Talking to Airplanes and Helicopters

Sometimes I feel kind of strange telling people that I am in the Civil Air Patrol.

First they ask, "What is that?" Then when I tell them, they ask, "Oh, do you fly?" Then I have to tell them that I'm a wimp and that pretty much what I do is talk to the airplanes... well, the pilots anyway.

I don't mind too much. It really isn't that I don't like to fly - it's just that I get motion sick really easily. I always have. So, I just pretty much stay on the ground and keep track of the airplanes in the air.

Thursday was one of those days.

The Utah Wing of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) planned a joint exercise with the Utah Air National Guard (ANG) last Thursday afternoon, November 17. It was to take place on the border of Utah and Tooele counties, out in the desert.

A few days prior, it was debatable whether the exercise would actually take place due to a winter storm coming in late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning. Everyone involved was watching conditions so we would know whether to continue with the exercise as planned or make modifications since the aircraft wouldn't be able to fly in stormy weather.

Luckily, the storm subsided by late morning and the exercise was a "go."

Thursday's Weather

This exercise was designed to test our ability to find an aircraft that had gone down using a technique called Radio Direction Finding (RDF). The objective was to search for a Blackhawk helicopter on the ground ("the target") and use two ground teams made up of cadets and their leaders, a CAP aircraft (Cessna 182) flown by personnel from Phantom Squadron out of Spanish Fork, and an AH-64 Apache helicopter from the ANG. In addition, there would be communication personnel from the Wing and a couple squadrons in a communications vehicle (comm van), and command personnel at Wing headquarters in Salt Lake City, near the International airport.

Ground teams being briefed before search

The CAP airplane and the Apache helicopter, along with the ground teams, had radio direction finding equipment, which is used to locate the target. Typically, the aircraft would fly overheard while listening to a beacon from the disabled aircraft on the ground. Once they get in close proximity to the target based on the signal they receive from the beacon, they will radio in coordinates of the target's approximate location. Then, ground teams are sent in the direction of the target to search until they find the target on the ground. Many times, the aircraft is able to get close to the beacon signal, but might not be able to see the target from the air due to the terrain and environment. It is at that time the ground teams will locate the target, check for survivors and casualties, and then act accordingly.

Utah ANG Helicopter flies overhead.

While the search aircraft and ground teams are out doing their thing, there needs to be personnel and equipment at a location nearby that will coordinates all the efforts. This is usually referred to as the "Command Post." Depending on the size of the event, the command post can be anywhere from a single vehicle with one person giving orders, to a whole team with many responsibilities assigned to each individual. One of the main components - and this is where I come in - is communications. Sometimes, communications is in the same vehicle as most of the rest of the command group, and sometimes it is in a separate vehicle set aside strictly for communications. This is referred to as the "Comm Van."

"High Desert-88" - Utah Wing's Communications Van

For this exercise, members of wing communications drove the comm van from Salt Lake down to the location of the event. This comm van happens to be an older ambulance-type vehicle that has been converted for strictly communications use. While it has the capability of almost any communication means necessary, for this exercise we used one CAP VHF radio to talk to our airplane, and a cross-band unit that patched the ANG's high-band VHF FM (138-144 MHz) radio to the low-band VHF (30-88 MHz) radio used by the Apache helicopter. This allowed direct communication from the comm van and aircraft to the Apache helicopter. We also tested HF communication at one point.

My assignment for this exercise was to keep track of the ground teams and CAP aircraft. Since our Incident command is almost always located at wing headquarters, I was in contact with them, also.

So what I did was spend several hours talking to ground and air units, kept a paper log of all communications, and entered all entries into a digital log on a computer. I also coordinated with other personnel at and near the comm van, including the radio operator assigned to the patch. I was busy the entire time spending about half the time on the radio and the other half on the logs.

Sun going down over Utah's West Desert

It was a lot of fun being out in the desert away from the city, with CAP and ANG personnel, and hearing the airplane and helicopters fly by (sometimes only several tens of feet above ground). I also enjoyed using my communication skills, both on the radio and face-to-face with the others. I hope as I continue to do these exercises that my communication skills will continue to improve.

...and gone. "Fairfield Mission Base...out."