Dim future for CA aircrew?`

[FW]

As for new contributors.....I hope we don't stoop to the level of agreeing to fly for anyone and everyone.  The corporate side seems to like this stuff, for example tracking gophers, counting lizarrds, flying sick wildabeasts, etc.  I know the next words out of the "I wanna fly on someone else's dime" folks are  "It's good training.  Tracking the beacons of those gophers is mighty tough and will help hone our DF skills."  Along with, "do you know how hard is is to spot a lizard from 1000 agl??? It will make our scanners and observers better at doing the job. " 

Just an excuse to have someone else pay for your flying. These flying club members have one thought....fly for free.  They don't see CAP as a service to our country as the original members did. 

If we go that route....I'm outta here.

Actually, Smokey, lizards want attention as much as anyone else.....
However, don't confuse contributors with customers.  Contributors give to CAP because they believe in helping.  We use their money to improve cadet programs, aerospace education, scholarships and that kind of "stuff". It frees other funds to help us with flying those missions which are important but, not necessarily reimbursable. Customers pay us for lizard looking....

If your asking us to be selective with our customer base; well, ok, I can agree with that. 

[Spaceman3750]

As for new contributors.....I hope we don't stoop to the level of agreeing to fly for anyone and everyone.  The corporate side seems to like this stuff, for example tracking gophers, counting lizarrds, flying sick wildabeasts, etc.  I know the next words out of the "I wanna fly on someone else's dime" folks are  "It's good training.  Tracking the beacons of those gophers is mighty tough and will help hone our DF skills."  Along with, "do you know how hard is is to spot a lizard from 1000 agl??? It will make our scanners and observers better at doing the job. " 

Just an excuse to have someone else pay for your flying. These flying club members have one thought....fly for free.  They don't see CAP as a service to our country as the original members did. 

If we go that route....I'm outta here.

customer base

This may or may not be a good point to bring this up but I'm going to ask anyways...

Why do we call it our "customer base" or "customers"? That sounds as if CAP is selling something (which its not - its providing services near cost with volunteer members), and if that's the case where's my paycheck?!

[JeffDG]

This may or may not be a good point to bring this up but I'm going to ask anyways...

Why do we call it our "customer base" or "customers"? That sounds as if CAP is selling something (which its not - its providing services near cost with volunteer members), and if that's the case where's my paycheck?!

Someone who pays you money to provide a service is a customer.

When GM is losing money, they're providing a product at below cost.  Does that mean that when you buy a Corvette, you're not a customer?

[Eclipse]

It is used in the generic sense of those we serve, however in a lot of cases CAP does bill-through to agencies served.

[FW]

Good point.
We use "customer" or "customer base" as a generic term (as Eclipse made note) for those who benefit (or may benefit) from our services.  Whether or not they pay for it is irrelevant in the Non Profit world.
For a non profit organization to be successful, it must have a "customer base" wanting to use the services it provides and, the funds necessary to perform those services well. The metrics used to balance the ratio depends on our marketing strategy, past mission performance and, a dedicated volunteer base able to perform those services.

If you wish to use another term, go ahead.  What ever works is fine with me :angel:

[blackrain]

Since the annual hours per aircraft in CA seem to be shrinking, I am interested to know what other Wings are doing with their planes.

Not sure I'd call it "on a regular basis", but since we're doing very little else mission-wise, I will say that here in my wing, we have completed a not-insignificant number of taskings over the past several months in support of a defense project that I cannot yet talk about here.  

I can say that other wings will be brought onto this project in the not-so-distant future.  I can also say that our performance to date on this project has people in the military and the defense industry very excited about CAP's potential for similar roles never previously considered.  It could be very "full of win" for CAP going forward.

Update: it would appear it's public knowledge now.  See attached, lower-left.

Well It IS called "Aviation Leak"

[jimmydeanno]

Customer is a perfect word for those we serve.  It provides an expectation for a certain level of service and professionalism that you don't get from other descriptors. 

Just because we are a non-profit organization doesn't mean that we are in the business of losing money or doing stuff for free.  If someone is paying for our services, they certainly are a customer and expect a certain level of service from our members.

[EMT-83]

A customer doesn't necessarily need to be a paying customer.

I work in the IT department of a company with about 1,200 employees. We treat those fellow employees as our customers; it keeps us focused on the support that that we're supposed to be providing.

[calguy]

One of the reasons for multiple pages in CA for crew/IC/ etc is the person mentioned previously sends them out about 3 minutes apart.  That person then says...."No one answered up"  , so "I guess I will do it myself." 

