what is the wierdest, funniest, oddest, or just plain most hilarious thing that has ever happened to you on a sarex?
mine is i was asked,"do we really need a pack for ground team"
SaREx or real mission? Buddy a mine about 12-15 years ago had an EPIRB on a ship out at the port, on board w/ port auth police, freakin huge thing of mallases busted open on him. like several hundred gallons huge.
Dumpster diving!
WIWAC, unprintable on public forum... ;D
some one put a practice beacon in a dumpster, not realizing the bottom was lined in beer. A cadet went in to get it and came out smelling completely like beer.
Once we were looking for a simulated ELT going off in Central Ohio, and we blundered into a mock battle being staged by a group of World War II re-enactors, complete with a half-track, an M-4 Sherman, a bunch of Wehrmact soldiers, and explosions simulating artillery.
At the debriefing, the Ground Ops Director asked one of the standard questions:
"Did you see anything unusual on this sortie?"
Well, now that you ask, ... YES!
Quote from: JohnKachenmeister on February 22, 2007, 03:32:28 PM
Once we were looking for a simulated ELT going off in Central Ohio, and we blundered into a mock battle being staged by a group of World War II re-enactors, complete with a half-track, an M-4 Sherman, a bunch of Wehrmact soldiers, and explosions simulating artillery.
At the debriefing, the Ground Ops Director asked one of the standard questions:
"Did you see anything unusual on this sortie?"
Well, now that you ask, ... YES!
That's Awsome!!
Quote from: SarDragon on February 22, 2007, 08:19:09 AM
Dumpster diving!
That's why we bring cadets, or really anyone other than me would be just fine. Happens a ton.
Had a lot of wierd stuff happen, but the ship, that's got to be the most amusing. On the desk at the CG radio shack after their cutter went out & came back turned it back to AFRCC when they couldn't find it - that's just funny, for us moreso than the kid working at the time. Narrowed them to oil rigs before - passes thru your mind how you're going to get there from a cessna before you just call the CG.
Let's see...
Ah. watching a GT with an "experienced" GTL circle a tree several times looking for a the beacon, and giving up/deciding the elper was broken. They were in the right spot, just not thinking in three dimensions. It wasn't even camoflauged.
Man how many times can people pull that same old trick. :P
what trick?
Quote from: DNall on February 22, 2007, 11:32:11 PM
Man how many times can people pull that same old trick. :P
I usually see it perpetuated by the now-more-experienced GTL after being made aware of the beacon's location. They want to try on someone else, and so on, and so on, ad nauseum. You'd figure somewhere along the line they'd incorporate the third dimension in GTM/GTL training.
Usually I see and hear about all kinds of fancy camoflauging tricks, signal direction, fake wreckage, etc, but I haven't really heard anyone tell GTM/GTL to look up.
so where did they hide the elt
Quote from: swya on February 23, 2007, 04:12:42 AM
so where did they hide the elt
It wasn't hidden. It was in plain sight. Think about putting a practice beacon on a tree.
Stick a wing section up there & you're in business. Then hide a couple dummies (no not UDF-Ts) off in the woods w/ tags explaining their injuries, make sure they take proceedure from find, reporting, organized search, sim first aid, evac. It's fine to hide an ELT. Lord knows that's most of our missions, but I can't tell you how many really experienced GTM/Ls I run across that got no idea what to really do if they find a crash. And being the experienced one they're going to get tagged as GTL w/ some cadets & not have anyone to fall back on.
Also, if you're going to do that dumpster thing, put it behind so it doesn't get picked up by the garbadge truck & haulsed away on ya, seen that happen.
On a certain SAREX the practice beacon ran out of batteries and no one informed us...here we just thought we really stunk at DF'ing. ;D
Quote from: JohnKachenmeister on February 22, 2007, 03:32:28 PM
At the debriefing, the Ground Ops Director asked one of the standard questions:
"Did you see anything unusual on this sortie?"
Well, now that you ask, ... YES!
One of the land-owners near our airport has his pasture decorated with HUGE paper mache' dinosaurs. There's a bronto, a triceratops, wooly mammoths.....Our missions always include the coordinates for the "herd" and it is real fun, especially for aircrews visiting who don't know about Mr. Barber's ranch.
a cadet was suposed to be in one spot but he was young and decided to follow the ground team he was supposed to reprsent a downed aricraft. The ground team never found him but the MPs did lol
Had a GT wander into the neighborhood of a very unhappy Wolverine and her young... one inventive tried to spray it with 'OFF' hoping it would have the same effect as MACE (It didn't)
I'll leave it to your imaginations. ;D
This one time we had a mission where everyone showed up on time, in proper uniform, with all their credentials current and correct.
Airplanes were waiting on the flight line, fueled, inspected, and on standby. All the radio panels were properly programmed, and the aircrews knew how to use them.
Everyone had the proper gear, and executed their instructions without filtering in their own ideas or making things up as they went along.
Meanwhile, back at mission base...
The command staff checked their egos at the door, including pilots, who, because of weather issues couldn't fly in the morning and helped get things set up and running, then they did whatever was needed throughout the day.
No one was left for hours sitting in a field, waiting for instructions, only to be given a mission 45 minutes before sundown and then ordered RTB 20 feet from the objective.
There were no arguments in front of the press, the missions were well thought out and executed well within the budgets, most of the teams accomplished their objectives, and those that didn't learned something.
And afterwards all the paperwork, mission credits, and 108's were processed in a timely manner.
Weirdest thing I've ever seen in CAP...
HA! Did you or Patrizzi have a hand in organizing that?
Quote from: Eclipse on February 23, 2007, 08:00:43 PM
This one time we had a mission where everyone showed up on time, in proper uniform, with all their credentials current and correct.
Airplanes were waiting on the flight line, fueled, inspected, and on standby. All the radio panels were properly programmed, and the aircrews knew how to use them.
Everyone had the proper gear, and executed their instructions without filtering in their own ideas or making things up as they went along.
Meanwhile, back at mission base...
The command staff checked their egos at the door, including pilots, who, because of weather issues couldn't fly in the morning and helped get things set up and running, then they did whatever was needed throughout the day.
No one was left for hours sitting in a field, waiting for instructions, only to be given a mission 45 minutes before sundown and then ordered RTB 20 feet from the objective.
There were no arguments in front of the press, the missions were well thought out and executed well within the budgets, most of the teams accomplished their objectives, and those that didn't learned something.
And afterwards all the paperwork, mission credits, and 108's were processed in a timely manner.
Weirdest thing I've ever seen in CAP...
Yeah right... you had me till the radios were set up right, then the pilots that was the clencher. One can dream though.
Yeah, then I woke up...
((*sigh*))
...someday...
On a positive note, I was at SAREX (FLS). A new concept was tried. The aircrews that arrived Fri evening were briefed Fri evening. Sat morn at 0700, we had a general briefing, each aircrew had a weather update, then they launched. We had all eight a/c in the air by 0800. It was a wing record, and hasn't been matched since.
Unfortunetely, after they returned (around 1200), the wind picked up. Crosswinds constantly 35+. We ahd all the second wave aircrews ready to launch by 1300, but the SAREX was terminated. The winds were bad enough that most a/c didn't get out until Monday.