The Auxiliary Beacon
News from Civil Air Patrol... Now with 30% more sarcasm and 100% fewer safety briefings.
Latest dispatch
On Sept. 19, 54 members of the Louisiana Wing occupied predetermined points across New Orleans, opened a phone application, and waited for an orbiting camera to require them. Civil Air Patrol had never attempted the activity, a fact officials treated as innovation rather than as evidence that no…
Each week until Dec. 1, Civil Air Patrol National Headquarters is working through a historical timeline titled “Be a Part of the Story,” now in its fourth feature and sixth tile: “Helping America’s Youth Soar, Yesterday,…
The South Dakota Wing’s latest contribution to homeland defense was to arrive, on schedule, as the airspace violation. Members flew 10 drone flights for the South Dakota Air National Guard’s 114th Fighter Wing during Operation EDGECRUSHER,…
Washington Wing closed its books in September on a monthlong wildfire “response” whose principal product was photographs of places that had already finished responding. FEMA supplied hundreds of pins. Civil Air Patrol supplied 129 unpaid people…
Civil Air Patrol this week began its 85th anniversary communications season, a scheduled recitation of founding lore organized around a newly designed historical timeline branded “Be a Part of the Story.” The first tile is “Eyes…
Senior Member Samuel Ten of the Burke (Virginia) Composite Squadron has now finished Civil Air Patrol's cadet aviation menu with so little left on it that the remaining work is airline hours, two other people's private…
The National Radar Analysis Team does not hoist wreckage, extricate pilots, or stand on Thorodin Mountain. It examines radar. In less than 10 days, that was sufficient for the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center to attach…
Fifty-four Civil Air Patrol cadets from 31 states reported to Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tenn., from July 18-25, 2026, for the National Cadet Engineering Technology Academy, a competitively selected week whose title contained the…
Civil Air Patrol’s Washington Wing is now in the fourth week of its highly organized response to the wildfires currently converting large portions of central and eastern Washington into a picturesque wasteland of blackened stumps and…
Over the past five years, Cadet Col. Catherine Eve Gardner has become one of the most recognizable and respected cadet leaders at Civil Air Patrol’s National Emergency Services Academy (NESA), held each summer at Camp Atterbury,…
A cadet beamed with the unfiltered joy of someone who had just discovered that gravity still works after a 20-minute loop around the Fort Worth traffic pattern. It was a glorious Saturday of controlled mayhem for…
Welcome to the Civil Air Patrol America 250 series. In a bid to attach ourselves to a national birthday party we had nothing to do with founding, we will be highlighting American hero members and their…
Col. Joe R. Smith of Wichita Falls, Texas, has joined the elite 1 percent of American pilots who have managed to keep their machines in the air for 50 years without the Federal Aviation Administration having…
McALLEN, Texas — In a triumph that will echo through the annals of teenage aviation history, Civil Air Patrol Cadet Capt. Sebastian Vargas has officially become the 200th Cadet Wings pilot to cash in on a…
Susanna Marking, in her role as deputy director for interagency communications for the White House Task Force on the FIFA World Cup 2026, enjoys the view at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia, during a recent World…
Welcome to the Civil Air Patrol America 250 series. We highlight American hero members whose service somehow loops back to 250 years of history, even when that history involves leftover Soviet bases and courtyard art. This…
With its new organizational membership in the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF), Civil Air Patrol is strengthening its growing role within the national geospatial information, intelligence, remote sensing, and GIS community. Because flying small planes…
Welcome to the Civil Air Patrol America 250 series, in which we profile members whose idea of a quiet retirement involves more radios, cadets, and emergency management than most people encounter in a lifetime. Fifth installment:…
