In article .com,
Robert M. Gary wrote:

I'm also told that Nomex is 100% required for all missions. I guess we
had a CAP flight go down a while back and some guys burned. Of course,
just like anything else you can wear either the AF Nomex or the CAP
Nomex. CAP is blue, AF is olive, both feel great when its 110F outside

I'm not in CAP any more (too much paper work and politics, not
enough of actually doing anything useful). The crash you refer to
involved one of the guys in the squadron I was in then, and two
other guys from the local group.

The two other guys didn't make it, the guy from my squadron spent
a few months in the burn unit and was not able to regain use of
one of his hands. He was wearing nomex, but most of the serious
burns were on his face and hands. He was the back seat scanner,
and after getting out, tried to pull the two pilots out through
the flames. Nomex is only fire resistant, and not heat resistant.
It buys you a few seconds, but unless you are wearing a thick race
car driver style suit, you need to get out quick.

The plane they were looking for had crashed a week earlier and was
not found until two days after the CAP plane went down. No flight
plan was filed for the flight over the mountains, and the ELT did
not activate. The ELT not activating is typical of an actual crash.
When I was in CAP, and I doubt the stats have changed much, 99+%
of ELT signals were false alarms, and ELTs failed to activate in
~97% of crashes. In the 15 years I spent in CAP, I'm only directly[1]
aware of one ELT signal leading to an actual aircraft in distress[2].
Anecdotal evidence, but my experience doing the 2am search for the
UPS truck or other false alarms[3] made it pretty clear that in the
absence of an alert notice (ALNOT), an ELT signal was likely a
false alarm.

Plane being searched for:
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief2.asp?...FA031& akey=1

CAP plane:
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief2.asp?...GA029& akey=1


John
[1] I knew the guys that found the downed plane and the survivor.
[2] Setting the ELT off when moving the wreckage doesn't count.
[3] Many false alarms are not even actual ELT but are random
malfunctioning electronic devices (copy machines, computers,
fax machines, video games, pizza ovens)
--
John Clear - http://www.clear-prop.org/