Pro Tip #2: Position Reports

Position reports are really important, whether a radio operator is giving one or taking one. They need to be accurately logged. What can you do to increase accuracy?

If you are the sending station, ask that the receiving station READ BACK your position report. If the readback doesn’t match what you sent, say CORRECTION, and read the coordinates correctly. Again, ask the receiving station READ BACK. Do this until the receiving station has the coordinates correctly. If you are the receiving station, say I READ BACK, and read back what you copied. The sending operator may not ask for it.

Be aware of the format used in a position report. Lat/long can be sent as degrees/decimal degrees, degrees – minutes/decimal minutes, or degrees – minutes –seconds. In addition, other formats are used. For ground teams, UTM Grid makes more sense than lat/long, because it’s easier to calculate the distance between two sets of coordinates, so don’t be surprised to get a position report from a ground team in UTM Grid. If you’re dealing with military teams, they use MGRS, which is similar to UTM Grid.

Depending on how someone gives a position report, it’s possible to confuse the different lat/long formats, and UTM Grid and MGRS can be confused. If you’re giving a position report, consider giving the format as well, to reduce confusion.

Lt Col Kristin Freeman, CAP AK001

480550@akwg.cap.gov

Civil Air Patrol, U.S. Air Force Auxiliary GoCivilAirPatrol.com

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Required Water Safety (WS) Training Available for Operations Qualification

In the past few years, some CAP mission responses have included extended over open water operations and other areas where no useful landing sites exist, such as rocky coastal islands and large mashes in tundra zones, and the trend is likely to continue. Operational Risk Management (ORM) requires the risk of these extended of these over-water missions to be mitigated by standardized training of aircrews and available equipment.

An extended over-water flight or sortie is defined as any flight operation conducted outside the normal power-off gliding distance to land, as determined by altitude, glide speed, wind speed, pilot technique and other determining factors.

CAP regulations (CAPR 70-1; 9.11.10.2.1-3) require that all crew members participating in extended over-water flights or sorties must have successfully completed over-water survival training within the past three years and validated in each member’s Operations Qualifications (Ops Quals).

In the past, compliance with the Water Safety (WS) endorsement requirement has been difficult because training opportunities have been limited. CAP is now fortunate to have received an invitation from the FAA Safety Team (FAAST) to attend sessions presented by the Civil Aerospace Medical Institute (CAMI), in ANC on 26 or 27 April or in FAI on 29 or 30 April. All days are the same, a morning classroom session followed by training an in-pool session, so you would attend only one day. You will be required to attend the classroom portion to participate in the pool training.

In order to plan for those classes I will need a request from each participant stating requested attendance site, date, name, CAPID# and e-mail address. At this time the sessions are first come first served limited to 20-25 participants. This event will be open to the general public so let me know right away if you are interested and I will send you further details a couple weeks prior to the event.

Col

Skip Widtfeldt, CAP

Alaska Wing Senior Advisor to Commander

Liaison to USCG Auxiliary D-17

(c) +1 (907) 306.3296

(e-mail) AV80R@icloud.com

Civil Air Patrol, U.S. Air Force Auxiliary GoCivilAirPatrol.com