But…but… We can’t modernise ACO Radio… What ever shall I do with my “codex wheel” and this Radio Teletype encoder/decoder I have sitting here!? :huh:
This is the only radio I use these days. ■■■■■■ all range but no nonsense.
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I was chatting to a mate at work and he said his son in Yr7 has done online safety since he was 8. He said the local council run online safety events which they pay for buses etc to take the kids from Year 4 to Year 8 along to get spoken to about it, plus what they do at school. They do what my kids called PHSE and cover off online safety and social media in secondary schools now, it wasn’t quite as much of problem when my kids were at school, but now 99% have smartphones, pads, tablets etc which parents have little if no control over, it has become much more of a problem. So based on that I can’t see any point in us ‘hacks’ telling them something they’ve been told a hundred times as you get to a point where you stop listening. Plus I imagine they’d be able to teach many of us!!
I think it would be far better to better inform staff in how to spot potential signs of CSE in all it’s forms and online wrong-doings and put proper systems in place for us to report them direct to the authorities, like they do in schools.
You’d be surprised - being told about something at school & doing something about it, are 2 very different items! A few years ago, I had to tell the teacher in charge of kids’ IT security (& associated presentations) that his ideas/protocols were about 10 years behind the times!
Choose a handful of your cadets at random, & see what you can find on their Facebreak pages - several will have open profiles, posts &/or photos, with limited or no personal security… Bet ya their stuff can be seen by “friends of friends” - not clever at all - but you’d have to ask them about that privacy setting.
You’d be surprised - being told about something at school & doing something about it, are 2 very different items! [/quote]
Granted and applies equally to adults, there more than enough adults to do stuff through social media, that they later regret. As newspapers lay testament to.
But in terms of cadets it’s just a case of us repeating what they are being told at school and elsewhere by people with more resources. It does seem that schools are well ahead of the game in just making kids aware, more so than even when my kids were at school. My mate at work said it’s repetitive for the kids but seems they are pretty hot on trying make the kids as safe as possible, plus the leaflets they come home with are pretty good.
I still feel we would be reinventing the wheel.
TETRA was never designed to be that, and would have worked except the company supplying it in the UK went bust and the mobile world moved on far faster than TETRA could be installed nationally so the business case collapsed. Even the Public Services are about to cease using its equivalent - Airwave - because it’s too expensive and the kit too unreliable and too much internal politicking messing it up.
Analogue radio works, and does it very well. Simple point to point Comms is as you say what most Squadrons need. PMR446 does that well too - as long as some local eeejits don’t join in and mess with it. Civil LMR is messy because the resource is finite, everyone wants it and no one gives two hoots about talking over anyone else on the same radio channel.
The ACO is supposed to be a ‘disciplined’ organisation and correct radio procedures are a discipline all their own. Kids of the current generation don’t have any idea that they can’t talk to who they want, when they want unless some VERY expensive infrastructure is in place. No Squadron, and certainly not the ACO is going to be able to afford to run a full digital broadband radio service, nor does it need it - that’s called the mobile internet!! Let’s face it, we can’t even get the ACO to issue half decent kit to Squadrons (actually any kit at all) so we have to buy and struggle to run 30 year old obsolete military hardware on a shoestring, or buy cheap handhelds not designed for cadet type operation but local commercial use. Our current procedures are all about operating on a single frequency, shared system and how to do it efficiently, and once comms are established then abbreviated procedures are used.
CCF it’s optional at first class. Just saying.
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I think, just for fun we should revert to Morse, semaphore and Aldis lamps
Heliographs would be fun too!
The greatest problem with Comms is that the people with an interest in it see it as an end unto itself, whereas in fact it is a tool that can be used to assist in a practical task.
unfortunately as a Sqn Radio Officer, i have to agree with Daws.
at our unit we use radios for maybe 6 or so events a year, various car parking/marshalling events where radios are useful.
this is no different an application that the RAF/MOD use it a s a tool to facilitate an activity, not one in its own right.
yes there are aspects of radio which can be “interesting” and make it a subject in its own right but that doesn’t mean that is all it should be!
too many Cadets dont have a basic understanding because they are put off by the radio geeks
One of the biggest problems is range for handhelds. They seem OK if you are almost within shouting distance, have straight line vision and or no buildings in the way. The ones we have which boast a 5km range really don’t work well when you’re anywhere other than open fields or in line of sight. As soon as we get anywhere hilly or built up, out come the phones.
Thus shall always be the way of radio comms. You could make a meal of it by involving relay stations but sometimes the terrain will just defeat you. We do an event at Balmoral and the comms is generally good until we need to talk to station 23 which is up a hill and hiding behind a giant chunk of granite…
(oh, and you are lucky if your phone works out there too!)
I assume other people have seen the restrictions put in place for RIAT. Is it just me or does an 80Km air cadet radio exclusion zone seem a bit over the top?
I know how crap radios are after years of hoping for better. I couldn’t be bothered with relays because unless you’re doing lots and lots and lots of comms, some poor sods would be bored beyond bored OR people just talk for the sake of it, as has happens with the radio geeks at Wing events.
each year i see this i do think it is a bit excessive!
I dont know what kit they guys use but that size of cordon does seem to have a large “safety” factor built in for radios which typically have a 20mile range (at best - based on our unit based VHF)
I don’t know wether anyone is aware of the fact that the whole radio Syllabus is currently having a huge over hall where you will see a 3 level system bronze, silver and Gold each with a badge I believe.
Should be out by the end of the year if not sooner.
I have also heard on the grapevine not the horses mouth that they are interlinking a lot more STEM based subjects into the syllabus or at least complementing it.
I find that there is still a need for radio comms and having a basic grasp of it and if delivered correctly the cadets actually enjoy it. I have ran numerous courses for my wing from provisional to comms badges on uhf/vhf and the cadets enjoy the courses that much that I have to bat them off with a stick as they all want to come back and help us run the next course (which I do have them do but each course has around 30 cadets and most of them want to return)
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[quote=“Parky131” post=25636]I don’t know wether anyone is aware of the fact that the whole radio Syllabus is currently having a huge over hall where you will see a 3 level system bronze, silver and Gold each with a badge I believe.
I forgot to say that this should be out by the end of the year if not sooner!
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I personally don’t think the relevance of radio has anything to do if the cadets enjoy it or not, it is the practical efficiency of the basic equipment in the average sqn, ie handhelds, compared with modern mobile methods of communicating.
It’s all well and good doing lessons etc where it is probably fully equipped for instructing in an ideal environment, but when you are out and about with a handheld and all of a sudden someone a few hundred yards away might as well be on the other side of the planet due to topography and or buildings, it soon loses its appeal and out comes the mobile phone. For me personally is any message is heard by everyone on that frequency which is not always desirable.
Technology has advanced a far way with everyone hearing everything on the frequency with introduction of airwave radio where it acts more as a mobile and you can have a private conversation handheld to handheld.
Either way radio is part of our ethos with preparing the youth of today for military and civilian life - radios are still a key part of emergency services and military life
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[quote=“Parky131” post=25667]Technology has advanced a far way with everyone hearing everything on the frequency with introduction of airwave radio where it acts more as a mobile and you can have a private conversation handheld to handheld.
Either way radio is part of our ethos with preparing the youth of today for military and civilian life - radios are still a key part of emergency services and military life
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Airwave is thw brand, the technology is TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio). A digitally encrypted point to point or point to pultipoint system capable of sending data (small packs) as well as voice. The network remains the same but it’s the gubbins which operate it which is the clever bit.