 Think Tech Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. Welcome back to the Cyber Underground, I'm Dave Stevens, your host. I teach with the University of Hawaii, Capulani Community College. I teach network security and ethical hacking. And we handle security here on this show in all of its forms. And even ethical hacking includes physical security. And a piece of the physical security of the United States that we never think about is the United States Air Force Auxiliary, the Civil Air Patrol. And today with me, we have Lieutenant Colonel David Shoemaker, Ed D. It's like a PhD for education, am I right? Yes. Welcome. Thanks for being on the show. And people should know for the sake of disclaimer, full disclosure, you're my father. And I'm real proud of you. And you're a local boy. I want to hear you tell us a little bit about your history. And the pride is mutual. I'm from Honolulu. I was born at the old tripler. My father was in the service, married a local girl. And... Puneau grad. Yes, Puneau grad. Yeah. Went there on a tennis scholarship. And in 1943, they were evacuated back to the mainland. Because all the families had to go back home, quote unquote. Home. But she was from here. This is home. Sorry, home is the mainland. And you know how the army is, off we went. So when did she end up? She was in Ohio or someplace? Iowa. Iowa, OK. Devonport, Iowa, in the middle of nowhere. But it was an interesting place to stay. But we had to fight World War II. And there's a large threat here to the islands at the time. Yes. Right. And I find it very interesting now that I have a Japanese-American daughter-in-law. Yeah, my wife. Thank you for that. Yes, right. And she's wonderful. She's wonderful, yeah. She brings to our family a whole set of cultural norms and ideals that the men in the family very badly need. We're not pragmatic, logical people. Oh, well, not to the degree that she needs. We don't always follow the rules, but us. And I became aware of that culture when I did my master's in Asian Studies at San Jose State University for the Army as a part of the Foreign Area Program. I grew up in the Army and went to a military college, served 21 years in the Army, worked for the Army as a civilian for five years, and then finally went into community college education. And now in there, in your service, they sent you to Vietnam. Yes. And you actually had to serve in combat. Yes. And I'm a very grateful person that you made it out of combat alive, as you served during some of the hairiest times of Vietnam. And you're even a Silver Star awardee. And thanks for serving, first of all, and then thanks for surviving, the most important part. Well, the Silver Star came from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I hear that story a lot. Yes. And probably not being grown up enough to realize the situation. Maybe you should just leave. Everybody else did. I spent the night alone face to face with the force that we were against. And air support kept me alive. So I'm very grateful to pilots. And I was, in fact, at that time, a pilot. So you started flying when you were in the Army and then you continued your private pilot adventure all the way up until you joined the CAP? Yes. And I became a commercial instrument and instructor rated. And then I quit flying for 36 years. And I came back to it when I joined the CAP. And don't let anybody kid you. It's not like riding a bicycle. Yeah, you do a lot of work to keep. It's a lot of work. The new equipment, the new standards. Yes. You get checked out on a new plane every once in a while. It's a lot of work and a lot of study time. And we have a lot of new equipment all the time. So we're being upgraded all the time. The Air Force takes good care of us. Now, this is amazing. You retire from teaching. And you go into the CAP at the same time. You're a city councilman. Until recently. Yes. You were a city councilman up in Washable, Washington. Eight years. And unbelievable that you're still alive after doing the CAP and that. And you're supposed to be quote unquote retired. But now it's just the CAP. And you just took a different position with the CAP. So let's talk about the CAP now. Now that we know about you and how we're related and your local boy. The CAP now, let's talk about the US Air Force Auxiliary Civil Air Patrol. What are some of its roots? Why is it here? What does it do? What's its mission? A week before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Civil Air Patrol was founded. A week before? Yes. And its job was coastal defense. OK. And so they flew patrols along the defense on the coast, particularly on the east coast, looking for submarines. And a week later, the war started in the Pacific. And we had some presence out here. But for a long time, our presence was mainly on the east coast. And that was because it was formed by Fiorella LaGuardia, who later became the mayor of New York. And we have LaGuardia airport now. Yes. And he was head of civil defense. And we were part of