[quote=“chaz, post:18, topic:2939, full:true”][quote=“Teflon”]
There are many small airfields all over the UK and I am sure that suitably located ones could be found that would better service the Corps than the AEFs on military establishments do currently.[/quote]
There are many small airfields which also have crash cover far below the minimum that the MoD would ever routinely accept for AEF, UAS or even EFT flying.[/quote]
I wouldn’t put any store anything that the MoD from an infrastructure / process perspective does or advocates.
I would advocate loosening the shackles of the MoD as we are more likely to be die down than flourish.
What a lot of sweeping and unsupported statements! Let me make a few of mine.
The only equipment fit needed in an elementary trainer is an ASI, Altimeter, Compass and a radio, anything else merely confuses the student. Maintenance of the Tutor fleet is to civil Public Transport requirements, as it is to any civil aircraft being used for the “grant or issue of a licence or rating”, so wrong on this one.
A large number of civil flying training organisations are basically operated by volunteers. Instructors may be paid, but it is often not their main job. Almost all BGA gliding training is in volunteer organisations (clubs) and standards are high.
There is certainly a lot of ground crew support at AEF, comprising mainly of poorly trained adults without clearance to work with children taking great delight in shouting at cadets and being rude to volunteer staff. There is certainly a lot of survival equipment (if that means World leading), but most of it is considered unnecessary in the civil world. When was a the last time a cadet successfully baled out of an AEF aircraft?
The next point is rather pointless considering the boredom of the long journey to and from the said military airfield and the way cadets are shut in a windowless room until the brief flight. Flying is flying, I know the RAF think they are the only ones who understand it, but they are not.
Ah, standardisation. In theory a good idea, but taken to excessive lengths does not make training better or flying safer. Civil flying instructors are also checked and standardised.
Air Traffic Control is NOT vital. See and be seen works very well if pilots are medically fit and don’t try to do aerobatics in the middle of a gliding competition.
WRT air traffic, this could be the way forward for 5 AEF
If it’s good enough for a busy airport operating in one the most congested places in the UK, more than adequate for a few Tutors buzzing around at the weekend.
Vital? No. Necessary to keep the risk to life as low as possible? Yes. Maybe if civilian aircraft operators bothered to use radios and fit transponders the world would be a happier place. The Benson incident was, as you allude to, unfortunate. However it could have saved 4 lives in Wales.
If you wanted it to be civilian flying, why not just change the name to the Air Scouts.
[Devils advocate mode on]
Would we be better off in the civvi world? We certainly couldn’t be any worse. Would the Vigilants have been grounded if they had been civi registered? Would there have been problems with the Tutor props if the RAF had gone with the one that Grob originally fitted? The 2010s have not been good for ATC flying, the Tutor grounded twice and the Gliding pause.
Also There has been a lot of money spent on Gliding equipment and infrastructure at Syreston with not actually not much to fly. Finally nobody has yet told me as a sqn cdr the future of gliding in Wales. I don’t know where my cadets will go to glide, what the overnight accommodation will be because Little Rislington is over a 6 hour round trip away and No date when normal gliding operations will resume.
[Devils advocate mode off]
I obviously stirred Chas up. Remember, we are talking about AEF, not all the other things that the RAF might want do with a piston engined trainer.
Maybe. If we’re talking about flying instruction (in the powered environment) then the role of the instructor isn’t just that of FI when you consider flying linked to the military - and this goes all the way down into the UASs).
Again, not UAS, but AEF, that would be cadet’s first flights in small aircraft.
I speak as I find about the ground staff.
Do you really regard civil First Officers in such a poor light?
No, I have not been subject to military standardisation in a powered aircraft, I have, however, been subject for many years to British Airways standardisation and also responsible for training, checking and standardisation in other AOC holding companies. I only mention this because you asked.
The four lives you allude to are presumably the two Tutors that managed to hit each other in South Wales whilst doing 360 degree turns to loose height. It is difficult to see how Air Traffic Control would have solved this one.
Are you not aware that actual powered flying training of air cadets (flying scholarships) is carried out by civil instructors? My FS in 1967 was at a flying club.
It is, and in the good old Flying Scholarship was too. I even got CFS’d as a FS student. I would though add that the standard of instruction received during this (I was during the 20hr days) was variable. I had a couple of superb intructors (one full time, who I met again several years later, one a part time airline pilot) but also a couple of rather disinterested ropey ones. That said, mediocre instruction isn’t exclusive to the
civilian world.
Indeed - a welcome change. Some of the QFIs you mention above are also AEF pilots. There are also some without “substantial” airline experience.
The funding might soon dry up if the Air Cadets “went civvy”.
As for the Tutor groundings (three of them - spinning was first - always best to use the correct spin recovery…). As for the prop, I’m fairly sure the Hoffman prop was an OEM option on the Tutor from the start rather than being anything different. The MT used now was the other IIRC and although better it has had its engineering snags to contend with (related to the oil system and hence the extra accumulator being installed).
Not intended to be inflammatory, just my honest observations as a civil FI/FE and trainer of civil FIs.
The Tutor is maintained under EASA Part M, no such thing as Public Transport under EASA.
I don’t mean to be rude, but I’d be staggered if anyone involved in contemporary flight training really holds that view, the limitations of visual lookout have been well and truly exposed in recent times and electronic conspicuity has made great advances.
I will give you that and TCAS made me feel much safer when it came in, but trying to keep one of five Tutors at least 5 miles from any other aircraft by instructions issued by a controller is unlikely to work on a sunny Sunday in southern England. On board anti-collision systems are the way to go, not more air traffic control.
