Ground Teams:Lessons Learned

[Eclipse]

18) KNOW HOW TO FIND DRY FIRE WOOD- Even in the wettest weather, it is possible to find dry wood for fires. Fire is one of the key tools used in survival. It provides light, cooking, tool making, warmth, and it is a powerful psychological booster. Getting a fire going can sometimes be the difference between life and death. Standing dead wood is usually your best source for dry wood in damp conditions but you can also get dry wood from evergreen trees. Next time you are out in the woods look at the bottom of any evergreen tree or shrub. You will usually find several dead bare limbs that have been protected from the weather by the evergreen boughs. The old sourdoughs called this "squaw wood" because it could easily be gathered by women, kids, and the elderly. Like all pine it is soft wood and will burn quickly but it should burn long enough to dry out any of the hard woods you may find.

pssshhh...wood?

Everyone knows all you need is a bowling ball and a torch!

[Spaceman3750]

11)SPEND A LOT OF TIME IN THE WOODS-

100% - we have units that do their compass tasking in a parking lot and then can't navigate their way around a rock or a tree.

Nothing beats real-world navigation practice.

We have an orienteering course up our way and I encourage people to do their learning there, and try to get there whenever I can to
shake out the rust as well.

Where in Chicago land do you even have any woods   I would think that parking lots are likely your 'woods' in your AOR (just use those dumpsters for way points).

I was just up in Chicagoland for a SAREX at the beginning of May - the park we were in, while littered with walking and biking trails, also had large wooded areas. I could easily see a small child walking away from his parents on one of those trails, off into the woods, and hiding, necessitating a search.

It's not all pavement jungle .

[ol'fido]

18) KNOW HOW TO FIND DRY FIRE WOOD- Even in the wettest weather, it is possible to find dry wood for fires. Fire is one of the key tools used in survival. It provides light, cooking, tool making, warmth, and it is a powerful psychological booster. Getting a fire going can sometimes be the difference between life and death. Standing dead wood is usually your best source for dry wood in damp conditions but you can also get dry wood from evergreen trees. Next time you are out in the woods look at the bottom of any evergreen tree or shrub. You will usually find several dead bare limbs that have been protected from the weather by the evergreen boughs. The old sourdoughs called this "squaw wood" because it could easily be gathered by women, kids, and the elderly. Like all pine it is soft wood and will burn quickly but it should burn long enough to dry out any of the hard woods you may find.

pssshhh...wood?

Everyone knows all you need is a bowling ball and a torch!

Mythbusters??

[Eclipse]

11)SPEND A LOT OF TIME IN THE WOODS-

100% - we have units that do their compass tasking in a parking lot and then can't navigate their way around a rock or a tree.

Nothing beats real-world navigation practice.

We have an orienteering course up our way and I encourage people to do their learning there, and try to get there whenever I can to
shake out the rust as well.

Where in Chicago land do you even have any woods   I would think that parking lots are likely your 'woods' in your AOR (just use those dumpsters for way points).

I was just up in Chicagoland for a SAREX at the beginning of May - the park we were in, while littered with walking and biking trails, also had large wooded areas. I could easily see a small child walking away from his parents on one of those trails, off into the woods, and hiding, necessitating a search.

It's not all pavement jungle .

Yep, even within the borders of Chicago proper there are plenty of forest preserves and similar wooded areas, venture into the area defined as  "Chicagoland" and you're well into rural Illinois.

(Note that includes portions of Wisconsin and Indiana.)

I was in Rockford on Saturday and on the way home I passed some forested areas that looked incredibly dense and untouched by anyone.

[ol'fido]

I know that Bear Grylls(why is that guy always running?), Les Stroud, and Dave and Cody are always on deserted islands, deep in the Rockies, or in some South American jungle(that's a rain forest for you Birkenstock wearing, Volvo driving PC types) but you can get lost in a square mile of woods or marsh. Just because someone lives in a predominately urban area doesn't mean there aren't areas where someone couldn't get turned around. It doesn't matter where you live, you need the same basic skills no matter what. We just won't be practicing building igloos(or maybe we will the way the snow was last winter in the state) or learning where to dig for water in the arroyos but that doesn't mean that urban teams should or would not practice wilderness skills.

