Weekend Emergency Services

More training today. Every so often, the CAP squadron will have a formal exercise to train, test, and practice for a real search-and-rescue event. Yesterday, with high winds forecast, the leadership decided to forgo a real exercise with planes in the air and instead just do some classroom training.

Naturally, it's not the same as being out in the field, but I couldn't argue with the logic of being inside while it was freezing and windy outside. For that matter, some of the work is necessarily administrative in nature (how to do incident paperwork, track resources, etc.) so the classroom is still a part of the overall process.

Due to the limited agenda, the meeting was also limited to senior members rather than inclusive of the cadets. That actually turned out to be a positive, as we discussed some issues regarding recruitment and meeting organization that falls to us as adult leaders to handle.

For me personally, it was a good meeting to clear up a few gray areas regarding advancement and emergency services operations qualifications (OpsQuals). I am now a trainee for a couple of operations specialties: Mission Scanner and Mission Staff Assistant. The first is a step on the way to becoming a CAP mission pilot. The second is more or less a go-fer position, but is still an important role during a real incident (think Radar from M.A.S.H. -- you remember that show, right?)

In follow up to the last post, I ordered four gyroscopes and received them today. They're the cheap kind, but they kept three kids busy for at least two hours today. I'd say that's a pretty good result. On top of that, we were able to talk about how they work in an airplane, how the gyroscopic effect keeps their bicycles upright, and learned that dogs don't like the noise of the spinning tops. Who knew?