[MilCom] Civil Air Patrol SAR Competition Exercise Monitoring Report 6/16/07

[Ken]

The Northeast Regional Civil Air Patrol, sponsored a Search and Rescue (SAR) 
Competition for this weekend.  The majority of the exercise took place today 
(6/16/07) at Westover JARB (KCEF), Chicopee, MA and the surrounding 
geographic area.  The exercise included both airborne & ground team 
competition exercises.

Reference:  http://www.ner.cap.gov/es/NER_SARCOMP_OPLAN.doc

Frequencies that were monitored active today included:
118.35 AM KCEF Ground Control
118.9 AM KBAF Tower
121.775 AM ELT Practice Beacon
125.35 AM KBDL Approach/Departure Control, Flight following
148.125 NFM (CTCSS 100.0/none) Simplex:  Mission Base Functional Support 
Activites
148.150  NFM (CTCSS 100.0/none)  Simplex:  Mission Base, Aircraft, Ground 
Teams

Callsigns Monitored:
Base/ Mobiles /Portables (and potential use/function):
ABENAKI 414  (ground teams transportation)
AIR OPERATIONS (functional) portable)
FLIGHT LINE (function) portable)
CAPSTONE 110 (Mission Communications, Portable Base Station?)
CHARTER OAK 11 (mobile, team management)
CHARTER OAK 350 (ground teams transportation)
DOWNEAST 300  (ground teams transportation)
DOWNEAST 301 (ground teams transportation)
GROUND OPS (functional) portable)
HEADCAP 302 (mobile) (management/teams evaluation?)
HEADCAP 400 (mobile) (Evaluator for comm out exercise aircraft to ground 
teams)
HEAD CAP 403 (mobile) (Evaluator for setup of ELT practice beacon)
INCIDENT COMMANDER (functional portable)
MISSION BASE (Portable base station?)
PATRIOT 54 (ground teams transportation)
PATRIOT 63 (ground teams transportation)
PATRIOT 92  (ground teams trasnportation)
PENN CAP 400 (ground teams transportation)
RED DRAGON 28 (2828?) (ground teams transportation)
WHITE PEAK?  32 (mobile)

Aircraft Callsigns (type of aircraft if known):
CAPFLIGHT (XXX/XXXX):
601
604 (C182)
1720
1740 (C182)
1926
1928 (C182)
1930
2825 (C182)
2827
2828
2912
2955
3712
3733 (C182)
9112 (G8)   (Acted as "Highbird #1", radio communications relay)
9973 (9173?) (G8)

Additional Comments on Monitored Activity:
*Based upon Larry Van Horn's authored articles in "Monitoring Times" 
magazine June 2007 edition (CAP aircraft, state/regions callsigns & radio 
frequencies information), it appeared that Northeast Region, CT, MA, ME, NH, 
NJ, PA participated in the competition.  RI, NY and VT did not appear to 
have participated.

*HIGHBIRD 1 provided relay information via simplex back to mission base from 
approximately 0833 to 1130 hrs and was not replaced by the other G8 
aircraft.

*It did not appear that aircraft communicated directly with ground teams --  
at least I did not monitor any activity on ANY CAP VHF NFM  or ANY aero 
multicom frequencies.

*Exercise areas for the aircraft was a fairly large area.  Exercises 
included:   Aircraft flew at least 30 miles west of KCEF & spotting a 
specific object (I would guess some sort of signal paneling).  There were 
also photographing type missions that had the aircraft flying over a lake in 
the Southwick area & also over the area in the vicinity of the Basketball 
Hall of Fame, Springfield.   Also the comm out aircraft to ground teams was 
held in the vicinity of South Deerfield (MA).    Afternoon thundestorms 
moving into the exercise areas, resulted in some modification and/or 
cancellation of portions of some individual aircraft competition exercises.

*Ground operations exercises consisted of  ELT searches (with portable 
gear), "line search", and "wilderness" search/moulaged patient treatment. 
Additionally ground teams participated in the comm out exercise.  Of the 
four ground team exercises, three were held either at Westover JARB 
(probably the "Dog Patch Training Area")  or in close proximity of the base 
(fields in Granby/Ludlow or State Park Chicopee/Ludlow line) since all 
mobile units could be monitored from my location and also directly 
communicated with the Mission Base.  Furthermore, I could monitor the ELT 
practice beacon.

*Ground Team communications basically reported to MISSION BASE when they 
were leaving, arrived on scene, departing the exercise area, & returning to 
the mission base area.  It appeared that MISSION BASE relayed this 
information to GROUND OPERATIONS.

*Aircraft communications followed a similar procedure, with the aircraft 
notifying MISSION base upon takeoff/departure, arrival at the exercise 
scene, departure from the exercise scene & landing at MISSION base.  This 
information appeared to be relayed to AIR OPERATIONS.

*Air Traffic Control, included assigning a "squawk code" to each aircraft by 
Westover Ground Control who also controlled the aircraft taxiing from/to the 
North Ramp area to/from runways.  Westover Tower controlling takeoffs which 
had most aircraft taking off on runway #15 and making a left turn. Flight 
following/monitoring safety was provided by Bradley Approach/Departure 
Control, with assistance at times from "HIGH BIRD #1" to let the aircraft 
know KBDL was trying to contact them.

*I did not monitor any Intrasquad Radio (ISR) OR Family Radio Service (FRS) 
portable Communications.  Since this is low power portable operations, the 
teams may have been just too far from my home monitoring post.  So it is 
possible that intra team comms used this equipment.

My monitored effort from my home monitoring command post started at 0745 hrs 
local and ended at approximately 1505 hrs local.  It was fairly exciting to 
monitor the overall coordination efforts & activities that supported this 
competition exercise.

Please note that Civil Air Patrol is always looking for volunteers --  
seniors as well as cadet members, including those that interested in radio 
communications.   The best way to see if this organization would be a "fit" 
for your volunteer efforts, is to visit your local unit.  Local unit 
Information can be found at:    http://cap.findlocation.com/   If there's no 
unit close to you, don't give up ---- it is my understanding that at least 
some wings (notably Iowa wing) are now experimenting (or at leatconsidering) 
with a new type of organization (called "stations", which are not flights or 
squadron's BUT allow member's to be placed in an "adminstrative" squadron 
controlled by wing,  and only meet monthly/bi-monthly versus weekly & gives 
CAP a quick ground team DF response capability (after training) especially 
in geographic areas that are a long travel distance from the nearest 
squadron.

A mighty monitoring hobbyist's salute to the many Civil Air Patrol 
volunteers today who participated directly or supported this exercise 
competition (which I understand may be held in all 8 regions and leading up 
to a national competition).

Ken
Springfield MA Monitoring Area