April BOG Meeting Agenda

[arajca]

The April BOG Meeting Agenda is up and available for your discussion.

Several interesting items, especially the information summaries at the end. Under Professional Development, CAPP 222 is mentioned as having been released on1 April, but it's not available on the Publications website. Logistics now has online tests for each level. As do some others.

[RiverAux]

Some bad news for Maj. Carrales in the CAP Foundation Report -- In the last quarter of 2012 they raised a whopping $976 in donations.  Not a good sign for private resources picking up the slack if federal funding is reduced.  On the other hand, the Development Program report indicates that CAP is trying to ramp up its own internal fundraising efforts with some success. 

Under the CAP pilots agenda item it says,

CAP currently has enough qualified pilots to execute all missions, but

.  I don't know about everyone else, but my wing's pilot numbers have dropped off a cliff lately and I really don't think that is the case for us anymore.  I haven't really been active enough to have a good feel for why that is happening here.  The information paper that goes with it (hooray for starting to attach these reports to the agendas!) has some interesting facts including that 75% of CAP pilots are under age 65.  This is less than GA (86%), but WAY higher than I would have thought.

[Eclipse]

Is the BOG going to have to change their insignia now? (and is this new?)

As to the pilots, I don't know how Mr. Rowland can make that statement, except in the context of typical "slow deployment, bare minimum, work people until they are exhausted" mentality.
In my wing our pilot numbers have been static for a decade, both literally and figuratively.  We have enough to brute-force our way through the check-boxes, but we have no depth at
position or sustainability for long-term operations.  This conversation is also not just about pilots - pilots can't fly without base and administrative staff.

When is someone going to wake up and realize that we need a huge, sustained, meaningful membership drive?  That's more then a brochure! We've been walking in a circle
on recruiting forever.  Our current model of "air shows" and "wishful thinking" isn't working.  Not to mention that more clearly defined identity, missions, and role, will bring people to the table in and of itself.

RSC - Standardization - It's about time.

[PHall]

Under the CAP pilots agenda item it says,

CAP currently has enough qualified pilots to execute all missions, but

.  I don't know about everyone else, but my wing's pilot numbers have dropped off a cliff lately and I really don't think that is the case for us anymore.  I haven't really been active enough to have a good feel for why that is happening here.  The information paper that goes with it (hooray for starting to attach these reports to the agendas!) has some interesting facts including that 75% of CAP pilots are under age 65.  This is less than GA (86%), but WAY higher than I would have thought.

Do we have enough pilots for the missions we are currently flying? The answer seems to be yes.

Will we have enough in the future?  Good question since our "missions" are in a state of major change right now.

I think once we can get a handle on what our "new" mission(s) will be, then we can start thinking about how many pilots we will need.

At the rate we're flying right now, our "fleet" of 550 aircraft is probably going to get smaller.

[Eclipse]

A big reason, at least in my wing, that the hours dropped so drastically last year was the "sky is falling" attitude about funding.

The actual impact lasted about a week or two, and didn't actually mean much to anyone, but the "full shutdown" rhetoric, not to mention
grounding planes from personal flying because of MX money, hurt us well into the new year.

We had members into February and March still believing we had no funding.

Just as it can take arm twisting badgering to get people off the couch planning activities for more then the next week,
once the ship looks like it is slowing down, it's even harder to get people motivated again.

We started doing that again this year.   We need to manage the message better and stop with all this panicked "call you Congressman or we'll close" nonsense.

[RiverAux]

There is some detailed discussion on the national drop in flying hours, and the outlook isn't looking good based on routine assignments. 

Keep in mind that a major disaster mission that requires 1,000 flying hours (a pretty rare occurrence) will only increase CAP flying hours by less than 1% in any given year. 

Personally, I'm not too worried about overall flying hours since it is all linked back to a totally random goal of 200 hours per aircraft.   

[Tim Medeiros]

Don't know about you all, but I'm liking the IT information paper, especially with the future plans bit about awards/decs, PD awards, cadet duty assignments, Unit/Group CC Dashboard, etc being in the works.

[NCRblues]

Command spec track was posted a little while ago, CAPP 222