….which is not happening.
8 cadets flown over the last 5 years, during which time we have had 95 cadets on the books.
Of those who have left, the vast majority have never even seen a glider.
Last years trip to the VGS was cancelled due to weather….when we arrived!
The year before that, we arrived at 09:00, faffed around in the morning, went onto the airfield after lunch only for the winch to go u/s on the first launch. Remarkably, none of the 12 staff on site were ‘qualified’ to attempt a fix.
That for me is the worst bit.
Winches break, fine. You know what a knackered winch probably does need an actual engineer to fix it which the VGS staff won’t be.
But to waste all morning just mucking about is shameful. If staff want to play Typhoon pilots and do the whole MET brief theatre, that’s fine, but they ought to get in before the cadets do and square it all away. Cut out anything that is not categorically required to sit cadet X in the glider, and just get on with it.
Just seems like an astronomical amount of faf built into the process to get a bit of fibreglass out of a shed and hooked up to a winch.
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, but when a lot has been put into recovering about a third (at best) of our previous gliding empire, 2FTS and RAFAC are bound to be protective of it.
Since the re-establishment of 2FTS as a gliding FTS I’ve seen that empire grow with limited increase in the provision of gliding for cadets. There’s no appetite to go through what we went through before and the way the provision of military flying training had developed has created more hoops for 2FTS to jump through. It was inevitable that 2FTS had to grow.
There’s obviously no momentum to look at the provision of gliding from other sources when the focus is still on building on gliding recovery and supporting the VGS structure.
RAFAC should be proud of having access to its own FTS and VGS structure. I hope it grows into something bigger that can provide more for cadets and I believe that is the view of many. I also hope that once we have maximum output from the VGS sourcing gliding and flying from other providers can be re visited?
The idea of being proud of something as pants as 2FTS is laughable. I’m proud of the delivery staff at VGSs doing their utmost to get people in the air, but of the organisation and concept - I’d find better run, more efficient and supportive organisations in 3rd world countries.
Their whole approach to the gliding “pause” was laughable - your could have got a B747 through a “C check” in quicker time than it took to check out half a dozen gliders! Trying to get fibreglass aircraft back to “birth state” with regards to record keeping was always going to be impossible - even for commercial aircraft, for major structural changes such as a main gear, the requirement to keep the paperwork is relatively short.
No “seed-corn” with BGA in order to maintain currency - & keep cadets flying.
Add on the stupidity of awarding a contract to Southern Sailplanes that relied on them getting planning permission for another hangar in order to be able to cary out the work. Whoops, that’s didn’t work, did it?!?!
You have to have pride in a system that is functional from top to bottom - when OC2FTS admitted that they hadn’t even though of using internal opportunities (silver gliding) as a short-term fix for those who aged out for their ACPs, it doesn’t install confidence.
I get the anger and frustration about what happened in the past. There were lots of negatives and things that didn’t go well.
The outcome could’ve been worse with a decision to scrap the whole thing, but at least we have something.
The main thing is that there are still some VGSs out there providing gliding experiences for cadets.
I hope things improve and the output increases to the desired level.
In a way, that might have been the best thing? It would have forced a total re-think on gliding, funding & best use of resources. Similarly, it might have pushed RAFAC into a formal association with BGA with the potential to joint fund (or donate / lease the use of facilities) some new centres to fill in BGA geographical gaps.
Ahhh, but surely it would have just been easier not to do any of that and much like parachuting remove gliding entirely 
/pendanticmodeoff
But no where near enough, SGS opportunities have been slashed but we’re still not seeing the “benefit” of that
I think that would’ve been a better outcome, save all that money, use it to get BGA’s signed off for units to use and then give the surplus cash direct to units to arrange our own gliding direct.
Ultimately if an AT venue has an AALA we can use it for AT with minimum faff (as long as our WATTO isn’t a Throbber), Gliding should be run in the same way.
Sums up the RAFAC in one easy photograph.
Sorry, but it is a sad end to airframes that gave good service. Why can they be recycled and turned into flight sims for AGS?
Because they don’t belong to us anymore.
They were considered to be so unserviceable that they were beyond economical repair. They were then given away to a civilian charity who were given a massive government grant…to make them serviceable again.
Charity were to keep a handful of the serviceable airframes and sell the rest to raise funds. Problem is, no one is buying airframes from them.
Little Riss:
