The Northeast Region Civil Air Patrol, sponsored a Search and Rescue (SAR) Competition for this weekend. The majority of the exercise took place on 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.docFrequencies 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)
HEADCAP 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) & Wing of Assignment:
601 (Connecticut)
604 (C182) (Connecticut)
1720 (Maine)
1740 (C182) (Maine)
1926 (Massachusetts)
1928 (C182) (Massachusetts)
1930 (Massachusetts)
2825 (C182) (New Hampshire)
2827 (New Hampshire)
2828 (New Hamsphire)
2912 (New Jersey)
2955 (New Jersey)
3712 (Pennsylvania)
3733 (C182) (Pennsylvania)
9112 (G8) (Acted as "Highbird #1", radio communications relay) (Northeast Region)
9973 (9173?) (G8) (National Commander's Squadron or Northeast Region)
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.
*WGBB TV 40 (Springfield MA) had a news segment last evening that showed a large white Massachusetts Wing Civil Air Patrol Command Post vehicle, with antennas, so I'd assume that this was the communications van being used for the "portable base station" listed above.
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.
A mighty milcom monitor's salute to those direct competition participants as well as those who worked in a support role to make this exercise competition work well. It was an interesting challenge to the hobby radio monitoring experience.
