 On Thursday, 18 February 2009, was looking like just another typical Thursday night squadron meeting. The evening had started and Capt. David Yost was set to present a pilot safety briefing and we were waiting for pilots from the Anoka Squadron (ANE) to arrive. We heard the Anoka aircraft taxi up and engine shut down and were waiting for Capt. Shelly Supan and 2Lt. Lion Templin to come in and get things going. When they came in, they were chatting about how they had monitored an ELT signal before they shut their engine down. They reported this to Minnesota Wing ES Officer, Maj. Paul Pieper. No sooner than did Capt. Yost get into his pilot safety briefing, the call came in from Maj. Pieper saying we have an ELT mission which was confirmed and mission number 10-M-0116 was active. At this time, the aircrew called to duty was Capt. Shelly Supan and 2Lt. Lion Templin since they had to return to Anoka that night anyway. They sprang into action and began to immediately to start the pre-flight of their aircraft for departure. A ground team from St. Croix was quickly assembled since it was a packed house on a meeting night. 1Lt. Charles Jents was Ground Team Leader (GTL) with 3 Ground Team Members (GTM) C/A1C Kati Jents, C/MSgt. Noah Hite & C/AB Austin Koeckeritz. At first they used the Direction finding (DF) equipment to see if they could determine a rough directional reading, but with the metal hangars nearby they needed to move away to a more open area. The aircraft was airborne by this time and was able to pick up the signal and indicated it was somewhere on the field at Lake Elmo (21D). The ground team traveled out to the north main gate and was able to confirm what the aircrew had indicated. The aircrew was then directed to return to base (RTB) and departed the local area to travel back to Anoka Airport (ANE) since the evening was drawing to a close and the time was getting late. The ground team was able to get close to the signal when they dismounted the vehicle and used the DF equipment to pinpoint the signals origin. They tracked the signal to a specific hangar on Grumman lane at the Lake Elmo airport. At this time they were not able to get to the ELT to silence it so the local sheriff was called to locate the owner and to silence this signal. This was a great opportunity for our squadron to actually use the skills which are practiced continually just for this reason. A special thank you is in order for Incident Commander (IC) LTC. Bill Rutten, Mission Staff Assist (MSA) Maj. Mike Bordonaro, Communications Officer (Comm) Maj. Stefan Sylvander for their participation during this mission. Congratulations & well done to all who participated. Story Submitted by: |
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St Croix Composite Squadron - Civil Air PatrolLake Elmo Airport (21D), Lake Elmo, Minnesota |
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