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.

Navigator / Spotter Training Feb 2012

Seven of our certified spotters have decided to take the Navigation Course through CASARA.

On Jan 6, 2012 we got together for the first time to start the process of becoming Navigators.

Al, Brian, Elaine, Larry, Lauretta, Marty and Sandi started with the slideshow presentation followed by map info, plotting lat long, laying out search patterns, in short learning a lot of new information for some and a review for others. We met again on Jan 24 and completed the course on Jan. 31. How comes the hard part. While we can plot a search pattern we now face the task of trying to keep an airplane on course following that pattern. The goal will be four individual flight each of different search tracks and doing this in a manner that is within 600 feet of the search track we are to be following. This requires an excellent pilot and good communication so that both the pilot and the navigator are of one mind. Sounds like a challenge. Tomorrow is Feb. 4, 2012 and it's the day we get to try out the knowledge we have gained in the past weeks. Good Luck guys. Tomorrow is also a Spotter training day. Stephaine, Dave and Nader will be able to gain the flight time to become certified spotters. Many of us well also be able to get in a refresher spotter flight to keep us current with the requirements of the CASARA standards.

The great thing in all this is that Lethbridge is well on it's way to re-certification to hopefully regain it's former status as Zone # 1 in Alberta. That would be a very good situation. It will most certainly take some of the pressure off of CASARA Calgary volunteers.