To jump right to the point, my wing isn’t really active on courses anymore, at least what we get on SMS. It used to turn like that when we came back to squadrons after the pandemic and unfortunately by the looks of it, we haven’t really recovered well. As a pre-pandemic cadet I’ve been trying to gain lots of experience and get on anything RAFAC related for a really long time now and it’s super frustrating when the opportunities never come up. Most we get are stuff like climbing (no offence to people that enjoy it) but this isn’t my thing and this kind of stuff can be done outside cadets.
Decided to take my own initiative. What my question is, how much actually you can do outside the cadets and still get qualified for it in cadets? I really wanted to do stuff like the N.R.A competition cadet 50 and 100 (yes I know its really hard but since I am really good at shooting, why not give it a try). I visited their website but I have no clue what would I actually need to apply for, how are we assessed?
Sorry for these long paragraphs but that’s around it. If there is anything other than DofE and music than can be done as an individual, please tell me! Thank you and I really hope I can finally find some opportunities.
@Foenix as Ive previously mentioned, we’re from the same wing. Again if youre comfortable you can let me know where you’re from (via DM) and then i can follow up with staff if youre not being told about various courses.
What qualifications do you have? and what qualifications do you want?
I previously mentioned that it appears youve been unaware of Blue Road Marching courses, we also had a canoeing day. So please don’t slate the wing and the volunteers that do try to get these courses out there (there are a lot of hoops to jump through).
There’s an Outward Bound course coming up - but the deadline has just passed on Cadet Portal - but if you were interested you might be able to ask your staff to liaise with the organising staff member.
There is a L98 Training weekend coming up soon, plans for further L98 and L91 Training in Nov and both Youth First Aid and Activity First Aid courses.
Dont forget that a lot of these activities rely on volunteers but also various approvals to operate from sites, and we’re often moved from ranges to accomodate other users.
Ive always told my cadets that if there are specific activities they want to do, to let us know and we can liaise with the SME to let them know there is an interest in X,Y,Z
Unfortunately shooting outside of Cadets isn’t much use for shooting inside apart from core components such as practice of the marksmanship principles.
All of our qualifications are military at the moment and the only one that might ever go civilian would be air rifle RCO but even then that is very unlikely to ever get approved.
Best to network within the wing and start pushing to attend courses that are about.
Got rejected from AFA before probably because my YFA expired. I don’t really want to redo the course again when I can attend a more advanced one shortly after, after all I done YFA in the past. Can I have an insight on this?