[Pilots] June CAP newsletter

[Greg Bestul]

Hello MN Wing Pilots,

We are well into the summer flying season! We finished off May with a great flying month, we flew 357 hours compared to 349 last year in May (2024 was our yearly record high number of flight hours). Even with the monsoons this June we are off to a great start flying 256 hours vs 248 last year. We have also been getting a lot of orientation flights completed, 357 so far this fiscal year, Keep up the good work!
Our plane washing was very successful, we only have three planes that escaped a bath, 369CP, 50935, and 439CP. If one of these planes is in your squadron and you could coordinate a wash it would be greatly appreciated.
Recent missions we have been involved in:

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Just finishing up the Low Level route survey flights for the air force. This has involved multiple flights using DLH, BRD, and MIC crews and planes.
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We took part in the yellow apron NCR SAR mission, and although the weather wasn’t very good, we learned a lot about inter wing operations. Our biggest part of the mission was to have been using the new WALDO camera system. We had crews ready and programing completed but the weather just wouldn’t cooperate to get any flights in. We are continuing to train pilots on the new system so we are ready when an actual mission comes along.
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We sent 4 of our C172’s to OSH for the great lakes region flight academy. They put just under 55 hours of flying on our planes.

Our wing CI inspection is coming up next year and we want to make sure we do well on it. One of the items we will continue to stress is Paperwork (insert groan). Make sure you are completing good briefing and debriefings on all of your flights, especially funded ones! Use the profile checklist for proficiency flights and upload them onto your sortie.
The pilot flight clinic is underway. Try and make it to one of the ground briefings so that you are eligible for the flight potion of the mission. Part of the briefing will review the profile checklist for proficiency flights and how to find, fill out and attach them to your sortie.
On the airplane front, we have officially retired C172 N98424, it is waiting for a new owner to pick it up. NHQ has just sent out the notice that C172 N98175 will also be retired. The good news is that I have received word that we will be picking up a new C182 G1000 airplane from the factory in August, so that will keep our number of flying airplanes stable.
We are doing much better at keeping the databases updated on our airplanes. These need to be done every 28 days to stay current. We want our airplanes databases up to date in case we have a mission that needs to be flown IFR. We don’t want to come out to fly a mission that needs an IFR airplane and find that the database is out of date and we have to cancel or delay due to this. CAP-USAF also wants to be able to fly IFR flights when they come out to fly our aircraft. So if you see an airplane that has an out of date database contact your squadron ops officer or myself about getting it updated.
Something to watch for on our new C172’s (N413CA and N445CA). There is a communication selector switch located just to the right of the spare handheld microphone. It is small and not lit very well, but it selects either seat #2 (right front seat)  or #3 (rear seat) as the active microphone to transmit on the number two audio panel. What this means is that if you have #3 selected, the right seat pilot will not be able to transmit on any radio and the #3 (rear seat person) will be transmitting on whatever is selected on the right side audio panel. With #2 selected the right seat pilot will transmit on whatever is selected on the right side audio panel and the back seat person will not be able to transmit on any radio. So be mindful of what position this switch is in.

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Continue to be vigilant at taking care of our planes, we have been doing a pretty good job of this so far this year. Remember to do Postflight inspections to catch any items needing attention before the next flights. Be especially careful moving airplanes in and out of hangars, this is when our highest incidence of damage events have been occurring!

Take Care, and Fly Safe,
Capt. Greg Bestul, CAP
Director of Operation, MN Wing
612.251.4786
gbestul at gmail.com<mailto:gbestul at gmail.com>
U.S. Air Force Auxiliary
GoCivilAirPatrol.com<http://www.gocivilairpatrol.com/>
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