Good afternoon everyone,
On our SQN projects seem to have gone “dry” so to speak and as the units training officer I need to come up with some new ideas. I have a few such as Public Speaking as well as the standard First Aid etc, but I was just wondering what sort of projects you guys have running on your SQNs and are they viable?
Thank you.
We don’t run them any more. We used to, but dropped them as soon as we could!!!
Ditto, “projects” always seemed to be a catch all for anything pointless for filling the hours needed for each classification.
Instead of doing projects, just do the activities without calling it projects - ie Call it Recruitment Planning, Radio Communications, First Aid, etc etc etc.
Do you have multiple ones running on one night? Or just have everyone doing one single one?
First year we ran “mini projects”, 2 weeks of intense training around a theme. First aid, radio comms, media etc, with all the cadets doing it at once. The problem remained lack of progression as you had all the cadets for all evenings.
Last year each staff member on squadron was given an evening to do something with all the cadets (we have a big staff team!), This generated a heap of different ideas.
This year we’re focusing on team cohesion and building up flights. As such, evenings are spent wholly in their flights doing different activities - for example, tonight A flight did archery, B flight team building. On Wednesday A flight are doing river crossings, B flight map making. Next week the flights swap over.
Build into that sports, drill, public speaking, leadership training, flight commanders evenings, fieldcraft training, radio, first aid, meterology, visiting speakers, field cooking, local navigation training, swimming, river crossings, pioneering, air recce, community work, dofe, technical training, field hygiene, aircraft knowledge, marksmanship training and everything else we offer and you should get yourself a healthy and varied training programme without reducing the cadets to the choice of 3 months aeromodelling or “radio”.
Think short burst of excitement with lots of variety. They see/experience something they like, then they book on a weekend course for it rather than a never ending project for it.
Thank you very much, I love the sound of this. I will try something out!
Got some money?
Reconnaissance drones are cheeeep now.
Look at how you can incorporate them into fieldcraft.
We did it recently on an ex when one of our Officers brought along his drone copter thingy that cost somewhere around a £100.
We found all of the enemy posn and now people are thinking about the importance of overhead cover.
Next step will be drone with a night IR/Thermal capability.
The Army is fielding many types of drones now, and drone operator is now a job role IIRC.
Thank you for this. I suppose the only obstacle is getting this past the CivCom! 
I really struggle with this concept, why should spending teh money raised by teh cadets on someothing for cadets be so difficult.
It is something I struggle with at my Squadron, but there appears to be a wider issue with too many CivComs refusing to open the purse.
Are you the CO?
Then sack your civcom. I know of one that did that TWICE until they bought the Squadron a brand new minibus. But with aircon, leather seats, privacy glass and rooftop luggage pod.
He was sick of the usual high mileage money pit MOT failures that most squadrons ended up with.
No.
The problem is finding suitable people who want to take on the responsibility that the new rules require.
When the CivCom has only 2 current parents they seem to forget about spending money and focus on the rainy day when the bus will need replacing.
No I’m not the CO, I’m a CI but I have the role of training officer. To be honest I didn’t mean anything malicious when I said about getting it past the CivCom. Our CivCom are very in touch with funding the cadets and their activities, although I do see your point as I’ve seen some CivComs in the past who have been less than helpful.
Have Training Weekends where by the cadets can do subjects to knock off whether cadet related or not. Some of the ideas that Batfink states are pretty cool think outside the box maybe ask your cadets what they want to do as a measure sometimes cadets can come up up good ideas for activities.
Another is to use your cadets preferably your senior cadets (also don’t discount your junior cadets either) to do the planning activities on their own with some guidance of course and make them feel that they contribute to the success of the activity. I use mine for planning field exercises, squadron socials, funding/grants etc when required, you would be surprise on what they can come up with when they put their minds to it.
I’m thinking of using a Raspberry Pi and Sense Hat to demonstrate pitch, roll and yaw. The Sense Hat’s pressure sensor can be used to teach the cadets about altimeters. The output is displayed rather conveniently in mb, so I should be able to show them that air pressure decreases at around 1 millibar (hopefully post-Brexit we’ll see the back of hectoPascals) for every 27 ft increase in altitude.
I have my own Pi3 and Sense Hat. Very easy (and cheap) to get started. Most cadets should know enough programming from school to be able to work on the project unsupervised.
There must be loads of other cadet related Pi projects that they can build.
Have you considered Drones as a project?
Will need some fundraising.
Brilliant stuff - clearly you’re interested in this stuff. Just make sure the cadets are before you start too! 
Same applies to Aircraft Recognition and 101 other “niche” subjects!
Slightly OT, but Pascals are the one that’s actually an SI unit…
Hmmm, not easy to find people when you shouldn’t be flying a drone camera within 50m of them…
Insurance in case of injury? Liability? Dare I say it, safety risk?
I think that means other people, ie those who aren’t part of the exercise.
I think there is still the requirement for membership of some airplane flying club for ACO units to be insured for ANY RC aircraft, from £5 helicopters right up to £5K drones.