RAF Air Cadets Launch into the Future at RIAT: A Showcase of Innovation and Aerospace Ambition
Just seen this news article. Sooo much that’s just PR nonsense and 90% of the cadets will be er experience, oh just like flying, and shooting.
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That looks like we should be re-named the RAF Computer Cadets when you take into account some of the other relatively recent declarations.
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Give every Sqn a set of all that kit and…
We might have enough to entertain half the cadets for a couple of months…
Utter goppings
Undoubtedly, the star attraction of the RAFAC exhibit was Spawnpoint RE:COIL
You mean a game I can buy and play at home?
That really is a statement. The most exciting thing there was something I could do at home.
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That sums up where we seem to be heading.
The state-of-the-art flight simulators are Intel i5 rugged laptops with (I think) GTX 20 series Graphics cards.
Jesus wept
Some of this looks alright, and I’m keen on using technology to advance the ability to deliver our training goals, but can we use tech from this decade please?
In all seriousness, I do know a couple of CFAVs on this team and they do the best they can with the very limited budget they’ve been provided from up on high. They also work in tech for their day jobs.
But at an organisational level, we need to realise that if we’re not supporting the immersive tech team with the very latest high-spec kit, we’re inadvertently sending a negative message out to prospective cadets and their parents.
I’ve shared this before but I don’t think all the tech barriers are within the RAF or even RAFAC.
A couple of years ago one of my cadet NCOs asked if he could type up some Terms of reference for the cadet NCO team. No problem says I just let me see what you come up with.
He hands the Terms of reference to me in hard copy & initially I’m bemused why he’s selected “courier new” as the font.
It then dawns on me that he’s used an actually typewriter - one of the dual ribbon ones with red & black ink.
It was like getting a set of nuclear launch orders from the Cold War.
Now it amuses me when we talk about digitisation when you’ve got 17 year olds in the 2020s running around with typewriters.
Unfortunately for us to grasp the tech we also need that tech literacy imbedded within cadets, parents & the local community before they even hit us with else it’s a challenge to get past the Luddite culture already embedded.
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I mean that could just be him being a hipster.
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It goes further than the immersive / synthetic training side.
Each Squadron should be provided with at least one up to date workstation for Bader access. It doesn’t have to be fancy, it could be an all-in-one i5 or even i3 (or AMD equivalent). Plus an internet connection: a 4G stick would do.
If this were purchased centrally I’m sure it could be done at a reasonable price and provide a higher level of assurance than the current mix of personal, squadron purchased and donated kit most of us run on.
We are budgeting to replace Sqn PCs, as our current ones won’t run Windows 11, and it’s not what I really want to spend our subs money on.
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I’m not sure how far it’s gone, but there was talk a while ago of a mass purchase of Starlink equipment.
Could be helpful for immersive tech; one squadron hiding in the Scottish Highlands with their gaming equipment, another in the Brecon Beacons playing virtual tag against one another whilst shouting “bang bang” to save ammo.
For sqn pcs, have you looked into something like an old optiplex?
Define ‘old’?
We need to replace previous generation PCs because they won’t run Windows 11, and are now unworkably slow using Bader.
So that suggests nothing older than an 8th/9th gen i5. Ideally I’d want something a bit more recent so it lasts longer.
For me, old is anything that isnt dual core. Pentium 4, kind of era.
We all know the system requirements of Windows 11 are designed to push us to buy new PCs.
I would not encourage the average user to circumvent the system requirement checks. It can be done but it sounds like 1) hard work, 2) fragile
Instead we should all at least try and take the plunge and use Linux. If all its being used for is a bit of light admin (web browsing, OpenOffice) you can likely give whatever PCs you have already a new lease of life.
The Windows 11 system requirements should result in a load of unwanted PCs being dumped onto ebay by their previous owners or their agents. Corporate refurbs are my favorite kind of PC - desktop and laptop. If these are no use to the secondhand user (cannot run win11) you should be able to pick them up for next to nothing.
It’s an unnecessary learning curve. It’s often not intuitive enough.
You can get decent 9th/10th gen desktops which are great for what we do at very little cost. You can also get half decent chromebook/chromebook style laptops for a reasonable price too.
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Wot, do you mean Windows 3.1 isn’t cutting edge anymore
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With distro’s like Ubuntu and PopOS that really isn’t the case these days, unless you plunge into the command line.
It all depends on your squadrons resources, personally I’m currently buying up secondhand 4th Gen i5 laptops on eBay for ~£50 each for use on the squadron. The currently run Windows 10 and won’t upgrade to Windows 11. We’ll probably accept the risk of Windows 10 for a couple years, then I’ll convert them all to PopOS and carry on.
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Have you tried chrome OS Flex? Might be another good option.
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