Colorado Wing SAREval '09

[Smithsonia]

Many members of this board worked at the '09 Air Force Evaluated Exercise this past weekend. We received an overall grade of excellent. Scott Orr (Rotorhead) ran the IO/PAO team. Eric Schwarm (Wusafuzz) was big time in the Comm-shack. Andrew Rajca kept the comm issues straight as Colorado is in the middle of the change over from Wide to narrow band and has a slightly different comm set up almost everyday.

Mark Young was remarkable as our IC. We had nearly 200 members ply the tools, trade, and craft of Civil Air Patrol as best we could. Excellent is what we got. We had our A-Team out in force. Our Wing CC Col. Ed Phelka deserves credit for putting the right people in the right places. These people and many more did first rate work.

I must say, the Air Force Eval team led by Maj. Trent Baines was amazing. They were corrective, fair, knowledgeable, firm, consistent, and proceeded with good humor and quiet resolve. I am proud to have
been in their stead. I am more proud that these people serve our country ever so well in the United States Air Force.

AOBD Successful
Air crews Successful
SDIS Marginal
IT outstanding
Communications Excellent
Logistics excellent
Finance/Admin excellent
Archer Successful
PSC Successful
Ground Teams Successful
GOBD Marginal
FLS excellent
OSC excellent
PIO Excellent
Chaplain Excellent
Agency Liaison Successful
Safety Excellent
IC Excellent

This feat is made even more remarkable in the fact -The Colorado Wing pulled off the SAREval while hosting the National Soaring Academy, a major CLC at the AF Academy, helping in a National Guard exercise, and running the Rocky Mountain GSAR School, AND we had a RedCap, all at the same time. Frankly, I don't know how we did it. But everyone in the Wing deserves a hardy congratulations. We'll take a day or two to "crow" and then go back to work.

MESSAGE FROM SAREval IC Maj. MARK YOUNG STATED:
Colorado Wing SAREVAL got an Excellent over all!

Thank you all for assisting to pull this off. The one area we got an outstanding in was IT. We really did not have a person appointed, so Von Campbell and I tag teamed it and it worked!  I want to thank Von Campbell for his hard work to help us get an outstanding.

[capn_shad]

 :clap: I was attending my first SAREX with a cadet ground team.  We got really good at holding down the folding chairs in Hanger 119 at Peterson.   We were the only ground team at the Colorado Springs Base, and we never did get a mission tasking, although the cadets did get some excitement when we were alerted and prepared for a "real world" mission (as one of the CAP aircraft missed a radio check-in).

Fortunately, Group 3 Vice Commander David Atwood was there and agreed to serve as our team leader for the day -- he did an excellent job trying to keep the cadets busy and their spirits up, and helped our team with some additional training (even helping one of our 18 year old cadets finish his requirements for ground team leader!).  Lt. Lefferts also assisted our cadets and both gentlemen were fabulous as teachers and role models.

Thank you to Capt. Atwood and Lt. Lefferts and to all the Colorado Springs Mission Base staff (and Capt. Carman for his patience with a bunch of newbies!).  Despite the lack of action, the Pueblo Eagles had a great time and learned a bunch!

[Smithsonia]

capnshad;
I am sorry for your languishing and feeling under utilized. Our Ground Branch Director got dinged a therefore graded as marginal. So your issue was noticed. Likely there will be a fix in our lessons learned debrief. We had much of the Ground Branch staff out of pocket due to the Ground SAR School being held on the same weekend.

We had many at Greeley ICP/Ground Teams who felt the same. But they re-purposed their time and trained Cadets while signing off SQTRS. Capts. Don Besee and George Dengler worked hard with the opportunities at hand.

This isn't an excuse of course, but it is an accurate observation of the various stresses the Colorado Wing was under and still pulled off an excellent rating. Thanks Pueblo for charging in, digging in, and doing your best.

[RiverAux]

Shad, its great that your unit sent a ground team and I wish the CAP-USAF folks had actually designed a scenario that would have made use of it. 

