Kudos to the ILWG!

[SJFedor]

Good job on your recent SAR-Eval and an overall rating of EXCELLENT!

PS- Sorry about the interference on Saturday from Tennessee Wing, we didn't know you guys were working as well. To anyone who talked to CAPFlt 4175, which was the high bird for the TN Wing exercise, you can now say you've talked to the legend 

Once again, great job. How'd the exercise go, besides what I've read in CAP news?

[Eclipse]

We basically rocked.

Here's an article from the Marion Daily:
http://www.mariondaily.com/articles/2007/05/09/news/news01.txt

And a few pics:
http://ilcapnews.blogs.com/il_cap_news_blog/2007/05/ilwg_eval_missi.html

And a few more:
http://group22.net/gallery/ilwg_eval_2007/

I was GBD.

Suffice it to say that TNWG's "sharing" of the air was a point of "conversation".    
Our CUL did an awesome job, but we had so much going on that by the time he got
done with a roll-call, it was time for the next one.  The highbirds were great, too.

Considering we had to drag everyone 5 hours down to Marion, IL, I think we did a pretty good job.
The ground assets did a fantastic job - the evaluators said our guys found the missing person faster than
any other Wing they've evaluated.

Going in we had a lot of stuff working against us - unfamiliar base, far away from where most of us live,
shortage of manpower, and the weather Friday was horrible.  We were all very nervous that we wouldn't measure up.

What we wound up with, though, was some of the most experienced people in the Wing, including at least
6 Katrina vets in key positions, including the IC, Rickey Oeth, who was a Katrina IC for at least 3 days. I've personally worked with most of the ground assets, comms and base staff, and there is no substitute for short-hand and muscle memory.  Train like you fight, and you can't go wrong.

The mission base was surprisingly, amazingly, astonishingly...quiet...what I think happened was that we all fell back on training, experience and best-practices, and just did what we were told, without filtering or worrying (too much) about the other sections.  Authority and responsibility was recognized and respected, and there was very little second-guessing once the discussion phase of a given issue was completed.  We brought new meaning to "shut up and color".

When you consider that our last eval was a marginal, you can see we have come a long way, and we didn't do a lot of advanced preparation beyond the 1-2-3 of procuring an ICP, etc. 

In years past, we've spent months doing tabletops and SAREx's trying to work out the rough spots, only to find half the tabletop people didn't show day-of, and many of the rough spots were caused by those same people, while we hadn't spent time where we needed to, on the basics.

This time we packed our gear, trucked it South, and setup where they told us to - just like the real world.
Also, though I could have done without the drive, since most of us were "captive" down there, the issue
of "day-players" and Sunday "no-shows" was pretty much eliminated, even though we went to 1500 on Sunday.  Being so far away did reduce our total numbers, but it also meant that those who went were in it for the whole thing.

As we were demobilizing, the Wing CC commented that it looked like we were actually enjoying ourselves and having a good time, which I would agree with - I mean that's why we do this, right?  Sure service, community, helping others, blah, blah... but at the end, if its wasn't fun, we'd quit, or at least the fun bucket being fuller than the BS bucket. 

And when a bunch of people come together, act professionally, and work towards a common goal, that's a lot of fun!

There is nothing cooler than being given a problem, visualizing the answer, and actually making it happen with the help of other people who have your same vision.

On the weird side, we definitely paid for our success with stress getting home:

Sunday morning my GBD-T broke a rib coughing, leaving me pretty close to bandwidth until he
got back from the hospital.

On the way home, our 5 hour drive took about 8-1/2 hours....

1 hour North, blown tire one.

+45 minutes, one of us gets pulled over with a suspended license because a family member failed to file an emissions notice. We have to post bond and find a driver for his car.

+45 more - blown tire # 2 (same vehicle).

And about an hour from home my truck starts grinding the gears at the top of the clutch. It made it to the garage, and died there - requiring a tow to the shop and $1200+ worth of repairs.

[SJFedor]

We basically rocked.

Here's an article from the Marion Daily:
http://www.mariondaily.com/articles/2007/05/09/news/news01.txt

And a few pics:
http://ilcapnews.blogs.com/il_cap_news_blog/2007/05/ilwg_eval_missi.html

And a few more:
http://group22.net/gallery/ilwg_eval_2007/

I was GBD.

Suffice it to say that TNWG's "sharing" of the air was a point of "conversation".    
Our CUL did an awesome job, but we had so much going on that by the time he got
done with a roll-call, it was time for the next one.  The highbirds were great, too.

Yeah, I was rather surprised when I got on station, and had someone from Marion Mission Base calling me. But we got it figured out n changed repeater frequencies.

Sounded like one of your highbirds was a CPF 99XX plane, were you guys using a GA-8 or something for a high bird?

Other thing was, the 2 guard frequencies on the CAP Radio in the plane (Ch 1 and 2), you guys were using BOTH, so I couldn't get rid of you since our CAP radios don't let us turn down the guard freq below a certain point.

We weren't a distraction the AF set up for you, but I'm sure it helped to demonstrate you guys could overcome a problem like that.

From the traffic I heard on Saturday, you guys sounded like you had a really good, really productive exercise. Great job!

[Eclipse]

I know we had a GA-8 involved, but not sure where / how it was used - we definitely had high birds up
almost continuously, had SDIS up both days, and a bird was involved in A/G coordination finding the "missing"
aircraft and pilot.

CAP-USAF setup some great scenarios, which made things challenging without getting insane.

[Psicorp]

We basically rocked.

Good job!   The MIWG CC has been touting your success in emails to the Wing as something to use as a benchmark.  We have our AF Assisted SAREX this weekend, so wish us luck.

On the weird side, we definitely paid for our success with stress getting home:

Sunday morning my GBD-T broke a rib coughing, leaving me pretty close to bandwidth until he
got back from the hospital.

On the way home, our 5 hour drive took about 8-1/2 hours....

1 hour North, blown tire one.

+45 minutes, one of us gets pulled over with a suspended license because a family member failed to file an emissions notice. We have to post bond and find a driver for his car.

+45 more - blown tire # 2 (same vehicle).

And about an hour from home my truck starts grinding the gears at the top of the clutch. It made it to the garage, and died there - requiring a tow to the shop and $1200+ worth of repairs.

OUCH!

Still, it could have been worse.   

[Eclipse]

GOOD LUCK!