RV-10 down in Texas

[Major Lord]

Does anyone know about an RV-10 experimental missing in Texas? Is there a CAP mission?

Major Lord

[Nomex Maximus]

Plane has aleady been found by CAP ground teams and the pilot has died.

http://www.keyetv.com/content/news/topnews/story.aspx?content_id=4faca74a-e114-4cec-86cd-dafba7fb2fe9

[Major Lord]

Thanks for the info...Dang.

Allen

[Nomex Maximus]

For details from the RV community:

http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=27736

[DNall]

Been gone the last few days on a successful redcap, just thought yall would like to know what went down.

Aircraft bound brenham to lockhart (TX), off radar ~1230 Sun around giddings. Prob loc was 11miles east Giddings & 2miles south Hwy290. Ceiling overcast & high to gusting winds, patches of precip. Took off in VFR, buddy leading 10mins ahead/behind, never was clear on which. The other plane made destination on a slightly northern track. Radar data put this guy down just east of giddings. Call from friends (EAA) went to Austin CAP unit. They spun up & staged to the area while AFRCC got the mission number started.

They were on scene Sunday night & went for about 22hrs straight. At that point there was no on-scene IC staff, so this GT was talking to the press that was literally following them around (after clearing w/ off-scene PIO), dealing with 3 local LE agencies, and taking all reports from the public directly to their cell phone. Kind of nuts, but they did a good job. They covered the primary target grid as thoroughly as it could be done from a car.

Through that day (monday) we put up four sorties. One was Sunday night route search for signal. The other three were grids. One was the primary grid. They got about 50% coverage on that with cloud banks closing from NW & SW on the Western center of their grid.

I rolled in monday afternoon with a GT in tow. Lackland had a GT arrived just ahead of us, Brownsville, Delta (houston), and Blacksheep (Dallas) also had teams arriving thru the night. I took charge of the location, got sign ins started, & debriefed both the first GT & the aircrew in the primary grid. We were changing ICs during this process & everything was being centralized to this one location where there wasn't a CAP unit. We took over the mall FBO & a nearby hanger though. The scanner on one of the aircrews flew back to Georgetown (austin area) got in a comm van with a cadet, and drove back to be in operations by the time we launched GTs the next morning. There were three TV stations at Giddings when we rolled up. They were pretty nice & cooperative.

Another guy I work well with showed up a bit behind me. He was slated to be GBD, we started conferred & kept things moving till the new IC showed up behind us. the other guy went to air ops, I took GBD, The original IC was in tow & took OSC, another guy showed up after we were done planning to take PSC. So, we cross briefed with IC & then went into planning while she got set up. The plan was straight forward & very solid in my opinion. We had six priority grids, plus four sections of creeping line on the route, and secondary grids for first cut. We were prepared to launch up to 10+ aircraft. We had 9, then 8, then 7 promised. It was a very serious issue to get aircrews. I think we had three on line before we finally tried to sleep, and one of those was driving 200 miles to pick up a plane. We had five GTs on scene before morning though. We asked that night for more GTs ready to stream in by morning, and continued that req to GpCCs into the morning as we searched for more aircrews.

I slept about 40mins. GTs were into the bathroom getting ready to btwn 4 & 5. I wanted to launch while it was dark & have them at their target areas as the sun came, up with air about 30mins behind. That was the plan anyway. I did forget DST pushed back sunrise, and we had ground fog/low ceiling conditions early morning preventing launch of three planes. I finally got my GTs briefed at 615-30, and launched all right at 8.

I had two teams clear tower areas east of town (grid we were based in) then proceed to adjacent grids - Alpha to the east (just north of LKP), Bravo to the south (just west of LKP on flight path). I sent Charlie (my Sqs guys) to a grid just SW of base that was on the primary list, and check an additional private strip that was a possible divert location. And Delta, which was a combination of folks from Dallas & Houston, I sent straight to the probable impact point SW of LKP to line search a four square mile area.

