David-aviator
Well Known Member
Sad news indeed, another RV aviator gone west. I did not know this guy but can feel the loss of those who did.
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Van's Air Force
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RV-10 found (was missing in Texas): Sad news
- Thread starter Ironflight
- Start date
Please......
Folks, please don't take this personally, but I would like this thread to be something that, if Mark's family were to read it, would bring comfort in the thought that his friends miss him and are saddened by the loss. I just removed a couple of comments which, although well intentioned, were really speculating on the cause of this terrible crash. If you wish, please start another thread on that topic, and we'll see if it holds up - but I really would like to keep this thread from turning into a give and take on what might have caused our RV brother's too-soon departure.
I hope I am being fair....
Paul
Folks, please don't take this personally, but I would like this thread to be something that, if Mark's family were to read it, would bring comfort in the thought that his friends miss him and are saddened by the loss. I just removed a couple of comments which, although well intentioned, were really speculating on the cause of this terrible crash. If you wish, please start another thread on that topic, and we'll see if it holds up - but I really would like to keep this thread from turning into a give and take on what might have caused our RV brother's too-soon departure.
I hope I am being fair....
Paul
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Geico266
Well Known Member
Never a problem Paul, you are aways fair.
Nomex Maximus
Well Known Member
A CAP member's write-up of the search...Pt 1
Respects and condolences to the family and friends. Added here below is what a CAP member involved in the search had to say about the search and recovery. Hope this is appropriate, and that it helps people understand whjat all goes on in a search and rescue operation, and that it helps that family see just how much was done to try and help. If this it isn't helpful then feel free to delete.
"Been gone the last few days on a successful redcap, just thought yall would like to know what went down.
Aircraft bound brenham to lockhart (TX), off radar ~1230 Sun around giddings. Prob loc was 11miles east Giddings & 2miles south Hwy290. Ceiling overcast & high to gusting winds, patches of precip. Took off in VFR, buddy leading 10mins ahead/behind, never was clear on which. The other plane made destination on a slightly northern track. Radar data put this guy down just east of giddings. Call from friends (EAA) went to Austin CAP unit. They spun up & staged to the area while AFRCC got the mission number started.
They were on scene Sunday night & went for about 22hrs straight. At that point there was no on-scene IC staff, so this GT was talking to the press that was literally following them around (after clearing w/ off-scene PIO), dealing with 3 local LE agencies, and taking all reports from the public directly to their cell phone. Kind of nuts, but they did a good job. They covered the primary target grid as thoroughly as it could be done from a car.
Through that day (monday) we put up four sorties. One was Sunday night route search for signal. The other three were grids. One was the primary grid. They got about 50% coverage on that with cloud banks closing from NW & SW on the Western center of their grid.
I rolled in monday afternoon with a GT in tow. Lackland had a GT arrived just ahead of us, Brownsville, Delta (houston), and Blacksheep (Dallas) also had teams arriving thru the night. I took charge of the location, got sign ins started, & debriefed both the first GT & the aircrew in the primary grid. We were changing ICs during this process & everything was being centralized to this one location where there wasn't a CAP unit. We took over the mall FBO & a nearby hanger though. The scanner on one of the aircrews flew back to Georgetown (austin area) got in a comm van with a cadet, and drove back to be in operations by the time we launched GTs the next morning. There were three TV stations at Giddings when we rolled up. They were pretty nice & cooperative.
Another guy I work well with showed up a bit behind me. He was slated to be GBD, we started conferred & kept things moving till the new IC showed up behind us. the other guy went to air ops, I took GBD, The original IC was in tow & took OSC, another guy showed up after we were done planning to take PSC. So, we cross briefed with IC & then went into planning while she got set up. The plan was straight forward & very solid in my opinion. We had six priority grids, plus four sections of creeping line on the route, and secondary grids for first cut. We were prepared to launch up to 10+ aircraft. We had 9, then 8, then 7 promised. It was a very serious issue to get aircrews. I think we had three on line before we finally tried to sleep, and one of those was driving 200 miles to pick up a plane. We had five GTs on scene before morning though. We asked that night for more GTs ready to stream in by morning, and continued that req to GpCCs into the morning as we searched for more aircrews.
I slept about 40mins. GTs were into the bathroom getting ready to btwn 4 & 5. I wanted to launch while it was dark & have them at their target areas as the sun came, up with air about 30mins behind. That was the plan anyway. I did forget DST pushed back sunrise, and we had ground fog/low ceiling conditions early morning preventing launch of three planes. I finally got my GTs briefed at 615-30, and launched all right at 8. ..."
