It's Better Than It Used To Be (New Activities)

A thread dedicated to all the new activities being introduced by the Corps, that will hopefully balance out the ‘Lost Activities’ thread. :smirk:

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I applaud your optimism.

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Tumbleweed Animated GIF | GIFDB.com

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I don’t know what you’re on, but please can I order several packets… :wink:

Just picking my way through the latest shooting stuff, on that news alone, NOTHING in new activities will match the potential loss of major elements in RAFAC shooting. :rage:

Kill this thread please.

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But, but… Cyberz!

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Activity all-stops for an entire month… that’s a new activity.

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eSports

Now I’ve never been involved myself but those Cadets and Staff who are all song it’s praises, even if some fuddy duddy’s like to moan about it:

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Depends on how far back you go (and of course the Post Code Lottery)

If I compare what’s available now to what I had (early naughties) there is so much more opportunity

The Progressive Syllabus despite the moans about it being scouty because of the badges it has allowed achievement, it has made cadets go for more even if they can’t go for the gold.

Yes hands up we got more flying/gliding but also we didn’t get STEM, Leadership Quals, radio Quals unless you were a “geek”, space, cyber, music qualifications were rare and difficult and you had to be a “bandy”, DofE was just the Exped because you used a classification and turning up counted as volunteering, Mondays was academics and drill with paper exams in October and (I want to say) April, Thursdays was the “fun” night good old fashioned planks and tyres, maybe a night ex running around a field (not sure we actually used any real skill lol)

I’ve actually had discussions (please don’t shoot me) about do we offer too much, that some weekends there are 3 or 4 events happening. We’ve had cadets drop out of a course because they were a reserve on another and someone had dropped out.

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This sounds very postcode lottery really.

As a cadet I did a lot of leadership stuff. Did loads of radio stuff, including with the ACF too. There was a lot more wing level band going on too. These sort of things have changed over time, but only locally I’d say. Depending on where you are, they may have increased or decreased.

But you are spot on with the way the PTS has encouraged a lot more engagement and achievement. And yes, the new space and cyber stuff is very new. Albeit I have yet to really see any of it delivered.

Some wings fail to organise them selves well, which leads to this. Letting all the WSOs just shoot their shot with what weekend they want to do things doesn’t work. If you have a Wing and Region that does proper planning for the year, this can be mostly avoided. There’s always going to be some clashes, but it shouldn’t be loads!

Oh 100% agree with this it’s a wing problem, and SMEs should be liaising or I’ve seen a lot of wings have success with multi activity weekends - yes it’s all at once but the cadets know when the next one is going to be rather than it might be the last one in a while, so they can accurately plan and choose what they want to do.

Sussex produces calendars like this and then print and send hard A1 copies to all sqns. The Wing SLT meet to organise it all in advanced so dates are well known. It’s obviously not 100% stuck too. Changes do need to be made occasionally, which is fair enough… Been doing that since about 2018. It works well.

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That looks phenomenal.

More collaboration with industries is a highlight for me. Having an industry day at NASC and really promoting employability beyond the BTEC quals has improved massively since I was a cadet.

We have cadets walking into jobs and university having been trained from various industry partnership events. This gives me so much hope

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100% this !

We definitely are becoming a better “cv builder” for a better term as an organisation. When I was a cadet yes I got a BTEC in aviation studies but didn’t mean anything in the “real world” and never used it. The leadership and Cyber PTS are excellent and should be something we are pushing.

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