The Cmdt said himself that “the Gliding contract that supports 2 FTS is fixed at over £3,000,000 a year, which is why we are working hard to change the way we manage the Glider fleet to safely fly 10,000 cadets per year within the existing cost envelope.”
We have 34k cadets in the ATC and 11k cadets in the CCF(RAF). If we manage by some miracle to hit the 10k target then cadets can only expect to see 2 glider flights/VGS visits in their cadet carer. And 10k is the target number, not the number we are flying currently.
It’s abysmal. And at a cost of circa £300 per flight, it’s uneconomical, too.
A. Cadets on GS (Or whatever its called these days!) are trained for Solo flight only …not thermal soaring which is probably the area of flight where a spin would be entered most commonly due to the nature of the flight and the higher workload involved in lookout and flying.
Granted, any turn ‘could’ lead to a spin…but see points C & D below.
B. On a solo, a Cadet would not be above @1000’ …so recovery from a full spin at that height would be very tricky even for the best of trained!
C. The Viking is notoriously ‘un-spinnable’ in its nature - hence spin whiskers were added to certain aircraft in the fleet to allow for VGS Staff / Instructors (who do go higher!) to be taught spin recovery.
D. All Cadets are taught to recognise and recovery in the early stages of any potential approaching spin parameters / stall in straight and turning flight …if they can’t do this they don’t solo!
I did a week at RAF Sealand back in the day and after 5 days I went solo. But during those 5 days, I was taught about soaring, finding thermals, and what to feel for. My instructor failed one cadet from attempting their solo as they lacked the confidence and they understood the risks but went home happy having the awesome week away that we all did.
When we had an opportunity of flying or gliding we would struggle to find cadets interested to go for the day to have a couple of launches. But to speak of my experience of gliding, we managed to get a few to put their name down to give it a go last year and they absolutely loved it.
Wheras gliding is undoubedtly centred around clubs, I’m concerned that the RAF have the impression that powered flying training is centred mainly on delivery by ‘clubs’, this is painting an unfair impresession to readers that they they are amateur in their nature :
Tayside Aviation was not a ‘club’ , but a totally professional flying school, staffed by instructors with many, many years of experience and qualified to deliver PPL, Commercial and Flying Instructor courses and was a CAA Approved Training Organisation - You can find more about the rigour and approval process for ATOs at : Approved training organisations | Civil Aviation Authority (caa.co.uk) .
Please stop referring to these professional organisations as ‘clubs’ and recognise that they are subject to a great degree of oversight and rigour from relevant regulator. It would be useful to understand the safety assurance the RAF is seeking over and above that provided by the CAA.
I suggested this above - but as zero progress was made to keep VGS staff current during the gliding “pause” (effective STOP) by linking to BGA facilities, sadly, I don’t see it happening.
Well thats not quite true there was some working with BGA facilities as as syerston had BGA (RAFGSA) aircraft for use in keeping flying and burseries were paid out to send VGS staff to various BGA sites.
Granted, I’m an outsider looking in (one that was fortunate enough to do a good bit of gliding via a scholarship back in the day), but the big thing for me is that this organisation really needs to look at what attracts cadets to this club over the other clubs.
The academic stuff is great and can give them valuable life credits and possibly even open doors, but you’re called the RAF Air Cadets.
Pretty much everything you do should be geared towards developing a solid understanding of how to fly something, with regularly practiced ground skills and air skills. You could even argue that flying suits might be a more desirable daily dress.
Then add a splash of shooting, fieldcraft/downed aircrew survival, first aid, AT, and DofE to round out the experience and offer.
But without a solid focus on your brand, you become a youth club with “air” in the name that doesn’t spend a whole lot of time developing that passion for aviation (or closely linked interests).
Like joining the sea cadets and not spending loads of time getting wet, or joining the army cadets and not spending loads of time shooting or being cammed up in a shell scrape.
I wouldn’t say the other stuff is worthless, but I think a revision of what the core offer should be could be quite important.
1/10 cadets getting airborne per year (therefore some of them never getting airborne in their cadet careers?) is a miss IMHO.
True. One of the continental European air cadet organisations runs on very similar lines.
I won’t go into too much detail for security reasons, but if you took the number of flights my (mid to large) Squadron has had since lockdown, the nearest number it rounds to is zero.
I hear and agree with you Sir, my only question is around RAFGA clubs… I have asked the question over the last decade or so, if the RAFGA clubs are happy (and have capacity) to fly cadets, then why cant they?? RAF Odiham has Kestrel - it’s on the base, it uses hangers (old 618 VGS hanger). it’s manned by RAF (and Former RAF) staff. Surely it HAS to meet the Duty Holders approval (like all clubs on the base) it certainly gets inspected…
I’m pretty sure that this was looked at during the pause - issues with DBS / “working” with under-18 cadets? Accommodation would be problematic = the previous options looked at parents having to drive to an RAFGA location & stay there all day for the supervisory aspects. Also, the 7(?) RAFGA locations do not offer a fair geographical spread.
BGA locations, especially youth centres, do not have a DBS issue…Same for ATOs. Locations-wise, far more choice.
It would be useful to summarise the various points / constraints in one place so that an objective assessment can be made for flying cadets at UK ATOs (powered flying) & BGA locations. I suspect (subjectively) that there are lots of “pros” & very few “cons.”
I know that we had historical AEF & VGS flying statistics quoted somewhere; up to date figures would be very handy.
For example, Cambridge Aero Club has always had excellent ATO audit results from the CAA & I believe has just received an exemplary audit outcome.
I would say similar to BGA facilities - & incidentally, the CAA granted Delegated Authority responsibility to BGA for issuing of licences - BGA has to be seen as a responsible organisation for the CAA to have done this.
The Air Cadets flew with Kestrel under the old ACTO 35 rules. Initially it was great, then the members started to not turn up on days they knew the cadets were there as they felt they were doing the VGS’s job and they joined the GSA to have fun flying, something they were no longer doing. At the end only 2 pilots would fly cadets - and they were both VGS pilots flying there while the VGS’s were paused. It led to a lot of cancelled cadet flying, did a but of damage to the GSA itself that took a while to recover from and the allocations died off before ACTO 35 did despite there being plenty of money available.
There were also a number of other issues including, for example, a cadet launched in an aircraft with the tail dolley still attached - everyone got to watch it fall to the ground at the other end of the airfield, luckily not hitting anything or anyone. It highlights the differences between that and a VGS - the VGS has multiple checks to prevent that and both the operation and individual staff are routinely standardised to make sure it’s happening.
