help is not immediately available.