# Civil Air Patrol



## TLDR20 (Feb 21, 2017)

Anyone here ever had any dealings with the CAP? I am thinking about joining. I like the idea of flying with a purpose. 

I honestly don't know much about them, other than that they might come looking for me if I crash. 

Aviation geeks? @Ranger Psych, @DA SWO?


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## amlove21 (Feb 21, 2017)

We have a yearly program (Pararescue Orientation Course or PJOC) where we work with CAP for a couple weeks. I can put you in touch with the primary POC's- I don't have a ton of contact with them but overall the organization seems pretty well set up.


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## DA SWO (Feb 21, 2017)

TLDR20 said:


> Anyone here ever had any dealings with the CAP? I am thinking about joining. I like the idea of flying with a purpose.
> 
> I honestly don't know much about them, other than that they might come looking for me if I crash.
> 
> Aviation geeks? @Ranger Psych, @DA SWO?


I did it years ago.


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## TLDR20 (Feb 21, 2017)

amlove21 said:


> We have a yearly program (Pararescue Orientation Course or PJOC) where we work with CAP for a couple weeks. I can put you in touch with the primary POC's- I don't have a ton of contact with them but overall the organization seems pretty well set up.



Yeah remember that young man I asked you about mentoring(he is in Japan and will contact you eventually) he did the PJOC. His dad was one of my flight instructors and is heavily involved..


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## TLDR20 (Feb 21, 2017)

DA SWO said:


> I did it years ago.



Anything positive or negative? Are you a pilot? Did you fly with them?


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## amlove21 (Feb 21, 2017)

TLDR20 said:


> Yeah remember that young man I asked you about mentoring(he is in Japan and will contact you eventually) he did the PJOC. His dad was one of my flight instructors and is heavily involved..


Oh no crap! Usually it's a very positive event. I don't have a single bad thing to say about it, and the limited experience I have had has been positive. I just don't have much.


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## SpitfireV (Feb 21, 2017)

When I was in the ATC as a kid we met some guy from CAP who came over for something or another. I always assumed it was solely a youth organisation. Interesting to read about.


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## TLDR20 (Feb 21, 2017)

SpitfireV said:


> When I was in the ATC as a kid we met some guy from CAP who came over for something or another. I always assumed it was solely a youth organisation. Interesting to read about.



It is a youth org for non pilots.  To have a pilot cert in the US you have to be 16.


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## Totentanz (Feb 21, 2017)

TLDR20 said:


> It is a youth org for non pilots.  To have a pilot cert in the US you have to be 16.



Do they have a track or a progression toward flying (ie getting a pilots license as a young adult)?


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## TLDR20 (Feb 21, 2017)

Totentanz said:


> Do they have a track or a progression toward flying (ie getting a pilots license as a young adult)?



I don't know. I have my license.


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## SpitfireV (Feb 21, 2017)

Yes but I figured it was more like our ATC I mean to say. 

New Zealand Air Training Corps - Wikipedia


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## TLDR20 (Feb 21, 2017)

SpitfireV said:


> Yes but I figured it was more like our ATC I mean to say.
> 
> New Zealand Air Training Corps - Wikipedia



In America ATC means Air Traffic Control.


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## Viper1 (Feb 21, 2017)

TLDR20 said:


> Anyone here ever had any dealings with the CAP? I am thinking about joining. I like the idea of flying with a purpose.
> 
> I honestly don't know much about them, other than that they might come looking for me if I crash.
> 
> Aviation geeks? @Ranger Psych, @DA SWO?



I was in CAP from '95 to 2000. It set me on the path to military service. I did PJOC and worked the Oshkosh Airshow as a cadet. You'd be a great influence on young minds. 

You say "flying with a purpose?" You better believe it. Aside from flying for emergency services purposes, those orientation rides with cadets create future pilots. My brother got his solo. My best friend did his solo and flies AC-130W for AFSOC. Another flies C-17's. Me? I realized I prefer my own two feet :) 

We flew with Vietnam vets, vets of the Berlin Airlift, vets who flew "operation ranch hand," gulf war vets, World War Two vets. Bush pilots, slick pilots, jet pilots, prop pilots, pilots who had their own grass strips. It's a wealth of knowledge and a professional organization that teaches leadership and service. I learned about first aid and CPR, aircraft recognition and radio procedures. I learned a lot about leadership. I got to hear a member of the Doolittle Raiders speak because of CAP. 

