Group 5 SAREX

<%@LANGUAGE="JAVASCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%> Group 5 SAREX


Lt Col Fran Gleockler, Commander	CITIZENS SERVING COMMUNITIES...Above and Beyond	Contact Group Five Public Affairs

GROUP 5 NEWS & INFORMATION

Jan 15, 2010
Group Five Conducts SAREX

Mission pilot candidate, 1st Lt Oscar Revilla, completes flight planning for a sortie under watchful eye of Lt. Col Robert Filler as Mission Scanner Andy Wright, looks on. The three aircrew members, from the Charlotte County Composite Squadron, participated in the Group 5 SAREX held this weekend.

PUNTA GORDA, Fla. – Civil Air Patrol members from across southwest Florida began gearing up today for a weekend-long search-and-rescue exercise. The exercise, conducted by Florida Wing's Group 5, will provide members with mission experience and proficiency training in advance of the annual, Air Force-evaluated wing exercise later this spring. CAP aircraft will operate from airports in Charlotte County, Marco Island, Naples, Sebring and Sarasota. Aircrews and ground teams will conduct visual and electronic target searches in addition to photo reconnaissance sorties. “The members have been working hard to prepare for the event and we could easily fly 50 hours to get everyone through the requirements for mission experience,” said 1st Lt. Robert Little, the exercise's incident commander. “Weather is going to be a factor and we may have to extend the exercise into next week.” The operations area for Group Five encompasses 9,000 square miles over a 10-county area in Southwest Florida, including Charlotte, Collier, De Soto, Glades, Hardee, Hendry, Highlands, Lee, Manatee and Sarasota counties. The group has 10 squadrons, five airplanes and about 510 members. Group 5 was the second most active of Florida Wing's eight groups, flying more than 1,600 hours in 2008. Of those hours, 371 were in support of emergency missions, 860 for training and 252 for cadet and ROTC orientation flights.

Civil Air Patrol, the official auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force, is a nonprofit organization with 58,000 members nationwide. CAP, in its Air Force auxiliary role, performs 90 percent of continental U.S. inland search and rescue missions as tasked by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center and was credited by the AFRCC with saving 72 lives in fiscal year 2009. Its volunteers also perform homeland security, disaster relief and counter-drug missions at the request of federal, state and local agencies. The members play a leading role in aerospace education and serve as mentors to the more than 23,000 young people currently participating in CAP cadet programs. CAP has been performing missions for America for 68 years.

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