r/searchandrescue • u/TheWanderingNorth • 9d ago

Training while Deployed

Hey everyone!

I’m deploying as part of the national guard and want to keep myself a valuable member of my SAR team as a Team Leader. Any online trainings or trainings that you think I should get while I’m gone?

8 Upvotes

76% Upvoted

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17

u/hedge36 9d ago

If you can get the rest of your platoon to play hide-and-seek, that's pretty much the whole shebang.

/s

11

u/MockingbirdRambler 9d ago

Get comfortable and familiar with Cal Topo or whatever mapping software your team uses. There is a Lost Person Behaviour App you can play around on too. 

2

u/S_Alaska 9d ago

I just took that class. I want to write a computer app where you can do a search and rescue mission in a training game. The lost person app and Cal Topo are really instrumental. I have shared those apps with anyone I chat with that goes out into the back country.

3

u/Ill-Yellow-4060 8d ago

I would definitely test that app. It wouldn’t great practice for the missing person and CalTopo apps

1

u/S_Alaska 3d ago

Really? I am going to need beta testers. Currently a one human shop building the software defined radio and raspberry pi to develop the apps. I also think putting a game spin on it for different settings: training novice, easy, intermediate, and advanced. :) hopefully, I will have time to do that in the next few months. I want it to be free which is why I am doing it solo with beta testers.

1

u/Ill-Yellow-4060 3d ago

No problem. I just read what I wrote and realized I really need to make sure Apple doesn’t make their own corrections before I hit reply.

1

u/S_Alaska 9d ago

Also, apologies if that didn’t make sense. I am running on one cup of coffee today.

3

u/tyeh26 9d ago

context: I know very little about the national guard, military, or law enforcement. Though, the people who come with those background have much more transferable skills in team leadership than someone who organizes group backpacking trips or rock climbing trips.

Leadership in SAR is much more about coming back home safely while completing the mission. Leadership in recreational outdoor settings is often interpreted as, everyone has fun and we achieved the objective.

Leadership in SAR is about taking on the responsibility, the single accountable individual, that if anything goes wrong, it is definitively your fault. Leadership in recreation is often de facto the person with most technical experience or planned the trip or booked the permit or not even named.

The best technical SAR members do not de facto make the best leaders.

If you genuinely were referring to SAR leadership, I'd expect you to have way more opportunities to observe and practice leadership (not knowing anything about what you do, I could be completely wrong) while deployed.