General Membership Meeting
12 April 2012
The Daedalian General Membership Meeting was held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel
in North Austin at 1700 hours on Thursday, 12 April 2012. It was a dinner
meeting with members gathering as early as 1800 hours.
Following a social period, the Flight Captain, Ron Butler, called the meeting to
order at 1910 Hours. Following the invocation, the Flight Captain led the group
in the Pledge of Allegiance. Provost Marshall, Mike Rhodes, then toasted our
departed brothers and sisters, and the Commander-in-Chief. The Flight Captain
introduced our honored guests.
A list of guests follows:
GUESTS HOST
Mary Boyce James Boyce
Mary Donahue Dean Caswell
LtC Scott Cerone Speaker
Wife of Speaker
Jan Decabooter Bill Decabooter
Pat Densford Charles Densford
Teri Dula Brett Dula
Jo Jo Edwards George Edwards
Marge Meyer Andy Meyer
There were 31 members and 9 guests in attendance. $170 was collected for the
raffle. Following dinner, the meeting was reconvened at 2018. The minutes from
the last meeting were approved. The next meeting will be June 14 which is Flag
Day. We are making arrangements for the Veterans' Day parade on November 10,
2012.
Charles Loflin spoke about the scholarships and how our raffle contributes to
the fund. Each year we provide two $1000 scholarships, and the Daedalian
Foundation matches it. Last month we selected the winners. Mark Jbeily and Jenna
Fetcher were chosen for CFIP. Andrs Cepla and Jenna Fetcher were chosen for our
scholarships. We get very good Air Force and Navy ROTC nominations from The
University of Texas.
Ken Firestone is organizing our junior ROTC awards program. Several people have
volunteered to present, but we still need a few more.
This year the Christmas party is moving back to Onion Creek Country Club and
will be held on Sunday, December 9.
Our speaker for the evening was Scott Cerone, a 1995 Academy grad, and a '96
grad from Columbus AFB. He flew A-10s at Pope and Osan, and is now the DO for
the 558 FTS which is responsible for training for remotely piloted aircraft. Two
key aircraft are the Global Hawk and the Predator. The Global Hawk can fly from
Beale AFB to anywhere in the world. The operator can push a button to taxi and
push another button for takeoff. Take off is controlled by line of sight, but
after that, the control goes through a satellite. The training for Reaper and
Predator is at Holloman. Global Hawk training is done at Beale AFB. The obvious
benefit of these aircraft is they don't put a human at risk. The Air Force
trains 250 people each year. Training starts in the DA-20 Diamond. The pilots
get 40 hours of manned flight over a period of 2.5 months. Then they get all the
syllabus simulator rides in the T-6 which is mostly instruments so they can fly
and de-conflict in national airspace. They get one month of basic combat
operations training like working with an Air Tasking Order followed by 2 weeks
of team training with the sensor operator. Their training is equivalent to a
private pilot, and it takes about 3 months to qualify in their aircraft. The
washout rate is about 30%. They don't have any pilots going through this
program.
The Flight Captain thanked everyone for coming and closed the meeting