... Continued, Pt 2
Respects and condolences to the family and friends. Added here below is what a CAP member involved in the search had to say about the search and recovery. Hope this is appropriate, and that it helps people understand whjat all goes on in a search and rescue operation, and that it helps that family see just how much was done to try and help. If this it isn't helpful then feel free to delete.
"Been gone the last few days on a successful redcap, just thought yall would like to know what went down.
Aircraft bound brenham to lockhart (TX), off radar ~1230 Sun around giddings. Prob loc was 11miles east Giddings & 2miles south Hwy290. Ceiling overcast & high to gusting winds, patches of precip. Took off in VFR, buddy leading 10mins ahead/behind, never was clear on which. The other plane made destination on a slightly northern track. Radar data put this guy down just east of giddings. Call from friends (EAA) went to Austin CAP unit. They spun up & staged to the area while AFRCC got the mission number started.
They were on scene Sunday night & went for about 22hrs straight. At that point there was no on-scene IC staff, so this GT was talking to the press that was literally following them around (after clearing w/ off-scene PIO), dealing with 3 local LE agencies, and taking all reports from the public directly to their cell phone. Kind of nuts, but they did a good job. They covered the primary target grid as thoroughly as it could be done from a car.
Through that day (monday) we put up four sorties. One was Sunday night route search for signal. The other three were grids. One was the primary grid. They got about 50% coverage on that with cloud banks closing from NW & SW on the Western center of their grid.
I rolled in monday afternoon with a GT in tow. Lackland had a GT arrived just ahead of us, Brownsville, Delta (houston), and Blacksheep (Dallas) also had teams arriving thru the night. I took charge of the location, got sign ins started, & debriefed both the first GT & the aircrew in the primary grid. We were changing ICs during this process & everything was being centralized to this one location where there wasn't a CAP unit. We took over the mall FBO & a nearby hanger though. The scanner on one of the aircrews flew back to Georgetown (austin area) got in a comm van with a cadet, and drove back to be in operations by the time we launched GTs the next morning. There were three TV stations at Giddings when we rolled up. They were pretty nice & cooperative.
Another guy I work well with showed up a bit behind me. He was slated to be GBD, we started conferred & kept things moving till the new IC showed up behind us. the other guy went to air ops, I took GBD, The original IC was in tow & took OSC, another guy showed up after we were done planning to take PSC. So, we cross briefed with IC & then went into planning while she got set up. The plan was straight forward & very solid in my opinion. We had six priority grids, plus four sections of creeping line on the route, and secondary grids for first cut. We were prepared to launch up to 10+ aircraft. We had 9, then 8, then 7 promised. It was a very serious issue to get aircrews. I think we had three on line before we finally tried to sleep, and one of those was driving 200 miles to pick up a plane. We had five GTs on scene before morning though. We asked that night for more GTs ready to stream in by morning, and continued that req to GpCCs into the morning as we searched for more aircrews.
I slept about 40mins. GTs were into the bathroom getting ready to btwn 4 & 5. I wanted to launch while it was dark & have them at their target areas as the sun came, up with air about 30mins behind. That was the plan anyway. I did forget DST pushed back sunrise, and we had ground fog/low ceiling conditions early morning preventing launch of three planes. I finally got my GTs briefed at 615-30, and launched all right at 8. ..."
... Continued, Pt 2
Nomex Maximus
Well Known Member
continued...
"...I had two teams clear tower areas east of town (grid we were based in) then proceed to adjacent grids - Alpha to the east (just north of LKP), Bravo to the south (just west of LKP on flight path). I sent Charlie (my Sqs guys) to a grid just SW of base that was on the primary list, and check an additional private strip that was a possible divert location. And Delta, which was a combination of folks from Dallas & Houston, I sent straight to the probable impact point SW of LKP to line search a four square mile area.
Air was grounded till about 830 or 9. I'm not sure exactly when we launched our first bird. I know we had a ceiling of 1500 at base, but it was 500 in Austin where our first bird was. DPS (state police) called us & offered a helo, but didn't have spotters. We ran it up & got authorization. We had two spare folks on location at that point. Both pilots, but not MPs or rated as observers - one being fellow CAPTalk member & friend dogden. The helo landed & they briefed up. We were putting them on the probable track back to LKP & then grid search, exit grid on route & parallel search out to a pocket of leads we had on route at the next major highway intersect, then RTB.
