Over the weekend I attended the first weekend of a NASAR FUNSAR (Fundamentals of Search and Rescue) course. The weekend after next is the second weekend (mock search), and mid may is the SARTECH eval. I've wanted to get my SARTECH II for about five years now but until recently I had a job that kept me working on the weekends. I've tossed around the idea of joining another local SAR team to up my operations tempo and SARTECH II is pretty much required just to pick the phone and talk to them.
Initial impressions - I'm bored :P After reading the textbook I knew that I would be way ahead of the curve with 10 years of CAP ES under my belt. It's basically GTM 3 and 2 with different powerpoints, mantracking, and UTM. In fact, I was a bit surprised at how much CAP "borrowed" from NASAR for the GT program. I'm still having fun though; networking with the other folks in the group and getting out to do the practical stuff is still fun.
The only thing I could not pass was the compass course.
I have heard SARTECH 1 is a bear, sounds like 2 is a cub. Good luck and with your experience, I'm sure you will do fine.
SarTech 2 was pretty easy, as posted most of the info on the test was the same that I had obtained over years of doing gsar for cap. Ropes and knots and tracking stick are the only areas not covered by cap.
I too had difficulties with the nav course. Mostly just because its different. It set up in a grid...something like 4 points across by 4 points deep, all lettered. You get a computer generated list of 3 headings from one of the start points. You follow until you come to another letter, record the point and the distance then off on the next heading etc.
Have fun
MK
Nailed it. Just passed the exam yesterday. Knew I'd get it; I'm more proud of my classmates that walked into it without any real experience.