Inuvik Journal

Friday, March 17, 2006

The Preparation

Temp: -34°C
Sunlight - 11.86 hours


It’s the end of the week again…thankfully!

It’s St. Patrick’s Day and, although I’d love to have a few drinks tonight, I can’t. We are under strict orders not to drink because of the CASARA exercise tomorrow. We have a party planned after the evaluation (to either celebrate our success or drown our sorrows), and we will make up for it then.

Tonight we have a meeting with the evaluators so they can give us our mission. Once we have that information, we will start the process that we have practiced so often over the last few months. The navigator will be drawing flight plans on maps, calculating fuel needs, identifying the search area, and determining approach and departure vectors and all that fun stuff.

I have been assigned the Chief Spotter role. It’s quite an honour to be assigned such an important role, me being so new in the organization and all. My job will be to assemble and brief the spotters (those are the people in the plane who actually look for the downed aircraft and survivors), test and install the equipment on the aircraft, and calculate all the weights of passengers and gear. It’s a busy job, but not half as busy as the Navigator’s or the Pilot’s jobs.

The evening so far has been spent reviewing protocol and procedure and getting ready for tonight’s meeting. It’s looking like it will be a CASARA weekend – and that’s just fine by me.

Cheers!

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