Delta GT took a while to find the location we wanted them at & then waited a while for LE. I couldn't give them very good directions, nor could the Sheriff when I put them on the phone with him. I drove out there later & it was pretty difficult to get to. So not at all faulting them on that. So they were waiting, we got 8 call in leads all at once in an area about 10min SW on their location, so dispatched them to go look around there real quick. I had Alpha finished with towers & coming into the grid just north of that area, so sent them to pick up that line search activity, but had a **** of a time directing them in on it.
About this time AFRCC called with radar follow up. We had overlapping coverage from two radars, and they looked at western air defense on top of that. Result was bird crossed path of flight 15 secs before altitude loss. Was cruise at 2600, alt loss between 3 radar sweeps as 400 > 1000 > 5000. Their brief was they think he's within 300yrds of the predicted probable & straight in, to which we said (nicely) yeah duh. AFRCC continued, we should put a GT on that point. To which I said, "I briefed that at 630 this morning, they're on scene waiting an hour now for LE to put them on private property so they don't get shot for trespassing." AFRCC continued, I don't know how effective fixed wing will be based on a straight in with real wet ground. It might be best to have a helicopter on this. To which I replied, DPS helo just left with two of our guys on as spotters, they'll be on scene in a few." That was a fun call. I really appreciated that we were already as on the ball as we could possibly be.
Helo reported in grid same time as first CAP aircraft was in grid over our base, second & third CAPFlt enroute to assignments. Several others launching behind to our base for tasking, which we had ready to brief. Helo reported landing to investigate a target. GT Delta sweeping back up to meet up, Alpha still getting directed in on it. I think Delta got back there a hair earlier than Alpha, mainly because they knew where they were going. Both on scene pretty quickly though. Target confirmed. We handed over to DPS & notified up, DPS did as well.
I got very few complaints about the whole thing. The comm rig we had was good, but they had to set up too far away from our ICP, and radio comms were shaky at a lot of points. We used Wing cell phones for the branch directors, comm, & IC. That was okay, but they were ringing off the hook. The city/county/FBO were all excellent. They brought us food, water, tea; they let us take over their location & gave us chairs/tables for the hanger we used for team staging. We had wifi there, it was great. We didn't deploy teams telling them they'd be overnight or longer & we didn't have cots & such, which I could have gotten very easily from the national guard.
We were ready to sustain beyond that first day though. We could have run hard for at least a week. the problem was going to be planes. We've been doing a lot of o-flts & firewatch for the state, so a lot of our air was close to going down on maint. We were about to call LAWG for backup, and needed the crews too. Wg/CC wanted us to try west TX again before asking for out of state resources, but that wasn't going to be enough if we had to keep going very long. The biggest problem was the speed to get the op turned on, and the really slow response for crews - it is mid week & spring break now, but the guy on the ground doesn't care about that.
Chaplain was on scene at the end & CISM in place. Guy's son & several friends showed up/flew in when we RTB'd all air. We did a good job with all that, but it was honestly easier than expected. I would have liked to have a chaplain there the whole time too.
Some of the media were really a pain & some were quite nice. Our PIO for the mission is very good, but he was never on location, and that was a very big problem. In hind sight, if I couldn't get a really good PIO from CAP on location, I would have asked for one from DPS to keep those folks out of our hair & brief on a regular basis. We pulled through there, but really missed a big opportunity. A lot of our folks made the news. There were two newspapers & five TV stations very actively covering the story. Dogden was first on scene with the DPS helo & did the confirmation of target via inspection plate. He did a several minute follow up with the CBS affiliate. I'm sure there will be stories on the CAP side & lots of local media.
Overall, it was good mission. There are certainly some things we could do better. There were several frustrating items that are just the nature of CAP, and there were some factors beyond our control (mostly weather). That's about it I guess. I wouldn't recommend staying awake for 44hrs straight, but it worked out real well. "
"...I had two teams clear tower areas east of town (grid we were based in) then proceed to adjacent grids - Alpha to the east (just north of LKP), Bravo to the south (just west of LKP on flight path). I sent Charlie (my Sqs guys) to a grid just SW of base that was on the primary list, and check an additional private strip that was a possible divert location. And Delta, which was a combination of folks from Dallas & Houston, I sent straight to the probable impact point SW of LKP to line search a four square mile area.
Air was grounded till about 830 or 9. I'm not sure exactly when we launched our first bird. I know we had a ceiling of 1500 at base, but it was 500 in Austin where our first bird was. DPS (state police) called us & offered a helo, but didn't have spotters. We ran it up & got authorization. We had two spare folks on location at that point. Both pilots, but not MPs or rated as observers - one being fellow CAPTalk member & friend dogden. The helo landed & they briefed up. We were putting them on the probable track back to LKP & then grid search, exit grid on route & parallel search out to a pocket of leads we had on route at the next major highway intersect, then RTB.