Air was grounded till about 830 or 9. I'm not sure exactly when we launched our first bird. I know we had a ceiling of 1500 at base, but it was 500 in Austin where our first bird was. DPS (state police) called us & offered a helo, but didn't have spotters. We ran it up & got authorization. We had two spare folks on location at that point. Both pilots, but not MPs or rated as observers - one being fellow CAPTalk member & friend dogden. The helo landed & they briefed up. We were putting them on the probable track back to LKP & then grid search, exit grid on route & parallel search out to a pocket of leads we had on route at the next major highway intersect, then RTB.

Delta GT took a while to find the location we wanted them at & then waited a while for LE. I couldn't give them very good directions, nor could the Sheriff when I put them on the phone with him. I drove out there later & it was pretty difficult to get to. So not at all faulting them on that. So they were waiting, we got 8 call in leads all at once in an area about 10min SW on their location, so dispatched them to go look around there real quick. I had Alpha finished with towers & coming into the grid just north of that area, so sent them to pick up that line search activity, but had a hell of a time directing them in on it.

About this time AFRCC called with radar follow up. We had overlapping coverage from two radars, and they looked at western air defense on top of that. Result was bird crossed path of flight 15 secs before altitude loss. Was cruise at 2600, alt loss between 3 radar sweeps as 400 > 1000 > 5000. Their brief was they think he's within 300yrds of the predicted probable & straight in, to which we said (nicely) yeah duh. AFRCC continued, we should put a GT on that point. To which I said, "I briefed that at 630 this morning, they're on scene waiting an hour now for LE to put them on private property so they don't get shot for trespassing." AFRCC continued, I don't know how effective fixed wing will be based on a straight in with real wet ground. It might be best to have a helicopter on this. To which I replied, DPS helo just left with two of our guys on as spotters, they'll be on scene in a few." That was a fun call. I really appreciated that we were already as on the ball as we could possibly be.

Helo reported in grid same time as first CAP aircraft was in grid over our base, second & third CAPFlt enroute to assignments. Several others launching behind to our base for tasking, which we had ready to brief. Helo reported landing to investigate a target. GT Delta sweeping back up to meet up, Alpha still getting directed in on it. I think Delta got back there a hair earlier than Alpha, mainly because they knew where they were going. Both on scene pretty quickly though. Target confirmed. We handed over to DPS & notified up, DPS did as well.

I got very few complaints about the whole thing. The comm rig we had was good, but they had to set up too far away from our ICP, and radio comms were shaky at a lot of points. We used Wing cell phones for the branch directors, comm, & IC. That was okay, but they were ringing off the hook. The city/county/FBO were all excellent. They brought us food, water, tea; they let us take over their location & gave us chairs/tables for the hanger we used for team staging. We had wifi there, it was great. We didn't deploy teams telling them they'd be overnight or longer & we didn't have cots & such, which I could have gotten very easily from the national guard.

We were ready to sustain beyond that first day though. We could have run hard for at least a week. the problem was going to be planes. We've been doing a lot of o-flts & firewatch for the state, so a lot of our air was close to going down on maint. We were about to call LAWG for backup, and needed the crews too. Wg/CC wanted us to try west TX again before asking for out of state resources, but that wasn't going to be enough if we had to keep going very long. The biggest problem was the speed to get the op turned on, and the really slow response for crews - it is mid week & spring break now, but the guy on the ground doesn't care about that.

Chaplain was on scene at the end & CISM in place. Guy's son & several friends showed up/flew in when we RTB'd all air. We did a good job with all that, but it was honestly easier than expected. I would have liked to have a chaplain there the whole time too.

Some of the media were really a pain & some were quite nice. Our PIO for the mission is very good, but he was never on location, and that was a very big problem. In hind sight, if I couldn't get a really good PIO from CAP on location, I would have asked for one from DPS to keep those folks out of our hair & brief on a regular basis. We pulled through there, but really missed a big opportunity. A lot of our folks made the news. There were two newspapers & five TV stations very actively covering the story. Dogden was first on scene with the DPS helo & did the confirmation of target via inspection plate. He did a several minute follow up with the CBS affiliate. I'm sure there will be stories on the CAP side & lots of local media.