Wing just had a conference call and we were told there is a prblem with the Wing server getting the pages out again.  One IC says it takes on average ten minutes for the page to go out.   Seems like everyone wants to blame someone else and not fix  or address the paging issue.  These delays have been going on for years and often can take over an hour to go out.  Now, many ICs just call people on the phone and skip the paging.  Seems like you need to find a click to join.  The other answer is for the groups to have ICs that will handle missions in their own area and than "that person" won't get to use his "friends".  But when I have done the alerting duty, he is still the only one to take the mission.  Why are the ICs in your area not taking the missions?  Why don't you blame them?

[SarDragon]

No names here.

We used to have two in my immediate area, but one is missing required ICS coursework (300/400/both), and has expressed a reluctance to travel for a whole weekend to take the course(s). I don't know who the ICs are farther north in the other two counties in my group.h So we have one, and he's "that guy".

He puts out pages, and takes the folks who respond first, or can deploy the soonest. If those people happen to be the same all the time, then the other folks need to improve their response time(s).

We have six units in my county. Four of them have no ES presence (cadet units). The fifth is mine. The sixth is farther north, and doesn't respond when "that guy" is IC, because he expects them to follow the rules. They seem to be more of a GOB flying club, that expects to call their own shots on missions, and fly where and when it's convenient for them. I worked with that unit a couple of times a while back as a ground asset, and it didn't go well either time, primarily due to lack of operator skills with the CAP radio.

[edit to add info]

Regarding multiple pages - after looking at almost two years worth of pages (5/09-2/11), I see 5 missions with multiple pages by "that guy". The shortest interval is 11 minutes. The average is about 15 minutes, discounting 2 outliers of 4+ and 8+ hours.

I did notice some 5-10 minute delays between the time in the page text and the server transmit time.

YMMV.

[Spaceman3750]

Since the annual hours per aircraft in CA seem to be shrinking, I am interested to know what other Wings are doing with their planes.

Not sure I'd call it "on a regular basis", but since we're doing very little else mission-wise, I will say that here in my wing, we have completed a not-insignificant number of taskings over the past several months in support of a defense project that I cannot yet talk about here.  

I can say that other wings will be brought onto this project in the not-so-distant future.  I can also say that our performance to date on this project has people in the military and the defense industry very excited about CAP's potential for similar roles never previously considered.  It could be very "full of win" for CAP going forward.

Update: it would appear it's public knowledge now.  See attached, lower-left.

Hmm... I guess this is enough of an omen for me to start cross-training into air ops .

[JeffDG]

Hmm... I guess this is enough of an omen for me to start cross-training into air ops .

Come to the Dark Side...We have cookies!

[simon]

It will be interesting to see the average number of hours put on CAWG aircraft this year. I do not have the figures yet, but if the number of pages being sent out is any indication, my feeling is that it will drop significantly from when the satellites were monitoring 121.5.

As CD missions are not published like regular pages, it could well be that the average hours are still reasonable. I imagine some of the readers will have an answer for this. But the wing has almost 30 aircraft, including a boat load in the Los Angeles basin and a fair few up here in the San Francisco bay area. It doesn't make a whole lot of economic sense to maintain several aircraft in close proximity if they are only going to be averaging 100 hours annually. While the thought of taking a plane away from a squadron would not win any popularity contest, I do recall that prior to the satellites going off that 400 hours was not unusual for a plane in the Wing. It is a shame to see these aircraft gathering dust. I have been told that CD represents around 40% of CAWG's hours. If UAVs move into that role, the future could be dimmer still.

I noticed some people were inferring that I was plugging paid training. This was not why I raised the question of CAWG's flying future. I was instrument rated commercial before I jumped into a CAP plane and paid my own way for most of my flights to F5 and F91. I have no qualms paying for proficiency. Self funded rides in a CAP G1000 are still cheap. I just wonder how these great resources can be used, because the number of missions up here in NorCal have been few and far between in the last year.

[SarDragon]

I'm in Group 7, and while it's a little early, we seem to be on track for our 200 hrs. We just finished a SAREX last w/e, and have another one coming up in April. We're using our training money to train up new folks, and maintain proficiency for the rest of us.

[blackrain]

I have been told that CD represents around 40% of CAWG's hours. If UAVs move into that role, the future could be dimmer still.

I noticed some people were inferring that I was plugging paid training. This was not why I raised the question of CAWG's flying future. I was instrument rated commercial before I jumped into a CAP plane and paid my own way for most of my flights to F5 and F91. I have no qualms paying for proficiency. Self funded rides in a CAP G1000 are still cheap. I just wonder how these great resources can be used, because the number of missions up here in NorCal have been few and far between in the last year.

Definitely don't mind adding funded to my own self-funded flying to keep proficient and mission ready. Your right it cost way less than any alternative I can think of.

As for UAVs I think at least one shortcoming will be when a large amount start flying bandwidth will become saturated so a manned platform will be required for sometime. IMHO