Encampment Availability

[Ned]

I'm not seeing anything in there that requires special facilities. Nothing says you can't use the same space you sleep in to host a class.

What I'm picturing in my mind is a group of tents set up in a state park with some porta potties off a little ways. You have speakers come in for the classes. The wing would own the tents, lockers and cots so it can host encampments anywhere they can get open ground. I would see it as 2 weekends like GL Spring encampment as you wouldn't have enough or adequate shower facilities for everyone.

Our costs are in things we have to beg for. Why can't we be a little more self sufficient? For the cost of one airplane you can buy a lot of cots and tents and spread them around.

Well, I suppose you could have an encampment entirely in a parking lot somewhere, but I think we lose a little bit of the encampment experience.   

Classes benefit from being held in a classroom where everyone can get out of the weather and sit down in enough comfort to pay attention to the instructor.  The field makes it difficult to run projectors, computers, copiers, etc. to provide learning materials to students.  Trying to take notes on a clipboard in a rainstorm just isn't conducive to learning The Structure and Mission of the USAF, Aerospace Power, or Aerospace Career Orientation (to name a few.)

Seriously, you can sleep about 15-20 people in a GP medium (which is 16x 32 feet), max.  Trying to hold classes, meetings, and inspections all in the same tent for a week would create a substantially different (and I would argue diminished) encampment experience than what we have done for the last half century or so.

And they are not cheap.  Look on eBay and you will find GP mediums for $350-500, depending on quality and whether the poles are included.  It weighs about 250 pounds without the poles.  And they take a fair amount of maintenance to repair the inevitable holes and zippers.

Once they get wet, they are a significant challenge to dry and store without mold setting in.  Normally, you can just let it dry in the sun for a few days, but if it rains on the last day of encampment . . .

Trying to find a hundred or so footlockers on the market would be a challenge, it looks like new ones are over $150, used ones average $50 or so.  Take a moment and try to think where your wing could store 100 footlockers, 100 cots, and a couple tons of tents. 

Again, I'm not trying to beat you up here.  I would love to try a tent-based encampment, but it is not realistic to think that the average wing has $10-15,000 to buy used tents and equipment, and then store them for use one week a year.  Screening them from Uncle Sam is also a challenge - I have hung around DRMO fairly often in the last 10 years or so (my national guard unit used to drill across an alley from one), and very, very few serviciable tents or footlockers come through for screening.  After all, if it was servicable, they wouldn't be screening it.

I wholeheartedly agree that we need to keep thinking "outside the box."  We ask nothing less of our cadets.  But part of the process is evaluating the ideas against criteria of cost and feasibility.

To JimmyDeano - I have specifically looked at the pre-existing FOBs, etc. that are set up for training at several bases.  I can only agree that they would be great for this kind of of thing, and are our best bet to attempt a field-type encampment.  But as I mentioned, they suffer from the same drawbacks as some of the hard facilities; they were set up to train units, and they can be hard for CAP to book because so many military units use them to train, especially in the summer.  And even if we can book them, we have a high risk of being "bumped."

It's a Risk Assessment thing, I guess.

[davidsinn]

I'm not seeing anything in there that requires special facilities. Nothing says you can't use the same space you sleep in to host a class.

What I'm picturing in my mind is a group of tents set up in a state park with some porta potties off a little ways. You have speakers come in for the classes. The wing would own the tents, lockers and cots so it can host encampments anywhere they can get open ground. I would see it as 2 weekends like GL Spring encampment as you wouldn't have enough or adequate shower facilities for everyone.

Our costs are in things we have to beg for. Why can't we be a little more self sufficient? For the cost of one airplane you can buy a lot of cots and tents and spread them around.

Well, I suppose you could have an encampment entirely in a parking lot somewhere, but I think we lose a little bit of the encampment experience.   

Classes benefit from being held in a classroom where everyone can get out of the weather and sit down in enough comfort to pay attention to the instructor.  The field makes it difficult to run projectors, computers, copiers, etc. to provide learning materials to students.  Trying to take notes on a clipboard in a rainstorm just isn't conducive to learning The Structure and Mission of the USAF, Aerospace Power, or Aerospace Career Orientation (to name a few.)

