Mobile phone policy

Isn’t this, in essence, what led to the banning of charging electric cars on squadrons?

100% this.

It would be incredible easy to make a false (or otherwise) claim of damage, drop, or water damage that would be completely undefendable.

Is that a thing? We have EV charging point at our unit…:shushing_face:

The RAF can’t have all these sustainability goals and ban EV charging at the same time, although I have heard stories about charging points being for MT / hire cars only.

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Heard they are investigating at putting chargeable (credit card) charging points to help push people to electric vehicles.

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This thread seems to descending in the modern world verses stupid, local, made up rules and we have always done it this way.

You can’t say to a cadet you must have MyRAFAC on your phone for ID and then say you cannot charge your phone all week on summer camp when as we all know most phone will be out of juice after 48 hours.

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I knew I had seen it, but due to our poor comms management in RAFAC it’s taken forever to find it:

https://rafac.sharepoint.com/sites/interim/CentralEastRegion/HertsBucksWing/Lists/HBW%20Weekly%20Mail%20Drop/DispForm.aspx?ID=960

we have this in work.
Most of the old guard who are entitled to company cars have an EV vehicle (The Nissan Leaf is a popular choice but some hybrids too) and there are 10x charging stations for use.
If an employee (company car or otherwise) there is a below “market rate” charging cost * but any visitors get it FOC - how they work out who is FOC and who isn’t i don’t know I am still in my ICE car and a long way off needing to know!

*what this means I don’t know, I presume if it costs £0.15/unit but charging stations cost £0.25/unit my work charges £0.20/unit so less than it would be in town but not free.
(note these are made up numbers to explain the example, not figures that should be quoted as valid)

Lots of cadets have power banks so that they can do their Insta / TikTok uninterrupted. :wink:

I would add a safety point - from my previous work experience, several colleagues had a 'phone fire in their hotel room when charging overnight! Locally in Cambridge, very recently, a mother & 2 young children died from one family probably when charging an e-Bike overnight - major fire.

A e-device lithium-ion polymer battery fire is very, very nasty. A cargo load of them brought down a B747.

Swynnerton as one example have installed charging lockers…

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What are you guys in ATC doing about cadet ID on summer camps? MyRAFAC?
CCF still have physical ID cards (for now!)

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MyRAFAC is now the ATC’s only official cadet ID. 3822s no longer mean anything and are, essentially, just a memento for cadets who happen to have one.

Or for those that can’t afford/aren’t allowed their own mobile phones!

My understanding is that they’re still expected to have MyRAFAC and the 3822 doesn’t count.

No, I don’t know either…

Again people inside the fence having little idea of the world outside.

If businesses and even my gym can have printed photo ID cards produced, why can’t the RAFAC have a standard format that Squadrons can print out. It’s not difficult or hard and gets over the problems of mobile phones.

What happens if the phone is broken or runs out of power???

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With regarding ID for cadets in particular, the MyRAFAC is a good idea in principle until the phone battery dies or no signal. With some cadets which is mainly 12-`16 year olds the only other ID they will have is a passport which for some parents, I could see them being a bit reluctant for that to be in the cadets possession for a day never mind a week away.

Although paper 3822s don’t need in theory to be brought back, there needs to be some form of visible ID, (yes alot of the time cadets will be escorted with a CFAV in possession of a MOD 90). However a RAFAC ID card (plastic type) regenerated every year off the profile pic on MyRAFAC would suffice. Then when visiting RAF stations this can be presented to the guardhouse who then can either link it to the MOD 90 of the escorting officer or give their own picture card like they do.

This could even go further to give ICE details/Urgent medical info and parents contact info if it was felt needed

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In 15 years I’ve never had a cadet show a 3822 or MyRAFAC when visiting a station.

I’ve shown my ID as driver and said I’ve got some cadets although they barely ask.

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Once (2017ish?) I visited Benson with a tri-service CCF group. The chap on the gate would not allow the CCF(RN) and CCF(Army) cadets in without each of them being photographed and wearing a red Escorted badge, although the CCF(RAF) cadets were fine with their F7537D (CCF ID card).

Might just have caught him on a bad day…

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I was scrolling to pass the time while waiting for forms and various downloads to magically appear on my laptop, which has slow internet speeds.

Sqn parade nights and cadets who keep getting their phones out and constantly being asked to put them away while others are being taught as these phones are distracting the group or by the staff member asking phones to be put away.

What do other sqn’s do with nuisance phone usage?

Way back we used to take them off them - but two main reasons we changed - jeeze some of them are expensive and whose liable if they break, and the second one is cadet portal, MyRAFAC, IDs etc are on them.

Now we’ve got a remove straight away (this has harden from previous warning stances and has actually seen to work)

Unless requested to go on, if its seen out for any reason its taken to the office. We have a dedicated phone area in the OCs office and they collect it after final parade.

But to be honest since we implemented that we (8 months or so ago) we’ve only had 5 occassions it was used, and the first 3 was the week it started.

To be fair its not just phones if you have bracelets/wrong earrings/rings etc there is also a dedicated place if they aren’t off before first parade. Although that has not been as successful and is still a huge challenge (like how many braceleta can one person. Wear)

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Ours put in a phone box on arrival, and get back back at end of night, unless in an emergency.

They had opportunity of using at break, but less and less did, so now it’s only at end of the night.

No issues

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