[Pilots] CAP May newsletter

[Greg Bestul]

Hello MN Wing Pilots,
Wing conference and the Compliance inspection are behind us now, we are headed into the heart of the summer flying season!
We had a great flying month in April, putting 371 hours on our planes. Great Work!!
I have heard from a couple of squadrons that they have completed washing their planes, hopefully the rest of the planes will get their bath before the end of May. This was one item that was pointed out during our recent inspection from CAP-USAF, that all our planes need to show a current washing this springtime.
Overall, the CI went well, but there were a couple of other items that came out of the inspection that need our attention:
An unacceptable number of sorties were not closed out in the 72 hour window (with fuel receipts attached for the funded flights). We need to work diligently at making sure we are getting our sorties closed out ASAP. To help with this, FRO’s check to make sure the flights you release are being closed out. This will give us another layer of oversight for this.
A training item that was overlooked:  All pilots should have completed the ABSORB program “AMRAD pilot training”. Currently we have only 29 pilots that have completed the course. We must show compliance with ALL pilots completing this to CAP-USAF by the end of June, so please get this done ASAP. We will be checking for completion on this.
The way MN wing has been operating up to now is that each squadron assigned an airplane has an operations officer. Since we have centralized maintenance in MN we only used a wing level AMO, and the squadron ops officer was assumed to oversee any squadron AMO duties that would arise. Going forward to align with NHQ’s organizational chart we will need a designated a squadron AMO for each squadron that has an airplane. We will plan on assigning this position to the current squadron operations officer, if we don’t hear from the squadron that they have another member that will take the position. The one item that needs to be completed by all squadron AMO’s is that they have to complete the ABSORB program “AMRAD AMO training”. This is a short read only course. Currently we only have 9 members that have taken this course. We will also have to show compliance to CAP-USAF on this item by the end of June so please get this course done soon if you will be a squadron AMO.
One last item that has come up from the maintenance front is oil quantity for our planes.
Our MN wing supplement to regulation 70-1 is due for updating and we plan to add the following section to clear up any confusion on oil quantities for our airplanes:
“When checking the engine oil before flight on an engine that has been shut down for at least 30 minutes, if the quantity shows below the 6 qt line, oil should be added to return the quantity to at or above the 6 qt line. If the oil is checked on an engine that has been shut down less than 30 minutes the quantity may be up to ½ in below the 6 qt line without adding any additional oil.”
By maintaining 6 quarts of oil in our engines we have shown much better reliability and less down time for engine repair or cylinder changes than the NHQ average. We want to start this new procedure immediately.

Take Care, Fly Safe,
Capt. Greg Bestul
Minnesota Wing Director of Operations
Civil Air Patrol, U.S. Air Force Auxiliary
612-251-4786
GoCivilAirPatrol.com<https://www.gocivilairpatrol.com/>
MNCAP.org<https://www.mncap.org/>
[cid:f54b2cf8-6c70-4ec9-b8c9-09655695f98b]

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