Seriously, you can sleep about 15-20 people in a GP medium (which is 16x 32 feet), max.  Trying to hold classes, meetings, and inspections all in the same tent for a week would create a substantially different (and I would argue diminished) encampment experience than what we have done for the last half century or so.

And they are not cheap.  Look on eBay and you will find GP mediums for $350-500, depending on quality and whether the poles are included.  It weighs about 250 pounds without the poles.  And they take a fair amount of maintenance to repair the inevitable holes and zippers.

Once they get wet, they are a significant challenge to dry and store without mold setting in.  Normally, you can just let it dry in the sun for a few days, but if it rains on the last day of encampment . . .

Trying to find a hundred or so footlockers on the market would be a challenge, it looks like new ones are over $150, used ones average $50 or so.  Take a moment and try to think where your wing could store 100 footlockers, 100 cots, and a couple tons of tents. 

Again, I'm not trying to beat you up here.  I would love to try a tent-based encampment, but it is not realistic to think that the average wing has $10-15,000 to buy used tents and equipment, and then store them for use one week a year.  Screening them from Uncle Sam is also a challenge - I have hung around DRMO fairly often in the last 10 years or so (my national guard unit used to drill across an alley from one), and very, very few serviciable tents or footlockers come through for screening.  After all, if it was servicable, they wouldn't be screening it.

I wholeheartedly agree that we need to keep thinking "outside the box."  We ask nothing less of our cadets.  But part of the process is evaluating the ideas against criteria of cost and feasibility.

To JimmyDeano - I have specifically looked at the pre-existing FOBs, etc. that are set up for training at several bases.  I can only agree that they would be great for this kind of of thing, and are our best bet to attempt a field-type encampment.  But as I mentioned, they suffer from the same drawbacks as some of the hard facilities; they were set up to train units, and they can be hard for CAP to book because so many military units use them to train, especially in the summer.  And even if we can book them, we have a high risk of being "bumped."

It's a Risk Assessment thing, I guess.

The storage thing is easy. Do you know how much space is in a semi trailer? My wing has two. Granted both of them need bulldozed as they are not even close to road worthy. Storage is easy. I think the money to purchase the equipment could be secured through a grant. As for the technology we got along with out it before, I think we could do it again. The way encampments are run now is like school. Let's try and get back to our roots. We spend entirely too much time indoors doing things. Let's get outside and do things.

[Ned]

The storage thing is easy. Do you know how much space is in a semi trailer? My wing has two. Granted both of them need bulldozed as they are not even close to road worthy. Storage is easy. I think the money to purchase the equipment could be secured through a grant. As for the technology we got along with out it before, I think we could do it again. The way encampments are run now is like school. Let's try and get back to our roots. We spend entirely too much time indoors doing things. Let's get outside and do things.

I suspect we are in substantial agreement on the important parts - I think we can have a quality encampment in a tent city environment.  Tell you what, you write and secure that grant and get all the stuff and I will be there for the encampment.  It will be fun.

Ned Lee
National Cadet Advisor
(Cool Job, Crummy Job Title)

[davidsinn]

The storage thing is easy. Do you know how much space is in a semi trailer? My wing has two. Granted both of them need bulldozed as they are not even close to road worthy. Storage is easy. I think the money to purchase the equipment could be secured through a grant. As for the technology we got along with out it before, I think we could do it again. The way encampments are run now is like school. Let's try and get back to our roots. We spend entirely too much time indoors doing things. Let's get outside and do things.

I suspect we are in substantial agreement on the important parts - I think we can have a quality encampment in a tent city environment.  Tell you what, you write and secure that grant and get all the stuff and I will be there for the encampment.  It will be fun.

Ned Lee
National Cadet Advisor
(Cool Job, Crummy Job Title)

Sir, if I knew how to do that my unit would have an Lper that was younger than I am. 

[ZigZag911]

Here's a way USAF could help (or get DOD to do so): get military facilities to stop charging our members for use of quarters for encampments.

But of course they charge everybody to stay in quarters, even themselves.

It seems a little unlikely that they would let me stay in the BOQ for free when they would charge an AF officer $48/night.