Personally, I have given up all hope of any of the state or region CAP-USAF people where I am ever designing a realistic ground team scenario worth gearing up for.  I haven't yet decided whether this is because they just don't know what are ground teams are supposed to be capable of or whether they just don't care enough about them to make an effort to put an ELT out in the grass next to a flightline or a visual target 50m off a main road. 

We know that CAP has no real love for ground SAR, but I've usually held out some hope that the AF folks wouldn't share that same bias.  After our last experience those hopes have faded away. 

I know from prior discussions that there are a few CAP-USAF personnel who take ground teams more seriously, but I've yet to run across them.

What our ground teams have learned is that its a waste of time to show up if CAP-USAF has anything to do with the scenario no matter how much Wing promotes it as al all hands on deck effort.
End rant.

[Eclipse]

Kudos to the Wing on the overall grade, but I have to ask about why this wasn't better coordinated.

In a real-world on the scale of most evals, anything other than the missions would likely be canceled to
recall the A-Teams to the operations.

Especially things like SAR schools and flight academies that take important resources from the evaluation should not be running the same weekends.

We know that CAP has no real love for ground SAR, but I've usually held out some hope that the AF folks wouldn't share that same bias.  After our last experience those hopes have faded away. 

I know from prior discussions that there are a few CAP-USAF personnel who take ground teams more seriously, but I've yet to run across them.

What our ground teams have learned is that its a waste of time to show up if CAP-USAF has anything to do with the scenario no matter how much Wing promotes it as all all hands on deck effort.

Who's "we"?  That isn't the case nationally.

If you're having trouble with the situation locally, I sympathize, but don't lump the rest of the wings into a generalization that insults CAP-USAF unless its clear you're speaking for yourself, and indicating where that is.

We have no issues in my wing with CAP-USAF ground tasking or respect, and at least 1/2, if not more, of the real-worlds we've had in the last few years are primarily ground-based missions. 

Poor utilization of resources is an IC/GBD problem, not CAP-USAF.  They just provide the scenarios.

[RiverAux]

I can speak authoritatively regarding CAP-USAF's ability to design decent ground team scenarios at the level of my region based on personal experience over about the last 10 years over the course of multiple SAR-EVALS and GTEs.  As I said, others have had different experiences with CAP-USAF in other areas. 

And I'm not alone when I say that CAP shows no love for ground teams.  Open up just about any GT thread and you will find much the same opinion. 

They just provide the scenarios.

Exactly.  The scenarios drive everything that occurs and they give us scenarios no more difficult than what you'd expect a newly minted UDF team member to handle. 

and at least 1/2, if not more, of the real-worlds we've had in the last few years are primarily ground-based missions. 

Exactly my point.  Ground-based missions are the only real potential growth area in CAP ES and CAP overall and CAP-USAF are still stuck in the mindset of "lets find the missing airplane and call it a day" on SAREVALS. 

[capn_shad]

To be fair to the Ground Branch Director, there were some typical Colorado weather problems in the area where one of our potential taskings would have been located (severe thunderstorms and possible hail), and there is no way I would have taken five relatively inexperienced cadets north of Woodland Park in the middle of a summer thunderstorm.

The only complaint we could lodge is that the weather was perfect from approximately 0700 to 1400 and we could have completed the task easily within that timeframe.  The weather forecast for the area perfectly predicted what occurred after 1400, so why we wouldn't send the ground teams out in the morning is far beyond my pay grade.

As noted by others, however, we made the best of the situation by reviewing training and coming up with new things to teach the cadets, and the cadets themselves got to know each other much better.  So it was all fine in the end!