[Walkman]

Train under stress.

Practice find scenarios with lots of chaos and people yelling. I did my first training sortie as a very green GTL trainee recently and had some amazing cadets act as the victims. Had a "mom" screaming "where's my son, why aren't you looking for my son" (she could have won an Oscar for that performance by the way) and a "reporter" running around hollering about seeing dead bodies and getting right in the way. I'll admit my heartbeat rose and I had a harder time thinking through everything I needed to do. I'm glad it was only an exercise, because I didn't do very well at all. Some of the younger cadets had a serious case of "deer in the headlights".

Lesson learned. We will be doing much more training under a variety of situations to make sure we know how to think clearly and react properly when we need to.

[ol'fido]

19) BUY QUALITY GEAR- Not to be a "gear geek" but you need to buy quality gear when you are outfitting for GT. This does not mean that you have to shop at REI or Northface to get your gear. You can get quality gear at Wal-mart, but you have to shop smart and do some comparison shopping. The first thing that a lot cadets and new seniors do is to go out and buy a lot of cheap knock off items that look like the quality stuff. For instance, I don't know how many times I have seen a kid by a $10 "Elite Special Forces Survival Knife" with all sorts of handy features that falls apart the first time they use the "built in bottle opener and combination dinner set". Start off with a good quality Gerber or Buck that looks pretty utilitarian for about $25. The best bet is to get somebody whose had a lot of experience who can help you shop for good, reasonably priced stuff. Don't try to buy everything at once. You can borrow or adapt something else until you have saved enough for something good. This is a good reason for more experienced people to hold onto the gear they have replaced that is still in good workable condition. You can loan that stuff to newer members till they get their own.

And remember, throughout this post I have said buy quality not necessarily expensive. They are often two different things.

[ol'fido]

20) DON'T ALWAYS TRAIN IN THE SAME PLACES- Vary the places that you go to train at. If you always use the same nearby state park for your training, shake things up a bit. Go out and train in a variety of places all through your AO. The same thing could be said not just about GT training but SAREXs in general. Don't always use the same mission base. Go find some little backwater municipal airport and run a mission out of it. We tend to like to go to familiar places because we know where everything is, we know what resources are available, and after a while you tend to get a sixth sense of where they are going to set the targets. "But we go there because our radios are there and they have WIFI." Exactly! And when you get sent to some other group area or even into another wing, you will be lost because you have never got out of your comfort zone and had to figure this stuff out on the fly. Get out there. It's a big world.

[RADIOMAN015]

20) DON'T ALWAYS TRAIN IN THE SAME PLACES- Vary the places that you go to train at. If you always use the same nearby state park for your training, shake things up a bit. Go out and train in a variety of places all through your AO. The same thing could be said not just about GT training but SAREXs in general. Don't always use the same mission base. Go find some little backwater municipal airport and run a mission out of it. We tend to like to go to familiar places because we know where everything is, we know what resources are available, and after a while you tend to get a sixth sense of where they are going to set the targets. "But we go there because our radios are there and they have WIFI." Exactly! And when you get sent to some other group area or even into another wing, you will be lost because you have never got out of your comfort zone and had to figure this stuff out on the fly. Get out there. It's a big world.

I would agree totally with you that training (even simple orientation hiking & driving) over ones complete response area is a very good idea (in those wings that have worked on response areas for specific teams).  HOWEVER, on mission bases most wings have specific plans in place for each region having a mission base because the support available is known from that location.  Depending upon how big the wing is a mission base could even be at one location with perhaps some radio relay bases to assist throughout the wing if direct comms aren't available.
RM

[ol'fido]

If you don't have the capability to go in and set up a mission base anywhere from scratch, you're doing it wrong.

[Phil Hirons, Jr.]

21) When on actual or training GT missions make sure mission base / ICP informs local police / sheriff of your location and activity. (X 100 at night). John Q public sometimes gets bad ideas seeing people in camo lurking about especially with the old school DF gear. I've had the interesting experience of 2 squad cars doing the V block on the CAP van I was driving on a late night ELT search.