Overall, it was good mission. There are certainly some things we could do better. There were several frustrating items that are just the nature of CAP, and there were some factors beyond our control (mostly weather). That's about it I guess. I wouldn't recommend staying awake for 44hrs straight, but it worked out real well.

[CFI_Ed]

Been gone the last few days on a successful redcap, just thought yall would like to know what went down.

Good debrief - thanks.

[RiverAux]

We have got to get over ourselves on being reluctant to call in out-of-state CAP resources if necessary.  Sure, if you're in a situation with a fairly confined search area and you've got about enough to cover it, thats fine.  But, when we get in these searches where the plane could be anywhere in 30 counties, then we should probably start putting folks from adjacent states on standby pretty soon.   

[Frenchie]

We have got to get over ourselves on being reluctant to call in out-of-state CAP resources if necessary.  Sure, if you're in a situation with a fairly confined search area and you've got about enough to cover it, thats fine.  But, when we get in these searches where the plane could be anywhere in 30 counties, then we should probably start putting folks from adjacent states on standby pretty soon.   

Texas is a bit unique in that there's ample resources right here in the state.  Texas Wing has about 140 MP qualified pilots and about 30 aircraft.

My squadron alone had 2 aircraft and 4 people (all MP qualified) ready to go and stay for several days if necessary.  I was on my way out the door when word that they had a find came through.  We certainly could have mustered some resources sooner if we had been asked, but we weren't.  My squadron is only about 200 miles to the north.

[thp]

We have got to get over ourselves on being reluctant to call in out-of-state CAP resources if necessary.  Sure, if you're in a situation with a fairly confined search area and you've got about enough to cover it, thats fine.  But, when we get in these searches where the plane could be anywhere in 30 counties, then we should probably start putting folks from adjacent states on standby pretty soon.   

They had sent out a TXWG wide email requesting crews also...

[RiverAux]

Just to be clear, I'm not critisizing Texas here, just commenting on the general reluctance to ask for support.  Frankly, I would have been surprised if Texas needed help given their resources. 

[dogden]

From my vantage there was excellent mission planning and execution on the part of the IC staff.

I got the call at approx 2200-2300, made a few calls to arrange child care and was off to bed. Departed the house at 0330 and headed to Giddings via College Station to drop off the kids with grandma. I arrived at mission base just after 0600. I pretty much did whatever asked of me until I was asked it I wanted a helo ride (like I was going to turn that down). We briefed the mission and the DPS pilot couldn't believe the amount of paperwork involved to get a sortie in the air. The helo was a huge asset when we arrived in the grid, we only searched for 10-15 min when we identified a potential accident site. We circled that site 3 times descending to 150ft AGL and approx 30kias and still decided to land in a near by pasture and confirm on foot. We hiked to the site and were only able to identify it as aircraft when we were within 15 yards. I am very glad that we were first on scene rather than a GT with cadets. We made the calls to mission base and other agencies and stayed on scene until local LE and the GT arrived and RTB. I was asked to stay at mission base and talk to a news crew, which I agreed. I tried to represent CAP as a professional group of people and not reveal too much about the details of the crash site.

Thanks for the kind words on my efforts DNall, I was just a part of the team and did what we are trained and called to do.

[Nomex Maximus]

DNall -

I hope you don't mind, but being an RV builder myself and being involved in the RV community, I copied your (very well done) report to their forum:

http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=27736

As you can imagine they all were quite upset by this event and wanted to know all that CAP did for them. I have already fielded requests from two RVers about how to join CAP. Myself, I was about ready to see if I could get some of them to help me to fly down from MIWG to help out there for up to a week, but for better or worse this was a short mission.

Sounds like you all did an outstanding job.

--JCB


 

[DNall]

I didn't really write it for their consumption, but that's fine. If they want me to come over & answer some questions, I can do that too, with obvious limits on what I will or won't talk about.