[Smithsonia]

I may have some of this a little wrong because I heard just a portion(s) of this at various briefings. BUT -

We were given a real airplane's, real tail number and flight plan. This was to be the major ground team exercise on Saturday. On Friday night -before the teams were staged but during the actual exercise... we actually (through coordination and wonderful response from the Wyoming Wing) found the REAL Airplane in a hangar somewhere in Wyoming. Wyoming dispatched a ground team. They took a picture of the tail of the plane quietly sitting in a Wyoming hangar. They sent the photo to our IC in Greeley. We had that picture before sign in on Saturday Morning. We thought we'd done very well indeed. We thought that scenario was completed and successful.

I heard that the Air Force Eval Team was surprised by our enterprise. They likely had not counted on us being so effective - as they thought they were giving us a scenario and not an actual plane that we would and could find... and so discounted our intel and resource guys actually find of the real plane.

In this matter, I don't think we (Colorado) screwed up. I think the Colorado Wing did great. I think the Wyoming Wing did double great. (THANK YOU WYOMING!!) BUT because of that issue, some of the follow on scenario work didn't get picked up as we discussed our point with the AF Eval Team, past noon on Saturday.

In this I think both the IC Staff and the Eval Team were surprised by the back and forth and Ground Teams got a little lost in the staff-hash.

I heard that we were moving to the next set of scenarios, then we were waiting to hear if we closed the original mission, then we were waiting on a final response from the Eval Team. It took hours for the final word to completely resolve itself. I was in the IO office and I think I heard 4 different yes and no's. SO, I stopped paying attention and asked to just give me the final word and I'd correct the "Pretend Press Release" to reflect the real (or imagined) events.

As everybody knows - sometimes a "find" isn't really a find until the Air Force says it's a find. How many planes did we find that DIDN'T have Steve Fawcett on board. That said, we should accept the Ground Branch ding, learn the lessons, correct the issues, and move forward. In other Wings, your mileage may vary.

I'd hate to see this thread drift into complaining about CAP "love" for Ground Teams. I am on a Ground Team. I love my Ground Team. I promote my Ground Team. My Ground Team makes me happy to be a member of CAP.

[wuzafuzz]

Comm and IT was a blast!  We had about 30 channels in our comm plan, with linked repeaters, HF, ISR's, etc in the mix.  The link system was awesome, it's hard to imagine working without it.  I wonder how many other states are fortunate enough to link repeaters.

Our CUL mentored me throughout the Comm planning process and had me do a lot of the heavy lifting.  An Evaluated SAREX is definitely the trial by fire method of completing a CUL qualification. I was feeling pretty scorched by the end of the weekend, but it was worth it.

Google Docs proved an effective way of sharing a spreadsheet based status board with multiple people.  (Paper backups were kept of course.) Comm/IT ran the updates and shared the worksheet over the Internet with the rest of the incident staff in multiple locations. 

It was very busy and we crammed Comm/IT, Air Ops, and Ground Ops in a small room (guessing about 10x10 ft).  That's just how it is sometimes with borrowed buldings.

Colorado seems pretty active for ground teams.  I know we did send a few ground teams out, but the need for them is dependent upon the Air Force generated scenarios.

It was a fantastic learning experience. 

[Smithsonia]

What WuzaFuzz (Eric) is not telling you is the COMM/IT guys did so well that Maj. Baines (head of the AF Eval Team) stated in the Grading Brief on Sunday morning that "This should be considered the benchmark for CAP and the Air Force Eval teams."

So Eric and Von Campbell deserve much praise. Praise to thee WuzaFuzz and Von!

I was in the office next door. I had lots of room and a nicely working air conditioner. The Comm Shack was triple full of people sweating and keeping it all straight. When they'd take a break - they come and sit next to my desk looking like half drowned puppies. In other words - Colorado Wing's Comm and IT were in a war. I was at the Colonial hotel with a cool drink. It felt like Vietnam all over again. Good Work Eric! Double Good Work Von! You guys were/are fabulous.

[Eclipse]

They just provide the scenarios.

Exactly.  The scenarios drive everything that occurs and they give us scenarios no more difficult than what you'd expect a newly minted UDF team member to handle. 

And yet many states are incapable of prosecuting even these "basic" missions.