There were a core group of 8 of us around a larger group of cadets. All 8 of us went in the military and have deployed to combat. CAP put us on that path.


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## Viper1 (Feb 21, 2017)

Totentanz said:


> Do they have a track or a progression toward flying (ie getting a pilots license as a young adult)?


Yes they do


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## SpitfireV (Feb 21, 2017)

TLDR20 said:


> In America ATC means Air Traffic Control.



I can see the confusion.


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## carlo amedio (Feb 22, 2017)

I was in CAP for a while as a cadet and it was a pretty good organization. The two coolest things they did were search and rescue and flying planes, they also had two pretty intense boot camps we had the opportunity to go to, a week long program and a weekend one, I think it's called BCS for basic cadet school. I never got to go but a friend of mine went and he said he almost cried getting smoked (he was 14 I think but he grew up in a bad neighborhood and worked out so much he was bigger than my dad, so I was surprised.) supposedly they hated it on the first day and didn't want to leave by the last.

 There was also a lot of volunteer work, we would go door to door asking for donations to buy wreaths and then lay them on gravestones in military graveyards, and also bus tables at veterans dinner events, provide security at airshows stuff like that. These were the most common opportunities provided, and personally, I liked doing it because it was rewarding.

 I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet as I am under the impression this isn't just something unique to my area but we did do search and rescue. I never did search and rescue, but I regret that because there wasn't any age limit since they weren't doing anything crazy like pulling people out of burning wreckage. The requirements to do SAR were completing a bunch of online modules, we didn't even have to learn CPR since our ground teams were only allowed to do the S part of SAR. I remember guys talking about being in high school and then getting a text and before they knew it they were up in the mountains looking for crashed planes, when they found them they set up a perimeter and contacted the professionals to pull off the rescue part. We also had pilots who flew planes over natural disasters to help keep SAR informed, but they had to be adults so I never really bothered to learn much about it.  Everyone there pretty much wanted a military career and my squadron's captain was trying to join AF Pararescue. He had already gotten to do training with PJs and had an extensive background in search and rescue before even leaving high school. 

As for the flying aspect I remember it was insanely cool to fly a plane, despite me getting airsick and throwing up after we landed. This may be unique to my area, but we only got five O-rides, then we couldn't go anymore. Again, not sure if this was the norm, it may have been rationing since we always had a lot of cadets going out for o-rides that would make sense. Some of the future pilots I knew would use another program that I forget the name of that was solely dedicated to flying. 

We met up once a week at an actual retired military base and got updates, watched presentations, and did PT (testing only), which was a joke for the most part but PT standards didn't need to be high, uniforms on the other hand were held up to pretty decent standards, It wasn't that bad looking back but I was a VERY lazy kid so spending hours shining boots examining my uniforms (dress blues or BDUs) for bomb cords and creases and other such stuff was annoying but it helped my discipline. We also got cards that allowed us to get on to Air Force bases (can't recall exactly how this worked), which was shocking, I had a movie based image of military bases, so when I saw a Gamestop and a small mall I was shocked.
we had packets full of information we had to memorize to move up in the organization stuff like rank structure the names of all the highest ranking officers, stuff like that. CAP was a pretty good experience, I can't recommend it enough and I hope some of this was helpful, sorry if I rambled on a bit too much.


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## Devildoc (Feb 22, 2017)

TLDR20 said:


> Anyone here ever had any dealings with the CAP? I am thinking about joining. I like the idea of flying with a purpose.
> 
> I honestly don't know much about them, other than that they might come looking for me if I crash.
> 
> Aviation geeks? @Ranger Psych, @DA SWO?



I was a cadet in junior high through college, then a senior member for a while.  Our squadron was mostly SAR; we had a few pilots.  It was though CAP that I took flying lessons (this was 86-87), and we flew quite a bit.

I loved the opportunities....the EAA fly-in at Oshkosh, PJ training in West Va., camps at Pope, Columbus AFB, not to mention the real-world SAR work.


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## Devildoc (Feb 22, 2017)

Viper1 said:


> I did PJOC and worked the Oshkosh Airshow as a cadet.



...as did I.  Did you do blue beret??


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