Moving Along

Slowly but surely, my CAP experience is taking shape. I still don't know what the holdup was, but everything is now in order for my Level 1. It is now on the books, so I am now "in" and can fly in the aircraft, work with cadets, and get moving on professional development.

The CAP specialty tracks include several roles. I had been looking at the public affairs officer position, but after talking to the wing PAO, I found out that there is a lot of time built into the advancement. Basically, many of the steps require a full year of service, rather than six months as in many of the other positions. This doesn't keep one from working on things outside of the chosen path, and some of the public affairs tasks are pretty interesting, so I might still consider it. On the other hand, the squadron commander asked me if I would be interested in Aerospace Education. It looks pretty straightforward, and obviously fits my piloting experience, so it's rapidly rising to be my first choice. Doing that would require that I become actively involved in training cadets and also doing some outside education, like at local schools. I'm all for that...

Today, I also went to my second senior meeting. On top of some administrative stuff, we talked about having a squadron fundraiser. Most interesting was that a couple of new members like myself need to get G1000 familiarization. Though I don't have enough PIC hours yet, I can still do the ground training. This goes hand in hand with my time playing around with the DA-40 so long ago. I still remember much of the information, and a second time around would be a good thing.

Starting next week, then, we begin getting into some more meaty parts of the flying game.