CAP overall and CAP-USAF are still stuck in the mindset of "lets find the missing airplane and call it a day" on SAREVALS.

I don't know what region you're in, but I know which one you're not in - that's not how it works in GLR.  The last two evals we've been presented with creative, aggressive missing persons situations in addition to the usual overdue aircraft scenario.

[Eclipse]

What WuzaFuzz (Eric) is not telling you is the COMM/IT guys did so well that Maj. Baines (head of the AF Eval Team) stated in the Grading Brief on Sunday morning that "This should be considered the benchmark for CAP and the Air Force Eval teams." Good Work Eric! Double Good Work Von! You guys were/are fabulous.

Thank goodness people are starting to realize we don't need to drop to the stone age for missions.

Yeah, stuff happens and infrastructure is affected.  Rarely is CAP involved until basic services are restored, and rarer still is a situation where the nearest infrastructure is so far away as to be inaccessible for a remote ICP.

That situation really would be Armageddon, in which case you'll likely be more worried about fighting off your neighborhood zombies than helping anyone else.

I could see Google Docs being an excellent shared tool for status boards as well.  Let the cloud manage it and we just use it. No internet?  Fine.  Use the hardcopy / whiteboard backups, but not utilizing an effective tool for some misguided notion that someday it might not be available is negligence in itself.

Ever see the kinds of resources FEMA and the military roll up with? Hardly the stone tablets some would force us to use.

[wuzafuzz]

I say use all the gadgets you can carry and set up.  Be prepared to function without them if needed.  I have been at ICP's/Mission Bases that didn't have decent Internet, but if it's there, use it to your fullest advantage.  Frankly, paper logs with hieroglyphics aren't much more useful than a temporarily unavailable electronic log.  (Penmanship should be part of the F&P for MRO.)

As for the zombie invasion, sharpen j-poles and charge!   

[Smithsonia]

Regarding comments above that are disparaging of the same ol' scenarios. We didn't get that from the our Air Force Evaluators. Instead they reinforced that CAP must change. That on time photo delivery with high quality photos delivered to THE CUSTOMER was our new mission.

SDIS, Archer, photo recon, timely, customer friendly, on time, accurate, quick turn around, mission ready were our new watch words. There was talk that we should use our GA8s for more transport work, field logistics, emergency relief, Customer and VIP Air Carriers, etc. were other NEW words to the wise. All of these missions are climbing in importance. As the 406 configurations come into more planes... we'll likely be doing less SAR and more photo, transport, and customer support. The Air Force was Forceful in this suggestion.

We should prepare. We have been told what to expect.

[wuzafuzz]

Many members of this board worked at the '09 Air Force Evaluated Exercise this past weekend. We received an overall grade of excellent. Scott Orr (Rotorhead) ran the IO/PAO team. Eric Schwarm (Wusafuzz) was big time in the Comm-shack. Andrew Rajca kept the comm issues straight as Colorado is in the middle of the change over from Wide to narrow band and has a slightly different comm set up almost everyday.

Mark Young was remarkable as our IC. We had nearly 200 members ply the tools, trade, and craft of Civil Air Patrol as best we could. Excellent is what we got. We had our A-Team out in force. Our Wing CC Col. Ed Phelka deserves credit for putting the right people in the right places. These people and many more did first rate work.

Pingree1492 is another forum member who was instrumental in Air Ops.

[Smithsonia]

As I explained earlier in this thread - the day before our SAREval the Colorado Wing aided the the Colorado Guard in a Homeland Security exercise. Click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4tYu26oq5M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cH-D4-fI5g&feature=related

Please forgive Capt. Steve Schneider his Aussie Accent. We have to forgive for it every time we see him. Capt. Schneider did both the NG exercise and AF SAREval. Many of the cadets included in these stories attended both of these events and the GSAR too.

One of these packages was produced by Capt. Scott Orr our Wing Deputy PAO and IO for the SAREval. (Rotorhead on this board) These are people are worth their weight in tribute.