This year my wing has been given 3 annual camps for the summer period. This totals about 110 cadets. This is not including other camps like RIAT or over seas camps just your normal summer camp at an RAF station.
From a wing of about 640 cadets I would consider this to be a unsustainably small number considering one of the corps objectives of the corps is to experience life on an RAF station.
I don’t want people to have a go and say when bread was tuppence apny t’ ‘ole wing went t’ camp for 3 years every fortnight and flew in t’ Wellington bombers over t’ Russia.
But…
With the draw down of the RAF and less “spare” accommodation on RAF stations summer camp places are getting like rocking horse poo. What can or should the corps and maybe the RAF be doing about this. While it is not directly an RAF problem how many current service personnel had their first experience of service life on a summer camp as a cadet and that experience influenced their future career.
It was more of a suggestion of something that could be looked at in the future (likewise the Navy & Army stations.) Interestingly we were at one of said experience days last year and someone from HQAC was there, I’m sure they mentioned something about HQAC wanting to do more with the guys at Lakenheath so who knows.
Absolute joke this year
Our wing got camp places for 24% of the cadets
As for staff they have been cut to the bone it’s barely manageable for some camps. If you factor in driving hours then one camp has practically a permanent duty staff at night all week. my best friend is going nuts since becoming staff in 2000 he has missed 2 years of camps, been asked most years to help and do 2 including stepping in last minute as someone pulled out, or doing back to back camps and this year they have said there’s no Room for him to do 1 but people who are on the list for multiple camps places.
Friend was there 2 years ago never again. Tents for all, had bats and bugs in them (seen the pictures) outside the camp across from a pub. 1 flood light that is on a time clock and when it rained they found the tents had holes, and there was no duck boards suitcases direct on the ground so they got soaked
And the camp program was poor all they did was museum after museum section visits were at best 15minutes, you saw more of the tornados standing at the end of the runway by all accounts
So if these sort of things are being done and almost seem to be set up to go, where’s the problem for HQAC to make it easier (as I bet it’s a raft a of admin to go) and explore other similar opportunities? Maybe free entry to museums and other places for staff and cadets. Sounds like something ideal for school holidays, build an overnight camp into it just to make it a bit more. With Easter looming sounds like a plan forming.
Like with most things, if you see something going on, organise it yourself and give the cadets something to talk about and testes to HQAC. I think we’d sooner get a Krakatoa event in the middle of the UK, than anything remotely useful or positive leaking from the Ivory Towers.
WRT camps I think we’re on about 400 places in the summer.
one at easter (shared camp - we get 15 places. In term time for most of our wing)
two in summer (first has 21 places in term time, second has 40 places.)
We have 2 weeks of HQAC Summer Camps totalling 54 cadets this equates to around 5% of the Wing’s Cadet Strength or 2 cadets per squadron!
In addition to this there is a Wing Camp to Germany (35 Cadets), 1 allocated AT week at Windermere (40 Cadets) and a Greens Camp (110 Cadets) this still only brings the number of cadet places up to 239 or 23% for HQAC/Wing organised camps.
The worst part is that the wing did not bid for many HQAC Camps as we have not able to fill previous years camps with Staff/Cadets and indeed have previously returned weeks.
we do a Sqn camp at one of three or four training areas - we’ll take 35-odd cadets and 8 to 10 staff for a 7 day trip, it will be a mix of AT, FC, shooting, a city visit, a couple of section visits for those interested in whats available and some social - we’ll do that for about £50 each.
annual camps for the last 5 years or so have been about half a dozen cadets each year. one was good, the others universally regarded as complete pump.
we tend not to have a problem finding cadets who want to go to camp, however we do have a problem finding cadets who want to go on camp again… not one cadet NCO has put their name forward for a camp in the last two years, and i doubt that will change this year.
the same is true with staff - new staff will happily volunteer, but no one wants to go again. the two issues reported by everyone are being overworked due to a lack of staff, and stations no one would visit.
annual camp has become a chore, we do it because we get whinged at if we don’t do it.
I’m a CWO and have been on an annual camp every year of my cadet ‘service’ bar one and I was on holiday for that. Don’t buy it that cadets don’t want to go on camp again.
unless you’re on my Sqn, how the 'kin hell do you think you’d know, and secondly, perhaps the cadets from my Sqn think camp is pump because they are spoilt by the Sqn and sector camps they get to go on, and when given the choice by their parents of which week they’d prefer to go on, choose sqn, not annual…
Sorry if this sounds rude too; how come one person has managed a place on camp every year bar one when other cadets want to go and places are limited?.. I can only think that this sqn either has a surfeit of places or not many cadets.
Annual Camp is only as good as the staff on it, if your Camp Com and Training Officer are gash the camp will be too. When I go on annual camp (Every 3 years or so) I tend to go as Training Officer and the first thing I do is bin half the stations programme and replace it with my own.
As for why has one cadet managed to go every year? Maybe his Squadron dish places out first come first served? Maybe they make sure they send an NCO away with their cadets? I always try to send a balance of cadets away on camp, especially if I don’t have any staff going.
The only reason I don’t do every year is due to annual leave issues as I Camp Com a minimum of 6 DofE’s per year and this eats into my days. I also prefer to run larger camps, the last one I run was for over 130 people and therefore had about a 10th of the Wing and I find this more rewarding, I’m therefore content to let other people run the blues camps. (I’m more interested in Big sexy activities which is what I went on as a cadet rather than little ones for only 30 cadets).
Merely stating how it is where I am. My squadron and sector rarely run any camps themselves so Wing annual camps are our best opportunity. Not casting aspersions on your squadron or cadets.
We used to be a very big squadron and Wing has still been giving us disproportionate allocations, having said that however we only had four places on annual camp last year but only four people were interested too. My Wing is not large and the uptake on activities across the board is poor. If I want to do something and there are places why shouldn’t I?
If you had said that you get 4 places and only 4 wanted to go then that might have deflected some of the comment? Whereas your original comment seemed to imply that there was more interest than availability, yet you go anyway. If you read the second part of my comment I did suggest a possibility which was latterly stated to be the actual situation