Check this out also:

Gen. Courter:

This is a superb media interview, and a superb job by TX Wing on the mission.  The find was made by a CAP observer riding in a Texas Dep't of Public Safety helicopter.  TX Wing does a great job with interagency operations.

Here is the link directly to the story http://www.keyetv. com/mediacenter/ local.aspx? videoid=17793@ keye.dayport. com&navCatId=5

Joe  - please pass my thanks on to Texas Wing for a job well done on this mission.  If you haven't already, please be sure NHQ/PA knows about the coverage.

JJ

Joseph Jensen, Col. , CAP
Commander
Southwest Region, Civil Air Patrol

[Nomex Maximus]

I didn't really write it for their consumption, but that's fine. If they want me to come over & answer some questions, I can do that too, with obvious limits on what I will or won't talk about.

Check this out also:

Gen. Courter:

This is a superb media interview, and a superb job by TX Wing on the mission.  The find was made by a CAP observer riding in a Texas Dep't of Public Safety helicopter.  TX Wing does a great job with interagency operations.

Here is the link directly to the story http://www.keyetv. com/mediacenter/ local.aspx? videoid=17793@ keye.dayport. com&navCatId=5

Joe  - please pass my thanks on to Texas Wing for a job well done on this mission.  If you haven't already, please be sure NHQ/PA knows about the coverage.

JJ

Joseph Jensen, Col. , CAP
Commander
Southwest Region, Civil Air Patrol

Sorry DNall, you just did too good of a job to be ignored. The RV guys appreciated your posting and I as a CAP member am passing along your work as an example of how we should do thing here in MIWG. Hats off to you all.

==JCB

[DNall]

On behalf of all the hard working dedicated professional officers & cadets that took part in this operation, I do appreciate the kind words.

My part in this was co-creating the plan & executing it. I do think it was one hell of a plan, for which I give a lot of credit to my partner, Lt Roberts. This was pretty straight forward though. With three radars tracking & rapid decent from a low altitude... you go stand on the probable point. We did that as fast as we could given the conditions & that's where it was. If it hadn't been there, I'm confident our plan was as good as it could get.

Now let me clarify... TX does have enough planes to do this mission, but we've been flying a lot with a CDEx, state fire watch, and o-flts. That had several down for maint, and several more getting close. We could have sustained for a couple days, then we'd need help till we could get some maint complete. We warned Wg/CC; he asked that we look to west TX first, that was a reasonable request. He was prepared to go to both LA & OKWGs when the time came. Let me also say that when our birds were grounded for weather at the beginning of the day he didn't hesitate to grant permission for the helo, which surprised me. I give him a lot of credit for that.

[Frenchie]

Even though our wing CO hasn't been on the job for that long, I'm so far very impressed.

I work for the FAA in the DFW approach control.  As long as someone is talking to ATC when they go down, we can usually come up with a general location pretty quickly depending on low level coverage in the area.  It's just another good reason to use the available ATC services even if you're VFR.  It can make the difference between getting found in a few hours or days and getting found in a few weeks or years.  Last year we had an off-field landing in the coverage area of the DFW TRACON.  We were able to get DPS on site in less than 30 minutes.

[CFI_Ed]

Even though our wing CO hasn't been on the job for that long, I'm so far very impressed.

We were impressed when he was our Wing CC also.   

[DNall]

I'm not going quite that far yet. No one will mistake me for the political brown nosing type. I've seen Col Smith in action on a few things, and he's always been professional & to the point. When this operational situation (the helo) came up he didn't flinch, he just gave us a go & we did the job. I've seen any number of similar situations where that wouldn't happen. So, I give him the credit he's due & I appreciate the support that lets me get the job done.

[Nomex Maximus]

PM to me on vansairforce.net really directed to DNAll, et. al.

"I  am a business partner and friend of the pilot of the RV-10 you were looking for last week. I would like to thank you and the rest of the volunteers for the CAP's efforts in locating Mark's crash site. it was a great comfort to his family and friends that there was such an effort to find Mark as quickly as possible.