civil defense. And then after the war, and we saw wartime service. We lost a couple of planes and crews. We were shot down or went down. In World War II? Yes, in the Atlantic. We also took credit for at least one submarine. So you actually found a submarine. They took bombs and dropped them out the window. Really? And they got one. They're going to take credit. Lucky hit. But it's a fascinating history. And after the war, the Congress made us the official United States Air Force auxiliary in 1948. And they assigned us three missions. Cadet programs, aerospace education, and the one that I'm very fond of, emergency services. So we should backtrack just a little bit. 1947 is when the Army Air Corps broke off and became the US Air Force. It is. A year later, your CAP was the official US Air Force auxiliary. Yes. So a lot of changes happen in the uniformed armed services in the late 40s, right after the war. And the CAP, as the auxiliary, is an all-volunteer force. And we don't get paid for anything. No salaries. No salaries. Keeps the budget low. Keeps the budget low. No benefits. Well, actually, when we fly Air Force missions, we fly as airmen since 2015. US Air Force airmen. I see. So you have that position in the Air Force while you're in the air. That's correct. While we're in the air. And we're covered by their accident insurance during that time. That's the only time. And the Air Force will pay, will reimburse us for fuel and oil and things like that. If they send us to remote locations on an Air Force mission, they'll billet us and feed us. But that's our pay. Most of our pay comes from the satisfaction that we derive from serving. And that's what most of the people in CAP came there for, to continue to serve. And it makes a great outfit. Right. There's a drive in many people to continue to serve. And I think when people get out of the military, especially retirees, they feel a little lost for a while. They do. Where's my service? What am I doing to better my nation, to serve my community? And they struggle to find that place in the universe. And you found two of them at the same time, the city council and the CAP. And I'm glad you've toned it down a bit. But you're going back to flying. And that's one of the most important missions of the Civil Air Patrol is actually flying. So let's talk about some of the missions of the Civil Air Patrol now. Well, we do emergency services. And that consists of homeland defense flights. And I'd like to talk a little bit about those in a second, as well as disaster recovery. We do a lot of photographic missions for Department of Defense, for state governments, for the Homeland Security people, Homeland Security Department, and various other government agencies. So that keeps us pretty busy. And the Air Force has equipped us with fantastic photographic and infrared capabilities. You got any toys? Second. You got any toys? Oh, absolutely. If you're interested in toys, we're the outfit for you. Yeah. But the air crews, many of them are prior service. And not all of them are pilots. We have four positions in an aircraft. There's the pilot. There's the observer who's the mission director. And then in the backseat, we have the scanner and the photographer. And if it's not a photographic mission, if it's a search mission, we'll put two scanners in there because their function is primarily to search on both sides of the aircraft. Pilot does the search. Pilot flies. That's a good thing. Directed by the observer. Observer also handles communications with our headquarters. Pilot handles the flying communications with the local center, Air Traffic Control Center, and towers, and things like that. And then the observer also covers the right side of the aircraft on the search. And the scanners in the back take a lot of notes on where we are. They draw a grid of where we've searched so that we can present that when we come back to our mission base. And they won't send somebody else out to cover something we've already covered. Completed searching that grid. Yes. We do about 80% of the ground searches in the continental United States. 80%? Every year, really. And it'll go as high as 90 and as low as maybe 75. But 80 is the average. Now, when you do search and rescue, you participate with other agencies, I would imagine. The local agencies on the ground maybe. And other air units maybe for local law enforcement? Yes. We fly a lot with sheriff departments. And some of them are well-to-do enough to have a helicopter. And that's really handy for us because often we will search the remote areas and the helicopters stay a little closer to home and they can relay radios for us. So you don't have any rotary aircraft in the Civil Air Patrol? You're all fixed wing. We're all fixed wing. And it's mostly high wing, I would imagine? It's almost exclusively, well it is exclusively high wing. Okay. So for the people in the Cheap Seats, the high wing is the wing above the pilot so you have much more visibility below. Rather than the low wing