Delta GT took a while to find the location we wanted them at & then waited a while for LE. I couldn't give them very good directions, nor could the Sheriff when I put them on the phone with him. I drove out there later & it was pretty difficult to get to. So not at all faulting them on that. So they were waiting, we got 8 call in leads all at once in an area about 10min SW on their location, so dispatched them to go look around there real quick. I had Alpha finished with towers & coming into the grid just north of that area, so sent them to pick up that line search activity, but had a **** of a time directing them in on it.
About this time AFRCC called with radar follow up. We had overlapping coverage from two radars, and they looked at western air defense on top of that. Result was bird crossed path of flight 15 secs before altitude loss. Was cruise at 2600, alt loss between 3 radar sweeps as 400 > 1000 > 5000. Their brief was they think he's within 300yrds of the predicted probable & straight in, to which we said (nicely) yeah duh. AFRCC continued, we should put a GT on that point. To which I said, "I briefed that at 630 this morning, they're on scene waiting an hour now for LE to put them on private property so they don't get shot for trespassing." AFRCC continued, I don't know how effective fixed wing will be based on a straight in with real wet ground. It might be best to have a helicopter on this. To which I replied, DPS helo just left with two of our guys on as spotters, they'll be on scene in a few." That was a fun call. I really appreciated that we were already as on the ball as we could possibly be.
Helo reported in grid same time as first CAP aircraft was in grid over our base, second & third CAPFlt enroute to assignments. Several others launching behind to our base for tasking, which we had ready to brief. Helo reported landing to investigate a target. GT Delta sweeping back up to meet up, Alpha still getting directed in on it. I think Delta got back there a hair earlier than Alpha, mainly because they knew where they were going. Both on scene pretty quickly though. Target confirmed. We handed over to DPS & notified up, DPS did as well.
I got very few complaints about the whole thing. The comm rig we had was good, but they had to set up too far away from our ICP, and radio comms were shaky at a lot of points. We used Wing cell phones for the branch directors, comm, & IC. That was okay, but they were ringing off the hook. The city/county/FBO were all excellent. They brought us food, water, tea; they let us take over their location & gave us chairs/tables for the hanger we used for team staging. We had wifi there, it was great. We didn't deploy teams telling them they'd be overnight or longer & we didn't have cots & such, which I could have gotten very easily from the national guard.
We were ready to sustain beyond that first day though. We could have run hard for at least a week. the problem was going to be planes. We've been doing a lot of o-flts & firewatch for the state, so a lot of our air was close to going down on maint. We were about to call LAWG for backup, and needed the crews too. Wg/CC wanted us to try west TX again before asking for out of state resources, but that wasn't going to be enough if we had to keep going very long. The biggest problem was the speed to get the op turned on, and the really slow response for crews - it is mid week & spring break now, but the guy on the ground doesn't care about that.
Chaplain was on scene at the end & CISM in place. Guy's son & several friends showed up/flew in when we RTB'd all air. We did a good job with all that, but it was honestly easier than expected. I would have liked to have a chaplain there the whole time too.
Some of the media were really a pain & some were quite nice. Our PIO for the mission is very good, but he was never on location, and that was a very big problem. In hind sight, if I couldn't get a really good PIO from CAP on location, I would have asked for one from DPS to keep those folks out of our hair & brief on a regular basis. We pulled through there, but really missed a big opportunity. A lot of our folks made the news. There were two newspapers & five TV stations very actively covering the story. Dogden was first on scene with the DPS helo & did the confirmation of target via inspection plate. He did a several minute follow up with the CBS affiliate. I'm sure there will be stories on the CAP side & lots of local media.
Overall, it was good mission. There are certainly some things we could do better. There were several frustrating items that are just the nature of CAP, and there were some factors beyond our control (mostly weather). That's about it I guess. I wouldn't recommend staying awake for 44hrs straight, but it worked out real well. "
Nomex Maximus
Well Known Member
CAP-Speak...
Sorry folks, I am not so much up on the CAP lingo myself.
