First year we ran “mini projects”, 2 weeks of intense training around a theme. First aid, radio comms, media etc, with all the cadets doing it at once. The problem remained lack of progression as you had all the cadets for all evenings.
Last year each staff member on squadron was given an evening to do something with all the cadets (we have a big staff team!), This generated a heap of different ideas.
This year we’re focusing on team cohesion and building up flights. As such, evenings are spent wholly in their flights doing different activities - for example, tonight A flight did archery, B flight team building. On Wednesday A flight are doing river crossings, B flight map making. Next week the flights swap over.
Build into that sports, drill, public speaking, leadership training, flight commanders evenings, fieldcraft training, radio, first aid, meterology, visiting speakers, field cooking, local navigation training, swimming, river crossings, pioneering, air recce, community work, dofe, technical training, field hygiene, aircraft knowledge, marksmanship training and everything else we offer and you should get yourself a healthy and varied training programme without reducing the cadets to the choice of 3 months aeromodelling or “radio”.
Think short burst of excitement with lots of variety. They see/experience something they like, then they book on a weekend course for it rather than a never ending project for it.