where if you look down, you have to look at a wing. It's kind of hard to see the ground. And that's why we have the high wing. Right, right. It's a little difficult to see up, but it's great for seeing down. And you fly fuel efficient really durable planes? Yes, we fly primarily in the Cessna 182 with a variable pitch prop engine, what they call an altitude engine. We also have 172s that we use primarily for training and the reason we don't like to use those for searches is that it's really hard to fit a crew of four in there. They're tight. And so when I was flying, it was a C-150. Yes. And I didn't even need help putting it out on the runway. I could just pick up the tail and push it out onto the runway to prep it and then I could fuel it. And the 172, not much bigger and you have to have kind of a weight allowance, right? You put too much in the back seat, you tend to tip up and you could stall. Yes. And you have to have a fair speed, yeah? So we have to watch the weight and balance very carefully. All right. But it also, because many of our crew have put on a few pounds over the air and they tend to be older. Really? Gaining weight when you're older? Yeah. I haven't experienced that at all. I know better than that. I just know how to hide that. You are your father's son. But because of that, sometimes we have to limit the fuel on the 172 so we try not to fly those four search missions. Right. Because we need a loiter in the search area for up to four hours. For our flight time is pretty good. Four hours in the air with four guys. Yes. That's a very good aircraft. Yes. It's about all the crew's bladders can take. And that aircraft doesn't have to fly tremendously fast. I mean, the speed, how fast in miles per hour do you have to fly just to keep enough air over the wings to keep you in there? It's not much, is it? No, it's not. It will stall with the flaps down at about 49 knots. That's not even moving. Most of us would get frustrated on the freeway if we're driving 49 miles an hour. Well, we fly most of the search missions at 80 and sometimes get down below that, but we need special permission to do that because we fly, nobody gets lost on flat ground. They all get lost in the mountains. Or the deserts or someplace like that. And so we're in the Hill Country all the time. I want to hear more about that. We're going to take a little break. We're going to pay some bills. We'll be right back. Till then, everybody, stay safe. Aloha, I want to invite all of you to talk story with John Wahe every other Monday here at Think Tech Hawaii. And we have special guests like Professor Colin Moore from the University of Hawaii who joins us from time to time to talk about the political happenings in this state. Please join us every other Monday, aloha. Aloha, my name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea is on Think Tech Hawaii every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join me where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music in Hawaii Anna all across the sea from Hawaii and back again. Aloha. Thanks for playing, everybody. Thanks for coming back. This is the second part of the show, the Cyber Underground. Again, I'm Dave Stevens. I teach at the University of Hawaii Cap E-Lining Community College. I teach network security and ethical hacking. And today we're talking with Lieutenant Colonel David Shoemaker from the Civil Air Patrol. Let's get right back to it. We're talking about nobody gets lost in areas that are easy to search. They all tend to find their way into remote areas, hilly areas, treed, cliffs, caves. Yes. Whitewater rapids, volcanoes. Tell us some of the great stories you have. Well, I was sent out on a search mission very soon after I joined. And I was flying the right seat as an observer and co-pilot. And we were told that the person we were looking for was in a pine forest. And the trees were spaced fairly widely apart. But he was dressed in brown pants and green shirt. Perfect. Which made him look like a pine tree. Like a tree. Right. We didn't find this individual. We found later that his vehicle had burned up with him in it. And so we didn't score on that one. Yeah. We have a pretty good success rate. And at the moment, I can't tell you exactly what that is. I don't remember. But it's pretty good. It's nice to have you guys in the air. And let's talk about how you get funded. Can I cover one other thing? Sure. Go right ahead. One of the capabilities that we developed ourselves was a cell phone forensic capability. And we have teams who collaborate, people in Arizona collaborate with people on the East Coast via conference calls and things like that. Look over each other's shoulders as they analyze the data. And our cell phone forensic team has been called on more and more by law enforcement to find people who are lost. This is to triangulate a location. Yes. Yes, yes. Based on pings on towers. So let's begin for the people in the cheap seats. Let's fill them in. Okay. Cellular technology is a group