I am wondering if you can help me interpret the sentance from your posting "Result was bird crossed path of flight 15 secs before altitude loss. Was cruise at 2600, alt loss between 3 radar sweeps as 400 > 1000 > 5000." I assume you don't mean an actual bird but Mark's airplane.

Thanks so much for this posting, at some point the family may find your description of the events a valuable part of their memory of their lost husband, father and grandfather.

I would also like to express my personal thanks to Capt. Woodgate who very patiently took several of my phone calls so I could keep the family up to date.

You can contact me at my e-mail address <... in pm to DNall>.

Fred Frey
Austin, TX"

[DNall]

I'll email him.

[Major Carrales]

Just to be clear, I'm not critisizing Texas here, just commenting on the general reluctance to ask for support.  Frankly, I would have been surprised if Texas needed help given their resources. 

This crash took place in Central Texas.  There were many "Layers" of Texas WING CAP personnel to draw on before going out of WING.

I'm sure that some of Rhode Island and Alaska Wing pilots could have been asked, however, all CAP is basically local and the nature of this crash (again, Central Texas and near some of Group III Texas Wing's most active units...KUDOS to David Odgen who is a regular here and who I plan to congratulate in person at the Wing Conference!!!) out of State Resources would have been a waste.

[DNall]

Texas does have a lot of resources, but they are spread out over a very large area. For a redcap, we really do need all hands & a lot of times that isn't going to be enough.

For this one, we did draw from all over. The GTs were from Brownsville, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston (2). The aircrews were from all over. And the entire command staff was from Houston.

The plan we created needed 10-15 planes with 2 crews (3-person) per plane, every day. That wouldn't have been possible past the first day given the number that were down for maint or close to it. We would also end us very short of crews. We weren't going to be able to sustain GT numbers past a couple days either. Command staff was great, but we didn't have replacements avail for anyone but the IC, and we needed some decent MSAs real bad.

[flynd94]

DNall, is correct.  I was the replacement IC and, getting resources to sustain a long term search was going to be an issue.

PS-DNall are you going to Wing Conf?  I might, if I do,I will have your AFRCC Inland SAR Patch for you.  That way you can have a little more respect.

[RiverAux]

Just to be clear, I'm not critisizing Texas here, just commenting on the general reluctance to ask for support.  Frankly, I would have been surprised if Texas needed help given their resources. 

This crash took place in Central Texas.  There were many "Layers" of Texas WING CAP personnel to draw on before going out of WING.

I'm sure that some of Rhode Island and Alaska Wing pilots could have been asked, however, all CAP is basically local and the nature of this crash (again, Central Texas and near some of Group III Texas Wing's most active units...KUDOS to David Odgen who is a regular here and who I plan to congratulate in person at the Wing Conference!!!) out of State Resources would have been a waste.

Geez, I said I wasn't commenting on Texas, but the overall reluctance of CAP members in many Wings to call on out-of-state resources.  By implying that I was suggesting that RI and AK planes come help are you therfore denying that this is not actually a issue in CAP?  Or are you suggesting that the people in TX wouldn't have realized that there were other states closer than those two that could have been available (if necessary) 

[Nomex Maximus]

Texas does have a lot of resources, but they are spread out over a very large area. For a redcap, we really do need all hands & a lot of times that isn't going to be enough.

For this one, we did draw from all over. The GTs were from Brownsville, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston (2). The aircrews were from all over. And the entire command staff was from Houston.

The plan we created needed 10-15 planes with 2 crews (3-person) per plane, every day. That wouldn't have been possible past the first day given the number that were down for maint or close to it. We would also end us very short of crews. We weren't going to be able to sustain GT numbers past a couple days either. Command staff was great, but we didn't have replacements avail for anyone but the IC, and we needed some decent MSAs real bad.

Now, being new to CAP, and out of curiosity, if I had found a way down to Texas from Michigan, would I have been able to join in the effort? Or would I just be in the way of the preferred Texas crews? And if I were able to join in, who would I have contacted? The IC?

It so happens that coming out that way would have been a waste of time since you found the plane so quickly. Something else for me to consider before making a trip.

