Aren’t HQAC making all stand down periods dependent upon units hitting their KPIs?
(It’s sarcasm, don’t shoot me!)
I’ve told you the information and numbers on how long a sustained delivery of GIF takes and you’ve chosen to completely deny that it is possible a reality for that to be true because you’ve taken 4 cadets gliding on a couple of occasions and they’ve managed to get long trips.
Good for them that’s great however it is not probable to expect every cadet to get 1 launch 15mins plus. If there are no thermals, you’re coming down. Take a fairly generous launch height of 1460’ (especially for Kenleys short 2500’ runaway) get the Viking all the way back to its minimum sink rate of 146’/min and you’ll get your 10 minute flight. Taking a random selection of five gliders in the fleet over their 40 year life span they are at 7.3, 7.4, 6.6, 6.4 and 7.7 minutes per launch on average so 10 minutes is not really pessimistic as a planning assumption really
Is a 15min + flight possible – Yes, is it consistently sustainable – No
Moving on to cycling cadets through the GIF, there is a range there 35 to 50 minutes picking a number below that range does not make it probable. The numbers given above for rotating through GIF with 10 min start, 10 min flight, 10 min reset, 10 min flight and 5 min finish is entirely plausible as the midpoint of that range is 42.5 minutes.
A flying window of 5 hours is indeed possible 7.5 hours is possible can’t extend it further though the set up and tear down isn’t writing RAs, Admin instructions JI’s and nominal roles like an SMS event and they can just be repeated its safety inspections of aircraft, equipment and plant that have to be done every day. In that 7.5 hours you’re still only getting through 10 cadets on that aircraft IF its operating with 3 or 4 others.
You’ve noted about the GIF operation you’ve seen being the operation of one aircraft. Operating five aircraft does not give five times the capacity of one they tend to start affecting one another. You can’t land at the launch point (the point to receive another cable) if that is occupied by another aircraft, you can land on the airfield but will require a tow or push back into the launch line taking about 10 mins. 10 min brief CFS like to call it a 5-point brief but yep it indeed does follow pretty much the SMEAC route and should be covering Aim of the flight – Airmanship hand over/take over lookout etc – Exercise Brief normally instruments and what they’re seeing at this point – Flight Brief who’s doing what - Check of Understanding including and entire run through of the abandonment procedure. You may well be changing the weight configuration of the aircraft that takes time to action.
Is a quick turn around possible – Yes (with single glider ops + qualified support staff) is it possible with 5 aircraft – No
Circa 10,000 flying in gliders is not too far from the mark though not necessarily how you’ve done the calculation. A 5 as VGS should be outputting about 1000 GIF a year 32 GS and a handful of AGT. As I said before GIF primarily will require 2 launches so that’s 1800-2000 launches, or up to half out of the finite resource that is the number of launches available per year. There is the engineers designated flying rate to ensure the aircraft burn rate is kept steady to maintain separation from them all needed a major at the same time. 1000 cadets divided by the number of flyable days I reckon I’ll get (87) that about 11.5 apparently we’re not allowed to cut cadets in half so task at 12.
Is the VGS world too small to fly half of 40,000 cadets – Yes – it’s tiny, three of the VGS aren’t fully operational. There are only about 100 instructors there used to be 300 to 400. it should be about 17 Squadrons stronger with 100 extra aircraft distributed around the country maybe a couple in Wales few more in Scotland and one over the water
And that is numberwang!!!
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It all depends on your location too to your parent station. Although our Wing Aviation Officer is very good in how he handles requests and does a fantastic job of juggling sometimes with staff availability as usually for us its Flying Weekdays and gliding Weekends we might only get 3 slots in a month. However this month we have had 4 gliding and 3 flying slots. I will also encourage cadets to bid for as many Easter and summer camps as possible as sometimes the opportunity for flying there too.