News - Page 5

Civil Air Patrol units across South Dakota are holding a “Safety Down Day” this month to stress the importance of safety and risk management in all aspects of CAP.

Civil Air Patrol in South Dakota is assisting Feeding South Dakota (FSD) and other agencies in their efforts to feed South Dakotans who have been snowed in for over a week because of winter storms. The operational support was approved yesterday (Tuesday) by the Civil Air Patrol National Headquarters.

South Dakota Wing’s Lookout Mountain Composite Squadron (LMCS) spent much of this year competing in the CAP National AE High-Altitude Balloon Challenge for Cadets. The program asked cadet teams to submit experiments to be carried on balloons to almost 20 miles above the Earth. 

Members from Lincoln County Composite Squadron Composite Squadron and Sioux Falls Composite Squadron worked together recently for an airplane wash (with help from some wing staff members and parents).

The beginning of winter is a great time to clean the summer and fall grime off CAP airplanes, and make it a fun activity.

South Dakota Wing demonstrated the ability to use aircraft relay to communicate across the state during a sortie Nov 20. The objective of the test was to determine the effective range and usability of a “high-bird” communications relay in central SD.

Colonel Mike Beason, the SD Wing Civil Air Patrol (CAP) Director of sUAS (Small Unmanned Aerial Systems), has another job when he’s not volunteering with CAP.

South Dakota is the latest state with a life saved credited to CAP support. The CAP “Save” is for a cell phone forensics mission during which the wing was not activated.

South Dakota Wing held a day-long operational mission training exercise on Saturday, Nov 5.  The training, conducted at multiple locations around the state, featured airborne search and photography skills, ground search, air-to-ground coordination, aerial drone photography, and related mission management skills.

South Dakota Wing holds a distributed SAREX tomorrow, Nov. 5. The event will feature squadrons training in their home locations, based on locally-determined operational training priorities.

South Dakota Wing, Civil Air Patrol, aircrews flew four training sorties with F-16 jets of the 175^th Fighter Squadron, South Dakota Air National Guard on October 18 and 21. CAP’s Cessnas simulated unauthorized aircraft flying in restricted air space.