The money has to come from somewhere.

That AF officer is gettting a housing allowance or some sort of perdiem if he is TDY.

[ZigZag911]

Why does encampment need to be such a production? Why can't we get a bunch of GP large and toss them up in a state park? Why do we need barracks and mess halls and all that other crap?

NJW did just that in the 80s, including a CAP run mess facility...talk about a PRODUCTION.

[Major Carrales]

The storage thing is easy. Do you know how much space is in a semi trailer? My wing has two. Granted both of them need bulldozed as they are not even close to road worthy. Storage is easy. I think the money to purchase the equipment could be secured through a grant. As for the technology we got along with out it before, I think we could do it again. The way encampments are run now is like school. Let's try and get back to our roots. We spend entirely too much time indoors doing things. Let's get outside and do things.

I suspect we are in substantial agreement on the important parts - I think we can have a quality encampment in a tent city environment.  Tell you what, you write and secure that grant and get all the stuff and I will be there for the encampment.  It will be fun.

Ned Lee
National Cadet Advisor
(Cool Job, Crummy Job Title)

Long live the tent city.  If we could do that, there are literally hundreds of facilities where such an activity could take place as opposed to a hand full.

[Nathan]

Tent city sounds like a cool activity, but looking at the goals of encampment, I'm not really sure if we can run a better encampment, or even one of the same quality, without real facilities.

Plus, how many 12-15 year old basic cadets do you think are going to handle living in a tent for a week, when even the coziest, best-facilitated encampments end up with the inevitable homesickness?

No, most cadets have a hard enough time dealing with the stress of caffeine and sugar withdrawl, getting up early, not having access to Facebook, and having to replace their parents with a teenaged cadet sergeant. Weather is a massively-stressful ordeal to those who haven't had to deal with it for an extended period of time, and never really getting a break from it is going to push cadets further than they need to go for no real enhancement of their learning experience.

[Rotorhead]

Tent city sounds like a cool activity, but looking at the goals of encampment, I'm not really sure if we can run a better encampment, or even one of the same quality, without real facilities.

Considering that 40 hours of classroom instruction are mandated for Encampments by NHQ, I'd rather see those 40 hours done in a facility suited for the job.

[ZigZag911]

From about 1981-1992 or 93, NJW had no choice but to conduct its Basic Encampments in the field; there were no military billeting facilities available in state with sufficient space (the main bases were McGuire AFB, Fort Dix, and Lakehurst Naval Air Station, which have been united in a mega "joint base" in recent years).

We held the annual encampment using two bivouac sites @ Ft Dix, busing (CAP still had buses then, and McGuire supplemented ours with buses & drivers from their motor pool) cadets into McG for tours, orientation flight, and so forth.

Many classes were conducted at the bivouac site, with cadets sitting on the ground.

We had a CAP run field kitchen, complete with a squadron commander as director of the mess and a group commander and the wing CV as his assistant cooks -- all lt colonels, which led to some raised eyebrows when Army non-coms would pop in to take advantage of the cup of coffee one or another of the senior staff had offered!

We set up a command post complete with radio message center (HF & VHF)...in fact, over the years we ran more than a few missions, including a REDCAP or two, right from that tent!

Much of the equipment was borrowed from NJ National Guard.

We used Army field shower facility and McG's base gym.

Sand got in EVERYTHING!

Everyone learned a lot about personal hydration, field sanitation of mess gear, and how one set up the interior of a GP medium or small for inspection!

The cadets LOVED it!!! Attendance varied based on membership spikes and dips, generally 100-125 basics, plus about 50 staff (senior & cadet). One year, including our wing GSAR school, we surpassed 300 total participants,

Some of us older folks endured it at first...after a couple of years, we began to take a sort of warped pleasure in the fact that NJW was doing something few other wings would even attempt. It was VERY labor intensive: much of senior and all cadet staff showed up about 3 days early to set up, stayed a day or two late to break down and return gear to the Guard...these staff members ended up dedicating 12-14 days to an 8 day encampment.

McGuire built a couple of training facilities with housing about 15 years ago, and the encampment moved back indoors.