Ground and Air Training Scenarios

[mmouw]

Does anyone out there have any interesting air crew and ground team SAR scenarios? If so please share. I am tasked with coming up with some for a SAREX this weekend. Thanks!!

[isuhawkeye]

what skills are you trying to exercise?

what part of the state will you be working in?

I have several years worth o material I would be willing to share

[Trung Si Ma]

My favorite one is to put it in a maintenance hangar replicating an aircraft being worked on.  The aircrew has to coordinate with the tower (if the airfield has one) or communicate what their doing on the CTAF.  Once they figure out that its at the airport, you have two possible scenarios by either having the aircrew land and find it or sending a ground team over.  If you brief the mechanics, they can portray anything from being overly helpful, through sceptical, to almost hostile.

A nice kink in this scenario is to put a controller with the ground team to tell them that a bridge is out or a crossing flooded so that they have to take an indirect route - maybe even having to call the aircrew to do a route recon for them.

[N Harmon]

You could position some mock wreckage (easily created with white painters tarps) at the end of your mission base's active runway. Then see how many air crews notice it on take off.

[mmouw]

We are working basic GT skills. We will be working in eastern South Dakota, more or less flat land. This is why I am asking because it seems to always play out the same way. I thought if we tried something different, people would have to think it through.

[BigMojo]

Get a farmer to put it in his tractor while tending a field?


If you are good with electronics, wire a timer to it, so it goes on and off..

Make your air and ground crews communicate only with signals, no radios.

[cap235629]

here is the scenario we did last night, twist on the basic elt search.

Hid the elt 2 miles away from mission base
borrowed "Rescue Randy" from the fire department

The GT was expecting a simple elt search.

When they found the elt 500 yards from the road in heavy brush, low and behold Randy was laying face down on top of it.  Taped to Randy's Back was the following note:

"HELLO CIVIL AIR PATROL!!!

I AM UNCONSCIOUS

I HAVE EVIDENCE OF POSSIBLE INTERNAL INJURIES

BECAUSE I MADE AN "OFF AIRPORT" ABRUPT LANDING, I MAY HAVE POSSIBLE SPINAL INJURIES

DUE TO SAFETY CONCERNS (USE YOUR IMAGINATION HERE) I MUST BE MOVED TO A SAFE EXTRACTION POINT

USING YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND TRAINING, MOVE ME TO WHERE YOU PARKED YOUR VEHICLE WITHOUT DOING ANY FURTHER HARM
   
WE TRAIN LIKE WE RESPOND!!!

The team was VERY surprised and all they had with them was 24 hour packs and were expecting a "typical" ELT search.  They had to improvise a litter and transport the 150 pound dummy over 500 yards to the "safe" extraction point. 

During the debrief all were excited about the twist and commented on how much they learned from the experience.

Just a thought

[BigMojo]

Nice work! I like that...great twist.

I may have to try that one.  :clap:

[Psicorp]

We had an interesting ELT search some years ago, although it ended up being interesting purely by accident.

The I.C. placed a practice ELT into back of a vehicle parked at his home with the understanding that the vehicle wasn't going anywhere.  His wife apparently had other ideas and took the vehicle to go shopping (with the ELT going off).   The I.C. didn't realize that the two Ground Teams were chasing a moving target until his wife called him so say, "Wow, your CAP people are all over the place...I saw them at the mall, Walmart, and now at Target".   *silence*  "Umm, honey...."   

When we finally got back to Mission Base we were told, "yeah, well...ELTs have been known to go off in UPS trucks so...good job!"

[gistek]

If you don't have an "Rescue Randy" available, you can improvisw one by stuffing a set of long underwear and a ski cap (for the head). Pin or sew everything together after it's stuffed, tie a bit of paracord around the joints, and dress it. (I used an old CAP uniform for mine.)

Then you can position it as if a leg is broken and/or label whatever injuries you want the GT to deal with.

Funny names are also a great way to make a training mission memorable. For instance, on my first traiing mission, Jim Bean reported that yesterday his friend, Johnny Walker had gone Wild Turkey hunting with his Old Grandad and hadn't returned that evening.

You can even put a new twist in by having someone play "Jim Bean" and spent a lot of time at the mission base bugging people about search progress and asking if he can help with anything. (There's almost always someone hanging around  mission base asking stuff and cadets as well as senior members should learn how to handle it.)

You can also give the GTL or Medic a paper that gives complications to deal with. LIke about half way from find to van, the victim has a heart attack. Or the Medic twists his ankle - so now you have two victims to worry about.