[RiverAux]

It is never a good idea to self deploy to a mission and if you did, you would most likely be sent home.  Generally, if a Wing needs help it requests whole ground teams or aircrews (with planes).  So, the best thing to do is make your availability known to your commander and wait for a call. 

[DNall]

Now, being new to CAP, and out of curiosity, if I had found a way down to Texas from Michigan, would I have been able to join in the effort? Or would I just be in the way of the preferred Texas crews? And if I were able to join in, who would I have contacted? The IC?

I don't want to encourage people to self-deploy. That's not really a good idea. You don't know what's going on tactically in the short/long-term, or strategically in terms of resource mgmt for a sustained effort & making sure other areas of the country are still mission ready.

That said, there's no such thing as "preferred Texas crews," and we would have put you right to work in what you're qualified to do. The Wg-wide email that went out had GBD & AOBD numbers on it to request authorization to deploy (including inbound sortie). If we'd gone beyond the Wg, the contacts would have been managed outside the staff.

Geez, I said I wasn't commenting on Texas, but the overall reluctance of CAP members in many Wings to call on out-of-state resources. 

I haven't seen that to be a problem in my CAP career. The standard & reasonable first reaction is going to make sure you're fully using your own Wg resources before you tap outside. That's what we got & it's completely reasonable. In a few cases that may be bringing in a plane from the other side of the state versus just across the border. As long as that doesn't effect the search, I don't care. That's just the nature of how resources are assigned.

I'm not trying to have a larger discussion on that point though. I posted that debrief for a couple reasons. It did let yall know what happened, but it was also a way for me to personally assemble & decompress the info, and also serves as an AAR to the rest of my wing (which some of yall might also take lessons from).

That AAR item is important. If I were in charge of fleet mgmt, I might want to take a look at how we do things so it doesn't effect mission readiness. If I were a pilot, I might evaluate how much gear I need to carry & maybe I'd start bringing along scanner/observer trainees on my prof flights so we get some more people avail & I get used to loading & crew dynamics for a three man crew. Maybe Id' start looking at my GTs & realize there aren't enough, they need many more adults involved int hat area, and GTs need to be able to line search through terrain more than half a mile & have some gear. Maybe I'd be interested in my call-out/alert procedures, responsiveness, and how long it takes. Maybe I'd like to practice some of that. Maybe I'd like to run a WAX (exercise) at a third party airfield where there aren't any CAP facilities. Maybe I'd like to more heavily involve local & state LE/fire/EMS (particularly on comm). Maybe I'd like to more heavily involve PIOs in our practice, simulate or involve some media, and get some more qual'd people. etc, etc...

We were lucky on this one. I don't want that success to dismiss the many lessons we can take from the experience. I want people to look at what happened & adjust what they're doing to make us better. I don't want the day to come when there is someone alive in a field out there waiting for us & we don't get the job done because we didn't learn enough from our past experiences & training.

PS-DNall are you going to Wing Conf?  I might, if I do,I will have your AFRCC Inland SAR Patch for you.  That way you can have a little more respect.

Unfortunately I'll be at drill in Bastrop. I've already been chastised for missing this one. I'll catch up with you at some point though. You're at Delta right? I can swing up there to a meeting sometime.

[RiverAux]

If I were in charge of fleet mgmt, I might want to take a look at how we do things so it doesn't effect mission readiness.

Always a good idea.  Unfortunately, this is something that would actually be harder for a Wing like TX with many planes since even smaller Wings have trouble balancing when to take planes out for maintenance and sometimes despite your best efforts you can get in a situation when you've got a lot of 100 hours or annuals due at the same time.

Heck, you have to keep your eyes open to make sure some unit doesn't "discover" the night before the SAREX (that has been scheduled for months) that they've only got a couple of hours left on the plane before required maintenance. 

[DNall]

Actually, I'd say it's easier for Texas cause we have control of adequate resources for the mission. If I'm a wing with half a dozen planes then I know I automatically have to go outside for help, and I got no control over what they're doing with their resources.