Fourteen pilots from across the North Dakota Wing gathered Sept. 20 across the state line for all-weather flight training at Moorhead Municipal Airport in Minnesota.
The annual advanced training session provided “one of the few times we all get to gather in one place, get to know each other, and just talk aviation for the day,” said Lt. Col. Chad Smith, commander of the Red River Valley Senior Squadron, which hosted the event at its hangar.
Squadrons from Grand Forks, Jamestown, and Minot supplied four Civil Air Patrol aircraft for the training. In addition to the CAP members, CAP-USAF liaison Jeremy Aamold visited from St. Paul, Minnesota.
The day’s weather was far from typical for search-and-rescue operations or aerial photography — CAP’s most common North Dakota missions. Instead, low clouds and reduced visibility prompted Smith to focus training on topics and flight plans applicable to instrument flight rules.
“It ended up being the perfect weather for that,” said one pilot, Maj. Jeffrey Slocum, Magic City Composite Squadron commander. “Cloud cover was low enough to provide real-life training but high enough off the ground to allow a safe margin of safety.”
Most of Civil Air Patrol’s emergency response flights feature good visibility required for photography and visual searches, but aircrews may need to travel through clouds between their designated mission area and their servicing airport.
Between scheduled training flights, members shared stories of search and rescue practice exercises and real-world flooding response missions. Capt. Fred Remer of the Grand Forks Composite Squadron presented an overview of modern forecasting tools available to all pilots.
“These models don’t count as the ‘legal’ forecast, like the terminal aerodrome forecast, but they are updated much more frequently, allowing crews to make real-time decisions during mission flying operations,” Remer said.
