Misc Pictures
Targets at Chin
March 16 Training Day Lethbridge Airport
CASARA Lethbridge ( Calgary Zone 2 )
Some Highlights:
Lethbridge CASARA how has 15 active members. Of the 15 we have 14 certified spotters, 11 certified military spotters and 5 certified navigators. Training has been both challenging and fun. The support from CASARA Calgary has been outstanding. I wanted to include a random sampling of pictures from variuos training days. Enjoy !
Lethbridge CASARA how has 15 active members. Of the 15 we have 14 certified spotters, 11 certified military spotters and 5 certified navigators. Training has been both challenging and fun. The support from CASARA Calgary has been outstanding. I wanted to include a random sampling of pictures from variuos training days. Enjoy !
The above were taken during Military Spotter training !
Western Canada SAREX in Cranbrook, BC.
Training Day in Vulcan Airport
The type of targets we look for sometimes.
Oct 13/12 Lethbridge (New certified Navigators)
This time we were back in Lethbridge put together another good exercise. We had Larry, Al and Sandy receive Navigator Certifications. Elaine, Lauretta and Marty also got in a Nav training flight each and need just one more day to complete the Nav training. Ed, Lloyd and James a new spotter trainee all had some more spotter flights.
I am so proud of the Lethbridge team. From our first CASARA flight on June 19, 2011 we have made some excellent progress.
Lethbridge now has 15 members with two more coming on the team in November. We have 13 certified Spotters, 9 certified Military Spotters and 3 certified Navigators. We are searching for pilots and we hope to have a couple within the year.
We thank Calgary for the training support with three pilots, Gary, Dwight and Dennis , a navigator, Ed and a search coordinator, Orin . Thank you Dwight for laying out the targets for us. You did a great job.
Sept 15/12 Vulcan
Several of the CASARA Lethbridge crew met CASARA Calgary in Vulcan for the second Nav training exercise. We had a great day and got Brian, Larry and Marty up for Nav training and Lauretta, Elaine, Dave and Stephanie up on Spotter flights. It was a good day and excellent progress was made on training. Thanks again for Calgary and the three planes, pilots and support crews.
It's been a busy year and it's time for an update.
Training Aug 18, 2012
Lauretta, Stephaine and Marty had an opportunity to attend the Western Canada Sarex in Cranbrook, BC. We left on the Friday and had a great flight over the mountains from Lethbridge. Dwight had flown down on Thursday evening attending a company event and was our very capable pilot. We stayed at a very comfortable hotel and after a evening where we friends from CASARA Calgary and met many new CASARA crews from Manitoba, Sask and northern Alberta, breakfast at 7:00 am and off to the Cranbrook AP via a shuttle bus. The nine crews met at CASARA HQ and where soon busy plotting the search pattern for the day. It consisted of 10 targets and an ELT target separate from the main track. Our flight managed to find 6 of the 10. We also had a ground search exercise and found the target ELT. After the SAREX exercise we had a great supper and then back to the hotel. Sunday up early and off to the AP again.
After some maintenance on the plane we were off to Lethbridge. This had been the first flight over the mountains in a small plane for all of us from Lethbridge. It was a great experience as was the Sarex exercise. I think we all learned a lot.
Training Aug 18, 2012
Lauretta, Stephaine and Marty had an opportunity to attend the Western Canada Sarex in Cranbrook, BC. We left on the Friday and had a great flight over the mountains from Lethbridge. Dwight had flown down on Thursday evening attending a company event and was our very capable pilot. We stayed at a very comfortable hotel and after a evening where we friends from CASARA Calgary and met many new CASARA crews from Manitoba, Sask and northern Alberta, breakfast at 7:00 am and off to the Cranbrook AP via a shuttle bus. The nine crews met at CASARA HQ and where soon busy plotting the search pattern for the day. It consisted of 10 targets and an ELT target separate from the main track. Our flight managed to find 6 of the 10. We also had a ground search exercise and found the target ELT. After the SAREX exercise we had a great supper and then back to the hotel. Sunday up early and off to the AP again.
After some maintenance on the plane we were off to Lethbridge. This had been the first flight over the mountains in a small plane for all of us from Lethbridge. It was a great experience as was the Sarex exercise. I think we all learned a lot.