of cellular towers or radio towers that can communicate with a cell phone and you need to give it time. And as you move with your cell phone, you communicate with different towers because you become out of range of some and in range of others. And at any given time, you can have up to three towers that can all ping your phone or contact your phone at any given time. And that's, you can triangulate a very specific area if you have close towers of someone holding that cell phone. And just to give people in this state an idea, if you're in the city of Honolulu, downtown or in the Alamona center, we can get within about six feet of a cell phone to triangulate. However, if you're hiking diamond head, it's half a mile. So there can be a great deal of variance. So I was just curious, when you guys are homing in on a cell phone, what is your area gap? How close can you get that? And as you just pointed out, it depends a lot on the terrain. And I'm not an expert on that technology. We use it. It gives us a clue where people are. One of the things that we like people to do when they go hiking is take a personal locator beacon that broadcast on the 406 band. And the reason for that is that we have equipment in the plane, which will track that. So it's basically a transponder. You rent these at the local shops when you go hiking. Yes. And you can buy them in gear and so forth, yeah. Often you can rent them for five bucks a day. And you can buy them for a couple hundred dollars. So I would think that's a significant value. I mean, if you're searching for a camper at the very least, if you get that beacon, even if you can't home in locally and get a good fix on that person, you can eliminate a wide swath of territory that you don't need to search, yes? Yes. And when we talk to people who've been located because they had these beacons, they all tell us the same thing. I am so glad that I did this. I would imagine the 406 band, I would imagine is a easier carrier wave than say most local cell phones, which use a higher frequency band and tends not to be able to get around hills and through tunnels as easy as say the lower bandwidths. Is that true? To some degree, yes, but it's still a line of sight. But when we're in the air, of course, we get a line of sight better than somebody on the ground does. With a lot of other stuff, yeah. We do two things for sheriff's ground teams very frequently. We help them locate the people, the area that they're in. Sometimes we can spot them from the air. When people hear a plane overhead and it's red, white and blue, they tend to come out of from wherever where they are. I didn't even ask that. You paint your colors are red, white and blue. Red, white and blue. Okay, all right. They tend to wave whatever they have. If they have an international orange panel, they'll get it out. And that helps us to see them because from 1,000 feet where we usually fly over the terrain, people are ants. It's hard to detect. We will fly as low as 500 feet, but that again requires special permission from our headquarters to do it. Well, you're taking on a little bit of risk when you fly that low. Yes. There's everything from thermals to really tall trees. And also in a single-engine aircraft, you're always faced with the possibility of engine failure. So we use a national nationwide maintenance contract. And we get what I think are the best. Our planes are well maintained. Now you have to, you bring them in every so often. Every so many hours that you fly to get a complete rebuild. Yes, and we use the FAA standards for that. And they're reasonably strict. I've been flying fixed wing for a number of years. I've never had an engine failure. Well, that's remarkable. I know there's a, between the seats on the 150, there was a little fuel stop. And I went for my camera once and the camera staff caught that. And as I pulled up my camera, I shut off my fuel supply. And that was an interesting event. And that's when I realized that if you fly too low, you don't have time to turn the fuel back on, realize what you've done and restart the engine and get some more air over your wings, pick up some lift and get out of the situation. At 500 feet, you might hit the ground before you can get all that done. So it's nice to fly a little bit higher. Yeah. The saying in the flying community is that the altitude is insurance. The higher you are, the more time you have to react. I like that saying. Yeah? Okay, I could use that in other areas of my life, besides flying, as a matter of fact. But tell us a little bit more about the Civil Air Patrol. I know people are exceptionally worried these days about how government agencies spend their money because these are all tax dollars that go towards funding organizations that support us and rescue us and keep us safe and protect the nation. How is the Civil Air Patrol funded? Two ways. We get about $40 million a year from the Air Force and that goes mostly into airplanes, communications, equipment, and vehicles. The rest of