CAP volunteer?

Just be sure you have a high tolerance for the military mindset. Remember,
if you discover a safety problem, it is not a problem and does not exist if
mentioning it would embarrass a senior officer. If it really was a problem,
you can be sure that someone senior to you would have already discovered and
taken care of it.


I joined as a maintenance officer and foolishly thought that it might be
part of my job to review the aircraft logs and give the aircraft a careful
look over. What I discovered was rather shocking. The aircraft were not
legal. AD's were not complied with. Instruments were improperly marked. POH's
were not updated with proper fuel consumption and weight and balance numbers
after engine conversions. One plane was even missing it's ELT antenna. The
coax just ran up under the panel and ended.

I'd already learned that there was no point in reporting such things to Wing
in order to get them corrected because CAP operates to the highest
professional standards, has their planes inspected every 100 hours, and any
problems would certainly be discovered by trained A&P's at the next
inspection.

Just before I took over, a plane was stumbling and losing power on climb
out. Permission to have it checked out was denied because it was clearly the
result of pilots adjusting the mixture improperly at our sea level airport
and something that remedial training would resolve. (It turned out to be all
except two bolts sheered on an intake manifold.)

My C.O., who was quite sympathetic to my position, agreed that getting some
independent verification would be helpful. I therefore, and with his
approval, took advantage of the FSDO safety inspection which is segregated
from enforcement action. They confirmed what I found and discovered so many
other deficiencies that I was a bit embarrassed. I wrote up my report and
gave it to my C.O. to take up to Wing.

It happened to be pilot meeting night. Because the PIC is responsible for
the condition of the aircraft, my C.O. agreed that we had to share the
findings with the pilots.

The result of my report and the pilot meeting was a blast from wing. It was
announced that, "after extensive discussions with the FAA" the aircraft were
found to be fully airworthy and I had overstepped my authority by
investigating the logbooks and inspecting the aircraft. Since the FAR's
require every PIC to have done this, I find it odd that a maintenance
officer would be the only pilot not permitted to do so.

My C.O. was then told to reassign me which he refused to do. Wing simply
stopped answering my calls and emails which made it impossible to do the job
so I quite and went on leave. A few months later, I resigned.

I learned later that the planes were put in the shop and thousands of
dollars spent on them. Personnel changes were made and, when the new
maintenance officer calls up to say something it wrong, it gets fixed.
Basically, they did everything they should have done and I achieved what I
set out to do.

Of course, I'm no longer in CAP and I would like to be because it is
something I believe in. I don't want this post to be viewed primarily as a
criticism or attack on CAP. It's really about the rank based, military,
model of organizations. Making your superiors look good is job one. Safety
and achieving the aims of the organization are jobs 2 and 3. When there is a
conflict, prioritize accordingly.

As I said shortly after all this happened, I thought at first that I had
uncovered a pocket of corruption but I had really only uncovered a pocket of
absolute normalcy.

I just heard on NPR (and excuse me if I didn't get it quite straight) two
FBI agents tried to point out before 911 that middle easterners that the INS
had lost track of were taking flight training and there was talk about
flying airliners into buildings. They were told to keep such fantasies to
themselves. They went around their superiors and it was the end of their
careers. 911 did not resurrect their careers.

This story was in connection with Congress just declining to pass a law to
protect such people. It makes me feel a lot better to know that Congress
would agree that it is appropriate for me to no longer be in CAP. I made
service a lot safer for the people I admire who get the call to go out and
fly in the dark to help others. The price of doing that is no longer being
able to serve myself but that is just the way of things. It's not a CAP
problem, it's a problem of our whole culture.

--

Roger Long