WINNEMUCCA - The Civil Air Patrol (CAP) is an auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force. It is a volunteer organization that allows citizens to serve their country, plus the people of the local community.
This article will cover several events that have happened in the Humboldt County CAP: cadet orientation flights, a promotion of one of our members and a training mission.
The purpose of the cadet orientation flights is to introduce youth to flying. CAP conducts these flights either with a glider or with a single engine aircraft. The flights are limited to cadets under the age of 18. These flights are normally done within the first 90 days after a cadet joins a squadron. We had a flight for our cadets in March 2013.
Before we did our training mission, 1st. Lt. Charles Sparke was promoted to Captain by Squadron Commander Major Wayne E. Smith.
There are several logical steps that must happen before we start a search and rescue mission.
First we determine what we are searching for, i.e., a downed-missing aircraft, lost hunters, missing people that didn't arrive home from a trip, etc.
In this case, it was a missing aircraft. Coordinates (where it may be) are given to the ground team and to the flight crew(s). An incident commander is usually assigned, or the squadron commander could possibly be the incident commander.
A communications officer keeps track of the ground teams and air crew(s) via radio. The incident commander tells everyone what we are doing and makes up the teams, i.e. communications, air crews, ground teams and assigns others to jobs that support the mission.
A safety and operations briefing is then given to all personnel. Then the air crew(s) and ground crews are dispatched.
After everyone is dispatched, the status of the aircrews and ground teams are verified via radio communications every half hour and are logged. The incident commander is updated on the status of the mission. In training exercises and actual missions, the Nevada Wing Commander, Civil Air Patrol headquarters, can see in real time the progress of our mission. Exercises such as this keep your local Civil Air Patrol ready to respond.
Imagine yourself as a member of a ground team, then you can see this develop. After leaving the squadron, we drove for about 30 minutes and the two ground teams picked up the emergency beacon. Maintaining contact with the signal from the beacon involved off road driving, searching and frequent "back tracking."
One Ground Team consisting of 2Lt. Matt Hei, 1st Lt. Larry Tregallis, and SM Jim Moore had back tracked and found the emergency beacon. Our team consisting of Capt. Charles Sparke, SM Rene Maldondo, and myself arrived at their location. We confirmed our find with our communications officer who relayed this information to the incident commander.
After we returned to the squadron, a debriefing was conducted, which consisted of the events that we did well, improvements that are needed, and a summary of the exercise. Had air crews been used, they would have been searching by air and relayed to our communications center where the aircraft was, and directed the ground teams to the area.
If no ground teams were involved, pictures would be taken by the scanner in the CAP Air Plane and relayed up the chain of command. The tasks of a mission at the squadron level are given by the Nevada Wing Headquarters.
If you are interested in joining CAP, the squadron meets on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month. We also have a cadet program that meets every Tuesday at 6 p.m. The Humboldt County Composite Squadron is located at the Winnemucca Airport.
2nd Lt. Bill Douglas is the public affairs officer for the Humboldt County Composite Squadron NV-068[[In-content Ad]]
