SAR Training

Murdoughnut said:
Does that count just for in the air ... or should we also not have civilian sea vessels search for missing boaters too? My brother-in-law has a dog trained to hunt out cadavers. Should he just keep it at home to stay out of the way?

I'm trying to figure out if you're saying don't get involved because 1) you won't find anything; 2) you'll get in the way; or 3) you're missing some key skill that's necessary to be of any use
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What I'm saying is that if you are just a regular citizen; let the trained proffessionals and volunteers who are trained in SAR do their work and stay out of the way unless they ask for your assistance. People getting in the way can mean the difference between life or death. Doing SAR is a difficult job and requires special training. I can tell you that finding a downed aircraft is hard. Most crashed aircraft don't resemble aircraft at all. I've done plenty of SAR missions at sea and it'a also difficult. The sea state can massivley hinder visual searching. There are different search patterns depending on the mission. Now if your a boater, then you are required to render assistace as drunkenbeagle stated
 
H46Bubba said:
What I'm saying is that if you are just a regular citizen; let the trained proffessionals and volunteers who are trained in SAR do their work and stay out of the way unless they ask for your assistance.
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It's a pretty big ocean out there. Given that the USCG only has two aircraft out looking, I doubt you are going to get in anyone's way.
 
drunkenbeagle said:
It's a pretty big ocean out there. Given that the USCG only has two aircraft out looking, I doubt you are going to get in anyone's way.
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The CG also used other DOD assets other than it's own. The use the assistance of the Navy and it's assets alot to help in searches. So there might be more than two aircraft out there doing different pattern searches.
 
Murdoughnut said:
There's a local family offering a $20k reward for any pilot or boater who finds their missing loved one alive after he fell off of his fishing boat yesterday. I'm not going to go up and look for him because I don't feel like I'm adequately trained for such a flight, but it got me wondering ... are there any resources out there to learn S&R flight tactics/procedures that don't involve CAP? I'm sure it's just a matter of flying a grid, but I'd be interested to know if there's any information out there for this type of flying. Not interested in joining CAP, though.
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At this point his prospects are pretty grim. If he didn't drown immediately, he's likely died from exposure/dehydration by now, if he's been in the water all this time.

Save yourself some troubles... there's not a lot you can do right now.
 
Firebird2XC said:
At this point his prospects are pretty grim. If he didn't drown immediately, he's likely died from exposure/dehydration by now, if he's been in the water all this time.

Save yourself some troubles... there's not a lot you can do right now.
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Oh I know - I didn't feel prepared to go out there and fly rectangles in the gulf right now, I was just asking about future incidents if I felt so inclined. Nick Schuyler was found clinging to his upside down boat a few days after he and his friends with missing - by a civilian boater, about 20-miles out. It'd be nice to help in these type of efforts in the future.
 
Re: S&R Training

drunkenbeagle said:
Why not just do that now? Doesn't really take any special training, just take someone along with a good pair of binoculars.
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I'm not going to start a CAP war again but yes, It does take a bit of training to do it safely. A lot to state aviation departments don't allow untrained pilots in search areas, and have been know to request TFRs.

On the other hand, some state pilot organizations do provide SAR training, Washington Pilots Assc. comes to mind. They do the same training as CAP, but don't have to jump through the hoops, but sometime that shows in the skills of the pilot.

There is also the Coast Guard Auxiliary Air wing. You use your own plane with them, but some of those guys look a lot like some of our CAP guys:D

Haven't done much of the search thing have you? Unless those are gyro-stabilized bino's that's a great way to learn how well a barf bag works, in short order. Even GS bino's can make you sick if you spend too much time looking through them sitting in an airplane.
 
MikeD said:
There are training manuals we have in the mil for this.

Maybe this could be a new John and Martha King addition to the series....
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I'm not sure I could take Martha explaining expanding squares, creeping lines and parallel tracks.:crazy:
 
drunkenbeagle said:
It's a pretty big ocean out there. Given that the USCG only has two aircraft out looking, I doubt you are going to get in anyone's way.
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The point of an organized search is that its... well... organized. You section off grids and search them one by one. The planes involved, are assigned grids, and the search manager keeps them several grids apart for safety. If you throw several airplanes into the search area that are not part of the search or under control of the search manager.... well, you can imagine all kinds of things happening, like midair's maybe.

Just a little food for thought!
 
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