I was talking to a ham on VHF yesterday and he brought up the subject he was thinking of stating a CAP Squadron in his home town. The nearest Squadron is sixty five miles away (on 2 lane roads). He said it's impossible to get the brochures, recruiting and paperwork material from National to start a new unit unless you give a charter number. Years ago, CAP had a new unit kit with some brochures, fingerprint cards and form 12 and 15. Now as he said you have to have a charter number to get the fingerprint cards. It looks like CAP should start a new unit kit again since I dn't doubt that there are many locations in the country where a former member might want to start a Squadron. While an approval from a Group Commander is needed in many Wings, how does John Doe in Podoke Corners know where the Group Headquarters are. The kit should at a minimum have the address of the Wing Headquarters along with email address.
If John Doe writes National, National notifies the nearest Squadron, but that may not be in convenient driving distance or date and time for John Doe. A new unit kit would solve a problem like this.
NHQ shouldn't be sending out kits on how to start a unit to people not even officially associated with CAP yet. That would be a receipe for disaster. Their first contact with CAP should be local.
Anyone wanting to start a new unit should first get in touch with the closest existing unit and start getting their own training done. Once they've been in CAP for a little bit and actually know enough to start training others, then they should look into starting a new unit and talk with the Group or Wing Commander about the need, etc.
They should be able to get plenty of stuff then.
Just went through the procedure RiverAux described and was fairly easy to do. I cannot imagine how hard it would have been however with no knowledge of CAP other than that described on the National website.
I am actually involved in something like this pretty heavily right now and have been working with NHQ to determine if this flight should get a new charter or not. We made the decision to make the new unit a "Satellite Unit" of an existing squadron. This means that the new unit will not have a new charter number until they are ready to break away and form a Squadron on their own. We are specifically helping them with logistics and finances to begin with. They are starting off as a cadet squadron so that does make things a little easier for now. In our case, we started with 5 Officers and 4 cadets so we had a membership base to begin with, and not just one guy. From there, the members of the parent unit are sending them recruiting brochures, helping them get equipment, and assisting with setting up a squadron meeting schedule. The local members contacted the airport and had huge support from the Airport Authority to start the squadron. They gave them a place to meet and an office!! Gotta love small towns!! They are also working on getting community support so they can purchase office equipment, a computer, printer and such.
So, to wrap this up, my advice for the radio guy looking to start a unit is become involved in one first. Then drag a friend or two along to meetings for a few months. From there, get support from another unit to help you. They can assist with getting recruiting pamphlets and things he will need. To be honest, word of mouth has been one of the best recruiting tools I have seen. If they can find a way to get help from another unit, they will do better. Plus having 3-4 people who know what they are doing is way better that 10 how have no clue!!
Just went through this with a new squadron. The individuals that were interested in chartering the new squadron contacted wing headquarters and the group commander of the area was advised.
The group commander has been attending the new unit's initial meetings along with a nearby squadron commander who has been acting as an adviser to the new unit.
For several months prior to chartering, both the squadron adviser and group commander were available at meetings to answer question and acquire needed materials.
Now that the charter has been issued, the group commander and adviser continue to provide support and training assistance where needed.
Before starting a new unit, you may also want to consider a pre-emptive divorce. I have been single for 5 years and since becoming involved with CAP am considering a trial separation from myself. I never talk to myself anymore and I never take myself anywhere and cant remember the last time i sent myself flowers. Would it kill me to stay home on the occasional Tuesday night? Maybe I can join a book club for something to do when I am at CAP meetings.
I am hoping the efforts we have started in Kingsville, Texas will eventually produce a Cadet Squadron serviced by the Aviators of the Corpus Christi Comp Squadron.
We will sort of "bud off" the main unit.