The poster and the thread can be found at:
http://captalk.net/index.php?topic=4491.0
(sorry for the cross-post, but I think it is useful this time)
Redcap - a rescue mission (successful, means they found what they were looking for, not necessarily what they were hoping for)
AFRCC - Air Force Rescue Coordination Center
IC - Incident Commander (from either CAP or another agency)
PIO - Public Information Officer
GT - Ground (search) Team (CAP unit - may or may not have cadets)
GBD - Ground Branch Director (as opposed to the AOBD - Air Ops Branch Director)
Observer, Scanner - The right seat guy and the back seat guy in a CAP plane
ICP - Incident Command Post
LAWG - Louisiana Wing, CAP
RTB - Return To Base
CISM - Critical Incident Stress Management - counselors to help people deal with the situation
Sorry folks, I am not so much up on the CAP lingo myself.
The poster and the thread can be found at:
http://captalk.net/index.php?topic=4491.0
(sorry for the cross-post, but I think it is useful this time)
Redcap - a rescue mission (successful, means they found what they were looking for, not necessarily what they were hoping for)
AFRCC - Air Force Rescue Coordination Center
IC - Incident Commander (from either CAP or another agency)
PIO - Public Information Officer
GT - Ground (search) Team (CAP unit - may or may not have cadets)
GBD - Ground Branch Director (as opposed to the AOBD - Air Ops Branch Director)
Observer, Scanner - The right seat guy and the back seat guy in a CAP plane
ICP - Incident Command Post
LAWG - Louisiana Wing, CAP
RTB - Return To Base
CISM - Critical Incident Stress Management - counselors to help people deal with the situation
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Thanks!
I appreciate the factual information from the CAP post - this is exactly the kind of thing that most of us were sitting and wondering about during the search. Having been involved in this kind of thing for most of my life, I know that it isn't practical to disseminate a blow-by-blow description of what is going on outside of the organization during an operation, but seeing it afterward at least lets us all know how much effort went in to it.
Paul
I appreciate the factual information from the CAP post - this is exactly the kind of thing that most of us were sitting and wondering about during the search. Having been involved in this kind of thing for most of my life, I know that it isn't practical to disseminate a blow-by-blow description of what is going on outside of the organization during an operation, but seeing it afterward at least lets us all know how much effort went in to it.
Paul
CAP Mission
I would just like to emphasize what was stated earlier. I was the CAP Mission Pilot that flew Sunday evening looking for Mark Ritter (I was also one of the Mission Pilots looking for the RV in West Texas last March). We were up before sundown and by the time we got to 50R (Lockhart) it was almost dark. We were performing a route and electronic search. We received nothing on both our Direction Finding (DF) equipment or our VHF radio tuned to 121.5. Our route search took us close enough to the crash site that we would have received any ELT that had gone off from the crash. Whenever I get briefed that the aircraft we are looking for is home built, I figure that there is less than a 50/50 chance that there will be a working ELT. Please, make sure that your ELTs are tested and working properly. There is nothing more we would like during our search is the ELT directing us to the plane sitting in the middle of a field with the pilot sitting on the wing waving to us. And please, Search and Rescue is a dangerous business, leave the searching to the people who are trained to do it.
CAP Major
I would just like to emphasize what was stated earlier. I was the CAP Mission Pilot that flew Sunday evening looking for Mark Ritter (I was also one of the Mission Pilots looking for the RV in West Texas last March). We were up before sundown and by the time we got to 50R (Lockhart) it was almost dark. We were performing a route and electronic search. We received nothing on both our Direction Finding (DF) equipment or our VHF radio tuned to 121.5. Our route search took us close enough to the crash site that we would have received any ELT that had gone off from the crash. Whenever I get briefed that the aircraft we are looking for is home built, I figure that there is less than a 50/50 chance that there will be a working ELT. Please, make sure that your ELTs are tested and working properly. There is nothing more we would like during our search is the ELT directing us to the plane sitting in the middle of a field with the pilot sitting on the wing waving to us. And please, Search and Rescue is a dangerous business, leave the searching to the people who are trained to do it.
CAP Major
Gary Bricker
Well Known Member
Gary Bricker
Major, thanks for what all of the CAP members do. Do you recommend all of us go ahead and get the new 406 units.
Major, thanks for what all of the CAP members do. Do you recommend all of us go ahead and get the new 406 units.
I let my ham ticket expire but am getting ready to re-test just so I can install APRS in my almost finished RV-7A. Poor mans ADS-B
Steven Eberhart
WB9KJW (used to be)
RV-7A couple of months from putting air under the wheels
God bless you and your family, Mark. If you ever need anything don't hesitate to call.
Kindest,
Doug
Kindest,
Doug
Geico266
Well Known Member
Welcome to VAF We are very sorry for your loss. I for one am glad you are here to take your dad's place (you know what I mean
). Don't be a stranger.
Geico266
Well Known Member
