(As an officer teaching drill*) I am having some difficulty with the timings of static turns during drill, and was wondering if anyone on here can help!
As per AP818, there is a “regulation pause” in between static turns/inclines equal to two beats in quick time, indicated by “Left Right”. So any turn or incline is One - Left - Right - One. (At least this is my interpretation).
But some of my cadets have just returned from a leadership course having been taught the timings as One - One - Two, which is presumably a pause of just one beat in quick time.
If you have a look on Youtube, you can find plenty of ATC cadet drill doing turns with a two beat pause, but if you look for standard RAF drill, I found things like this with almost no pause at all:
(I think something like this was shown on the course as how it should be done).
So which is correct? Aren’t we all following AP818? If regulars are doing it differently, then surely the RAFAC are incorrect, as we take our lead from them?
*CCF, so we have no adult NCOs or Drill Instructors to do this!
HYou are correct in the way you are teaching with the regulation pause as 1LR1.
From discussions I’ve had at the corps D&C camp it would appear the RAF have different ways of carrying out Drill. The most recognisable being the differences the QCS input which when compared side by side is different to that of AP818.
The best course of action is to always follow AP818 as that is where it says in black and white to observe the regulation pause equal to two beats in quick time meaning the 1LR1.
It could be that the old drill is still being taught which was pause in stead of LR or that the CCF instructor from the leadership course was using army or navy timings (disclaimer, I am not familiar with army and sea cadet drill so this could be a load of rubbish)
The timings are One-Left-Right-One, spoken in the cadence of Quick Time (ie, 116 beats per minute)
Each word is spoken on a beat - not “one—leftright—one”
Don’t trust any video of the QCS - they do odd movements and odd timings to fit in with displays.
Don’t trust the army - they do too much shouting and rush things.
Don’t necessarily trust videos you see from the ATC, even at competition level, as lots of people seem to struggle with the timings of static turns.
Don’t trust the RAF - they don’t follow their own rulebook.
I’ve watched the changes in drill over the years and they seem to be purely cosmetic, coming from a desire to show that a job still needs to exist, more than there needs to be a change. Pretty much the same as dress regs.
When I’m on a parade or doing drill I still do the same as I did when I was first taught drill 40 years ago and you know what the end result is still the same in terms of the direction I face or whatever I end up doing.
I’ll bet my lunch money that the problem is because some old salt has infected the instruction with the old
ACP19 turn timings (albeit with totally incorrect words).
ACP19 used to require “One - Pause - Two”, which, regardless of possible intention, was always carried out as 3 beats. This would be exactly what your lads or lasses are doing with the words “one - one - two”.
Army drill is effectively the same as AP818, except that they say “One - Two - Three - One” where we say “One - Left - Right - One”; and they attempt to do it at the speed of light.
There haven’t really been any ‘changes in drill’. There was the change from “attention” to “shun” which made a slight difference, and then we switched to the RAF manual which - given that we have no input to that manual - would appear to be the exact opposite of pointless job creation.
There was nothing wrong with the drill we did as cadets and this change in how you interpret the timing is bizarre and purely a change for the sake of it. The use of ‘shun’ rather than ‘attention’ was also unrequired.
As for needing to show a need for a job, the whole SNCO structure has evolved into this. We never had a CACWO or RWO and WWOs just rolled up for Wing Parade and you never heard from them for the rest of the year, tehn there are the Area WOs that also appeared and then there is the DI course nonsense. All of which, if they went no one would notice or care.
except that those cadets moving to join the RAF had to significant re-learning to comply with the RAF’s current drill - a common complaint by the RTS staff. Harmonising the drill manuals was simple and sensible.
A lot of what you say about the SNCO structure has some truth. Some of it is frothing drivel of course, but not all of it
If our Sector SNCO disappeared then my unit would be worse off, and there is a large difference from what I’ve observed between properly-trained DIs and others.
absolutely, having just left there, I can say that despite using the same manual there is still a training delta that has to be overcome. It’s hard for the recruits to un-learn and then re-learn.
This seems to point to a situation where RAFAC Staff are still teaching the 818 incorrectly.
The timings are easy: 1 - left - right - 1 (116 ppm)
This is true, but it is not all one-way. RTS do not follow AP818 particularly rigidly and don’t seem to be in a rush to update it with current practice.
I have definitely seen many, many examples of the turns timings not being properly applied (QCS do not help in this regards as they set a very poor example) but I doubt that adapting to the “correct” timings is a particularly difficult fix.
We also have a lot of resistance from the “we’ve always done it this way” mindset and we don’t have a strong framework for ensuring that initial drill lessons get it right from day 1. I don’t think we ever will.
Incy, I have to disagree there - it’s the lesson plans from the 818 (for which the AP is designed) that the (we) instructors use to teach basic foot drill to recruits. It’s the standard and if the lessons aren’t taught that way there’s hell to pay! So the 818 is the only source and is rigidly stuck to for drill instruction.
The less said about QCS the better when it comes to standard, everyday drill
Drill in the RAF is starting to become more standard as more DIs are being trained and the standards are being raised - albeit slowly!
I’ve not seen it personally, but I have heard from people who have (senior people, not just recruits) that everybody seems to have adopted the QCS method as opposed to the book method.
By which I mean: AP818 instructs that each foot is raised by 6" (and the knee bent sufficiently) as it is moved either left or right, while current RAF practice (I am told) is that the first leg is kept quite straight and moved 12", then the trailing leg follows through the bent-knee position to resume attention at the new position.
I do not think you are using a 30" pace for paces left and right
