Investigation Prep Part 2

Happy Saturday!  Today is our first public investigation so I thought it would be the perfect time to break down our day of prep work. Yesterday I posted about what we take care of the day before so you will want to check that out. Today is all about packing up equipment and gathering paperwork. First things first we finalize our layout of the location and where we want to place our cameras and other static equipment. With this being a public event we won't be breaking down into smaller teams so I came up with 3 scenarios on the flow of tonight's investigation which when we arrive and speak with the clients we can decide the best course of action or game plan if you will. Our final team member count is done, we sent out an email this morning as a final reminder and gave the game plan for the evening.  Right now Tim and I are doing our final packing and checklist of all the equipment we will be taking (note we don't put batteries in until we arrive so we don't get any pre investigation drainage). And after that I will figure out team assignments such as who will be leading which team and what equipment gets assigned to which team member.  Hope this helps any new groups that are starting out and need a little guidance. Also the number 1 thing to remember is you can do all the planning in the world however when you get to your investigation it more than likely will be different!

Investigation Prep Part One

It is the Friday before a big investigation so I thought I would break down how we prep. Today we pull all the batteries out of all our equipment and charge all of our batteries.  We use rechargeable batteries for most of our equipment and then we purchase regular batteries from the dollar store as back up for the day of. We also on this day go through all the SD Cards and make sure they are blank as well as deleting any lingering files on our digital recorders.  The day before is also the day we finalize our team guest list so I can make up the assignment charts and Tim usually finalizes the equipment set up so we have a plan before going into the day of .  Please note even though we appear and make every attempt to be prepared before arriving we have found that something always changes when we get to the investigation site. For example Tim and I went on a pre tour of the Rio Grand prior to our investigation so we could map out the equipment set up. When we arrived the security guard on site that night opened up some rooms we previously were told we would not have access to. So last minute we had to make changes to our existing set up plan.  My best advice is to go into the investigation as organized and planned out as you can but expect and don't freak out if there are changes. Well this is our pre-day of prep tomorrow morning I will post the second part giving you the run down of the day of prep!