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Pictures and training report by Tim Nutter
For the first training of 2011, on January 22nd, over 20 hardy Cherokee County Search and Rescue mission ready members and recruits shivered together in a circle in the Boling Park parking lot for the trainer's brief on a bitterly cold Saturday morning. The trainer summarized the previous Monday evening's Garmin Rino GPS familiarization training and had everyone perform several hands-on exercises with the Rinos. We changed radio channels, checked to ensure that the Rinos were set on the correct datum, turned on the Track log feature, and ensured that the polling feature on the radio screen was enabled. Several of the more experienced mission ready team members shared their experiences and offered practical tips for using the Rinos more effectively.
The Garmin Rino GPS unit is an important tool for search and rescue operations. Becoming comfortable with its use on an individual Strike Team Member basis and as a method to organize operations for the Team Leader and Search Manager is a vital training component of the Cherokee County Search and Rescue Team. To practice using the Garmin Rino’s navigation, radio and polling features, the Search and Rescue Team searched for existing Geocaches in Boling Park. We were then briefed on Geocaching, and the trainer sent everyone via his Rino the coordinates for the 10 Geocaches we would be searching for today. Chief finished up with a safety brief. Among the intrepid present were half a dozen brave new recruits for whom Saturday was their first CCSAR Field Exercise.
We started off in a couple larger Strike Teams with a recruit on each team assisted by a mission ready team member navigating towards the first Geocache 3/4 of a mile away. Eventually all Strke Teams arrived and logged their visits. Once it was clear that the recruits could operate the Rinos and navigate to the correct coordinates, mission ready team members branched off into smaller Strike Teams and navigated to Geocaches ahead of the new recruits. Once a Geocache was found by the mission ready members, they would step aside and wait for the recruits to catch up to find it for themselves. One Squad Leader stayed with the recruits at all times.
Over the course of the day, Strike Teams found all the Geocaches in an area from Boling Park to Old Shoals Creek Road, proving that the Garmin Rinos could be used effectively to navigate to many coordinates and that operations could be coordinated over a large forested area by the Search Manager. Cherokee County’s Search and Rescue Team ended up with a better appreciation for the capabilities of their Garmin Rinos for search and rescue operations.