At Booker in the 70s we did 12,000 glider launches a year, most of them in the summer. That results in somewhere near 36,000 movements (tug and glider take off together and land separately). The tugs were non-radio and the few gliders that had radio used it to talk to their crews. See and be seen does work, but not when people are pretending to be airline pilots.
In my experience it works pretty well (ok, as long as ATC have the manning), and if the TS becomes difficult due to high traffic density then you probably want to find another sector to operate in anyway. Hence the useful sub-division of airspace into sectors at all Tutor bases allowing useful and proactive coordination with ATC and aircrew.
This is, of course, the inherent weakness of a lot of the service thinking - assumptions that things will always stay the same.
My last job before true retirement was with a low cost airline (not the Irish one). Not only was the training/checking the best I had ever experienced in the industry, but everyone from the CEO down came to work in the morning with a “what needs to be changed today” attitude. Not every change was for the better, but most of them were and the result was in just a few years they were the second biggest UK operator (and without any aircraft sporting a metal plate by the door saying which bank it belonged to - they own them all).
It may not be an assumption. I’m sure the sums have been done. I’m sure CFS would fall off their chair at having to provide the assurance at a couple of dozen civil airfields around the country😀!
For the volume of air experience that they are trying to provide, ensuring (once at the airfield) each cadet has the same opportunity as another, be they from Inverness or Dover, I’d be interested to see the sums of how much “cheaper” it could be outside (in an aircraft as inherently safe as the Tutor). Let’s face it, AEF is affordable because it has (for the past 17 odd years) been able to be piggy backed onto other RAF projects.
Ah, here I can help you. For more than a decade I ran a pleasure flying business using a single Tiger Moth. We operated at weekends to full AOC standards (they were not “trial Lessons”) planning on 16 flights a day. The best we ever achieved was 36 flights in one day. For five of those years we gave free flights to cadets on summer camp at RAF Uxbridge, in fact with the help of a number of other operators at the airfield (also supplying their aircraft free) we flew all 36 cadets at least twice and on one memorable occasion every cadet got at least 4 flights. Don’t ask me how the ACO squared this with regulations, we just did the flying.
As a result of this and with encouragement from a more enlightened part of the service we put together a scheme to privatise part of AEF using three Tigers at a nearby RAF airfield. We had hangarage and accommodation offered, we had engineering cover organised and could have had the operation running within the year. The rug was eventually pulled by one officer who couldn’t countenance the idea of cadets being flown by pilots who didn’t have RAF wings (in spite of the VGSs already doing it). Our pilots would have been ATPL holders with at least 2000 hours and 500 hours in taildraggers.
The other objection from this officer was cadets would not be interested in flying in an open cockpit bi-plane. I can assure you that our experience was that the Tiger was the most sought after aircraft when we flew cadets. We certainly found it a very practical aircraft for pleasure flights with few engineering problems.
The costing for this three aircraft AEF flight was made and compared with what the service thought AEF was costing in their aircraft. Our figure including everything was just over 25% of theirs. I can’t recall the actual numbers, but they wouldn’t make much sense after all the inflation since then.
As to safety, I question that the Tutor is significantly safer than any other light aircraft. The overwhelming majority of GA accidents are human error and structural failure is almost unknown. Safety is having good people.
“After the Tutor…” is, as at 10/05/16, more Tutors. Apparently the introduction of Grob 120TP to the EFT schools will release airframes for AEF flying, with two new AEFs planned, including one in Northern Ireland. Total aircraft numbers go from 40+ to 70+.
Air Cadet Aviation Relaunch:Written statement - HLWS591 made on 10/05/16 refers:
“The reduced glider fleet will be operated by significantly fewer, but larger, VGS, which will have a regional focus and be better integrated with synthetic training and increased AEF locations. The number of Grob Tutor aircraft beyond 2017 for AEF/ University Air Squadron (UAS) use will go from 45 to 70 airframes, enabling the enlargement of existing AEFs and the formation of two new AEFs.”
This was also stated in Air Force: Gliding:Written question - 33368 on 11/04/16:
“There will also be an uplift in Tutor aircraft, for powered flying from 45 to 70, and the formation of two additional Air Experience Flights, as well as the provision of 25 part task trainers.”
Whist this all remains subject to change, particularly in light of an election, financial constraints, and the introduction of the new military flying training system.
Would be nice, but last I heard the RAF was getting 23 Prefects but disposing of 28 Tutors to Finland. So where are the extra Tutors for AEF coming from?
According to Airforcesmonthly.com report, RAF currently operates 119 Grob 115E aircraft (Wikipedia says 117), including RN and AAC users. 28 to Finland still leaves c.90 airframes, including those with enhanced avionics.
Compared to many civilian aircraft that fulfil similar roles and capabilities it is a far more modern platform. Just compare it to the Firefly: QFIs on the latter had to go high-rotational spinning every now and then just to keep current should anything happen that led to that (Spinning Firefly’s having sadly taken several to their graves). The Tutor pilots get to practice the alternative recovery too; essentially let everything go as the aeroplane will quite happily sort itself out. Four off- airfield forced landings without injury too. Even the one that stalled in from 50ft is still flying. It’s easy to fly, stable and as robust as anything.
Ortac: as Microlight1 mentions, the sale of the 28 (a mixture of Classic and EA Tutors) does leave about 90. Some will remain with EFT for time being as the transition to MFTS occurs, but eventually the fleet will exclusively be for UAS/AEF ops (although with a smaller CFS Sqn also remaining)
[/quote]
Hence the useful sub-division of airspace into sectors at all Tutor bases allowing useful and proactive coordination with ATC and aircrew.