Civil Air Patrol

Dash · Post by **Dash** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 10:55 pm

Hello everyone.

I was recently introduced to the Civil Air Patrol and all it has to offer a High School student such as myself. CAP is a "nonprofit organization with over 64000 members. It performs 95% of continental US inland search and rescue missions as tasked by the Air Force ..." There is a CAP squadron near my home and they meet on Wednesdays, 1900 hours. I plan on joining CAP for both the experience and for the boost in my application to the Naval Academy next year. I was curious if anyone here is familiar with CAP and would be willing to share any experiences!

Visit http://www.cap.gov/ for more information!

-Dash

Burner · Post by **Burner** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 2:29 am

From my experience CAP is mostly pomp and circumstance- with sooooome cool stuff- lighting rockets and looking for downed pilots. In any case if your grades are decent with extracurriculars you should be able to get into an Academy. And even if you don't ROTC is a great route to the cockpit. AND if you don't enroll in either you can still apply for OCS, or OTS depending on if you go Navy or Air Force.

Bottom line join CAP b/c you like flying and the military disipline, otherwise I'd say its not worth it.

Dash · Post by **Dash** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 12:37 pm

Awesome, thanks very much for the reply. I understand that I should get into the Naval Academy with what I have at the moment, but the thing that scares me is once I get to where I am waiting for that letter of acceptance, or rejection, from the Academy, that I get rejected because I didn't have this or that, which then puts me in either the Naval Prep School in RI, or at a local college doing ROTC for a year then have to re-apply to the Academy. I just don't want to get to that point and BE ABLE to tell myself that I could have done more, and gotten accepted.

So I assume you are, or once were a member of CAP, Burner? Is CAP regimented like the Air Force, or is it more relaxed? Either way, I'm interested and thanks for your opinion!

-Dash

Sinister · Post by **Sinister** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 4:43 pm

well CAP is a good thing to have under your belt for faster promotion consideration .. But you also have to earn the MITCHELL award if you are wanting to have something that can help you get into the academy. I myself have recieved Honor Cadet 4 times which got me Time in the F-16 and A-7 simulator. and also got me a spot on the Air Crew for SAR.. Ground crew does alot of hiking and deals with the gruesome part of finding a hiker or crash victim... And then you can go for the solo glider and pilot events...

Its just an extra experience step for you .. You will learn basic marching and facing .. leadership and military discipline and bearing..

just like ROTC or JROTC...