it, we do ourselves through fundraising. Oh, well, that's fantastic. So we're busy much of the time with fundraising trying to get the money to do what we do. It's not always easy. There are a lot of people out there fundraising with us. Really? Competitors, oh yeah. Asking for money. It's a national pastime. Well, it's our pastime at the university so I can commiserate, yeah. We're always asking, hey, can you fund this new building? Can you fund books? So you're a competitor. I know, you have a much more significant mission than we do and I gotta compliment the Civil Air Patrol on the United States Air Force having served in the Marine Corps. I feel, and I was stationed on Lackland Air Force Base, which is where the Air Force Boot Camp is and there's Kelly Air Force Base right there and I was impressed with the United States Air Force and I always have been. It seems like the top of the line, some of the smartest people, the most dedicated staff and it is one of them, I think, the best organized, uniformed armed services. And their whole program is to do the mission safely. Right. And I'm involved in that aspect of it in the CAP. I'm a master safety rated mission base safety officer, mission safety officer. So I enjoy that part. Going back to the funding, one of the reasons we're such a bargain is that we return almost $160 million a year in labor. Oh, that is a value, yeah? So we're giving back about four times what we take in. That's a good benefit. You put some money out and you don't have to pay people to work. You're paying for equipment. I would think that's an easy budget to authorize. For the most part of this, we generally don't have any trouble. The Air Force is very supportive. The Congress has been very supportive. We haggle at times for Nichols and Dimes, but they have been very supportive of our efforts. With our last couple of minutes, I want to talk about you again. You gave up a leadership position, a pretty significant one in the CAP. So you could go back to what you really love doing, flying. And I gotta tell the audience, you're 76. 78. 78. I'll be 78 in December. 78 in December. Wow. And you're still flying. That gives me a lot of pride and a lot of hope. It's nice to know that I'm gonna be kicking when I get to be 77, 78 years old. You have rigorous FAA standards that you have to physically meet. Yes. In order to qualify to fly that plane. And every year I have to take a flight physical at the commercial pilot level to do that. So commercial pilot level, United Airlines? No. American Airlines, that? No, that's an air transport pilot, ATP. Okay. And that requires, I think it's minimum 1,500 hours in flight time now. Multi-engine rating, instrument rating. I'm instrument rated, I'm not current at the moment. I'm not multi-engine rated. Couldn't afford it. So instrument rated, that means that you could fly without visibility. Yes. With just instruments. Yes. That's difficult, but you have new equipment to help you out with that. And our last 30 seconds or so, what's your most, your favorite equipment on the plane that helps you with your instruments? The iPad. They've got an application that does this. With four flight. Absolutely. And there are other apps that do the same thing. Garmin has one. There's FlyQ and WingX and several others. You hear that Apple? There's an app for that. Even for the Civil Air Patrol, I love it. It's good that you guys are using the most current technology to accomplish the mission and keep on top of the task. And I dislike when people fall into disrepair and they get lackadaisical and they don't have motivation. It seems like you guys are right on top of it and I feel safer having you guys around. You're based in Washukah, Washington, but you fly a lot out of Portland too. Yes, I'm actually a member of the Oregon Wing. And until two weeks ago, I was Chief of Staff of the Oregon Wing for two years. Chief of Staff, that's the position I was talking about that you gave up because you wanted to fly some more. Dragged in on the administrative side because they needed help and I was glad to give it. But there comes a time when I need to get back to what I came for. And now you're glad to give it up. I'm like the guy that was on his way to Australia. Yeah, he's always on his way to Australia. The movie, Support Your Local Sheriff. That's the one. The classic one. James Carter. That's right. Well, thanks for joining us. My pleasure. I hope everyone has more respect for the Civil Air Patrol and I didn't even know what it was before you joined. I got an announcement to make really quick. Wednesday's coming up at Cappy Lonnie Community College on Halloween night from six to eight p.m. Free food, free soft drinks, free water, and come on by and see our beautiful campus and check out all of our IT programs including ethical hacking and data analytics, our new program. Please come out and join us if you're in the local area. And thank you to our guests for being here and aloha everybody until next week. Stay safe.