Training from Vulcan Airport
We had another great day for training on May 12 in Vulcan. The weather was excellent and spirits were high. Lethbridge CASARA and Calgary CASARA, all Zone 2, did their first joint training day and decided that meeting half way in Vulcan was a good plan to try. Lethbridge saw 6 members attend and Calgary saw 10 members attend including the three pilots. Training involved Navigation training and spotter training. Lloyd from our local group is now a fully certified spotter with his three spotter flights. He was able to get his classroom work completed May 10. Al, Sandy each had two Nav flights and a spotter flight each, Lauretta had one Nav flight and two spotter flights, Larry had two spotter flights and I had a single spotter flight. The good news is that Lethbridge now has 13 certified spotters.
Many of the Calgary crews had nav training and spotter training. A successful day all in all. I had a good opportunity to learn a lot more about search HQ and believe this will soon become the standard tool for creation of our search mapping and navigation.
Many thanks to the Town of Vulcan, and the Air Cadets training on their glider during our visit. We all had a front row seat watching the cadets learning the glider.
On a sad note, Warren had set up a target on a air strip near Mossleigh and left a note after ward thanking the landowner. He got a call soon after only to discover that the land owner was involved in a unfortunate mid air collision in Northern Sask. over the weekend. CASARA offers our most sincere condolences all the families of all involved.
Many of the Calgary crews had nav training and spotter training. A successful day all in all. I had a good opportunity to learn a lot more about search HQ and believe this will soon become the standard tool for creation of our search mapping and navigation.
Many thanks to the Town of Vulcan, and the Air Cadets training on their glider during our visit. We all had a front row seat watching the cadets learning the glider.
On a sad note, Warren had set up a target on a air strip near Mossleigh and left a note after ward thanking the landowner. He got a call soon after only to discover that the land owner was involved in a unfortunate mid air collision in Northern Sask. over the weekend. CASARA offers our most sincere condolences all the families of all involved.
A BIG ACHIEVEMENT
CASARA Lethbridge has hit another important milestone! We now have nine Military trained Spotters. What does this mean?
Well, simply put it means that if there is a search and rescue requiring the C130 Hercules and the onboard Sar Techs in Southern Alberta there is a good chance that members of Lethbridge CASARA would be called to Spotter duty and help with an active search. CASARA Calgary would already be active and any available Spotter from Lethbridge would already have recieved a call. It means that Lethbridge members would have split duty training and would be able to respond with conventional Spotter light aircraft or the heavy aircraft from the RCAF. I am so pleased to had be part of the CASARA training we have recieved. The picture below is the C130 and the crew including the nine members from Lethbridge.
Well, simply put it means that if there is a search and rescue requiring the C130 Hercules and the onboard Sar Techs in Southern Alberta there is a good chance that members of Lethbridge CASARA would be called to Spotter duty and help with an active search. CASARA Calgary would already be active and any available Spotter from Lethbridge would already have recieved a call. It means that Lethbridge members would have split duty training and would be able to respond with conventional Spotter light aircraft or the heavy aircraft from the RCAF. I am so pleased to had be part of the CASARA training we have recieved. The picture below is the C130 and the crew including the nine members from Lethbridge.
Training Update
Well, after a very busy Saturday, I am very happy to announce that CASARA Lethbridge now has three more certified Search and Rescue Spotters bringing our total to number to 12. CASARA Lethbridge also has 7 of our Spotters well on their way to becoming Navigators. I really need to say that I am very very proud of how amazingly well this has taken off. We are receiving many fine accolades from our friends in CASARA Calgary and you can bet we are putting Lethbridge on the map once more. As I look ahead we are going to have a busy year. We are budgeting with Calgary to plan a monthly exercises and may have our own training budget in the near future. To certify the Nav trainees we will need a total of 21 hours of flight time. Along the way we will all be honing our spotters skills, doing some ELT ground training and somewhere we need to stop and have some pot lucks or BBQ's. I think we are doing Lethbridge proud. I am planning in the near future to ask Lethbridge Living Magazine to do a article on CASARA Lethbridge as a way of public awareness. All of your hours of training and practice are volunteer hours and that's an important public service. It goes without saying the plane rides are not too bad either. Please note the link on the upper right to some pictures of our training day.
Special thank you to our good friends at EXCEL FLIGHT Training for the use of your classroom and sort of taking over your space with our numbers. We also thank AIR WEST Flight Services for taking care of our planes and pilots.
And last but certainly not least, a big THANK YOU to CASARA Calgary for making the training and the CASARA presence in Lethbridge a possibility. Thanks to Gary, Dwight, Denis, Warren, Dave, Fred and Darcy.
I would also like to thank Dale and Rob and Mr. Peterson on who's farms we were able to place our search targets.
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