What…
How did you manage this?
Sounds like you undertook an uninsured activity if you ask me.
Why? So you keep a 6 monthly WHT.
There wont be any full bore shooting for months!
Sounds like you are on a hiding to nowhere.
Where England leads, the others will follow.
Not as if Glasgow hasnt got a declared hotspot.
I proposed a workable solution to the RC via the WEXO / OC Wg, the RC was not prepared to sign off so it didn’t happen. The plan has feasibility until for the next 2 weeks, at which point all WHTs will have expired for our SAAIs.
So we had 2 SAAIs who would be current for another 6 months and be able to cascade currenyc through the staff team without having to wait for whatever plan SASC have for us and a national filter down of currency.
Why not?
I could run a shoot where the only occasions that the 2m distancing would be breached would by the Driver & Co Driver of the vehicle moving the weapons, or any safety incident, on any DTE Range.
Only 3 individuals would need to be admitted onto the parent station to draw MT, Arms & Ammo.
1 Like
Not really that simple. I wouldn’t bother with gloves - too much hassle, is a cost, potential handling difficulties, and not reliable enough. A wipe down of the outside of a rifle between uses isn’t that difficult or time consuming - we do it for Annies.
Once used, 72hr quarantine before next use.
But wearing gloves isn’t really practical or what the average cadet or member of staff would do in reality. Also what sort of gloves?
The 6 month life of WHTs is a problem as I say, unless you ‘use it’ within a few days. This isn’t just me speaking it’s people who’ve been in the shooting game for years. Unless you’re on a sqn which does shooting, you may be lucky and get one occasion to use it. As we don’t do shooting as a rule, I get cadets WHTd (which is a palaver) a week or so before they are due to go shooting and even then we’ve had cancellations and it goes unused. Even if we could do something like this I wouldn’t offer it out as given the current uncertainty it would be a waste of effort for the attendees. The organiser might be a star off teacher.
The question has to be why didn’t the RC sign off?
Ok. Your initial post made it sound like you went.
On distancing.
What about safety inspections on range. That’s less than 2 meters?
Easy.
We are hard and fast on the no F2F until they can be satisfied the risk is low enough.
If common sense prevailed they’d extend it.
They’ve extended MOTs for 6 mths and given people are driving potential death traps for 6 mths with no MOT an OOD FA qual isn’t even close.
But that needs some common sense within HQAC and the FA bods, easy enough to alter the dates on SMS.
I know, it was rhetorical.
Why the Wg Co and WExO didn’t bin it beggar’s belief.
Valid point. So I would go with wearing a mask at this point as I would be stood behind and breathing on them.
@telfon this isn’t the topic to debate the availability of shooting opportunities.
I don’t run a “shooting” sqn as there is more to cadets than just shooting. But my intent and supported by the WShoO is to have a shooting opportunity at least once a month.
Once you are qualified, I was SR and SAAI within 6 months of ageing out as a cadet, getting cadets shooting isn’t as difficult as people try to make out, at least locally. Maybe we are lucky that our parent station with armoury and a 25m range is within an hours drive of all but 1 of the wings sqns.
They asked the question because I asked them too and had the support of the armoury, don’t ask don’t get. We weren’t talking about 30 people going up but 2.
1 Like
What’s your training program looking like for the first few weeks?
Working on it now with my staff team.
Ideas on a postcard please!
Running F2F in covid times is turning out more complicated than doing VPNs.
Want to do the fun practical stuff.
But anything that involves team work or equipment is very difficult to organise logistically.
Would really like…
Shooting on Sqn.
First aid.
Leadership.
Radio.
Going to try.
But waiting for the ‘guidance’ (from the no brigade) to come out first.
I wouldn’t count on that unless you’re applying some pretty stringent and sterile on-glove and off glove protocols. The moment that someone touches a contaminated surface with their nice clean gloves and then handles the rifle, the rifle is contaminated - as are the gloves of everyone who touches it from then on.
Consider also that in particular if someone contaminates it with their right hand they’ll now be spreading virus around the pistol grip which, on the L144, will be nice and close the mouth and nose of the firer.
Or if a firer breaths contaminated breath on the rifle - the same problem.
I’d say you’d be far better off wiping the rifles down with strong alcohol wipes between firers.
The Sea Cadets do fall under the MOD. They don’t receive the same funding as we and the ACF do, but they are governed by the same JSPs we are - namely JSP 814, JSP 535, and the Royal Navy Cadet Forces Training Afloat Regulations (which incidentally so are we for any afloat training).
The Royal Marines Cadets are back to fieldcraft training as well.
I think actually this might be evidence that the SCC put their thinking heads on early and came up with a plan, ready to go into action when the time came; whereas HQAC may have thought “Oh. No activity… We can stop thinking about any of this for aaaaages…” and then it caught up with them and they discovered that they had nothing in place. Just supposition of course, but the SCC certainly had a plan in place before HQAC even announced that they were in the first stage of creating one.
I can certainly accept the need to test building water supplies, &c after a long period of inactivity - it’s a shame that the RFCAs couldn’t have done this 6 weeks ago, but here we are… What’s particularly disappointing though is that our whole plan revolves around the idea that we can’t possibly do anything at all until the buildings are ready…
That seems to me to be either incredibly short-sighted, or a bit of a cop-out.
I don’t know why we couldn’t let the RFCA crack on with buildings in the background and we focus on returning to some easily distancable outdoor activity, whilst we’ve still got light evenings and summer holidays… Kind of like the SCC and RMC have done (and when I say “kind of like” I of course mean “EXACTLY like - what the hell are we playing at?”)
1 Like
Have a word with RC SW and his team of volunteers who have put together the return to parading and the return to activity guides. Pretty reasonable I think and very much volunteer led. Have you read them both and pressed your ‘cmd chain’ with the right proposal to start doing something now? On the assumption that you’re in England and not Leicester or east lancs/west York’s…
We haven’t…
It was port Glasgow about 20miles away 
My understanding is that the return to activity guide has not yet been released.
The return to parading, yes. But not the other.
If you have seen it may I ask where.
1 Like
I hope by volunteers I hope you mean real squadron volunteers and not regional staff. But even then with so many variations in terms of buildings, staff availability/ability/knowledge and then there is getting things, many would look at it and consign it to the shredder.
If we are going to have to meet small groups with 2 staff, it would need to be no technical knowledge, very basic kit activities, that are done indoors and preferably nothing that needs cleaning. I can’t imagine why we can’t come up with things to do like we always have done.
I suspect this is no more than salaried individuals trying to show why they shouldn’t have been furloughed, like many other employees in businesses/organisations that shutdown in March.
Yes ‘real volunteers’ not regional staff and not permanent staff. Of course there are going to be so many variations but at least we have a bit of a guide and The knowledge that the MOD will cover us when we return. Personally I think the guides are not bad.
What guides?!?
All we’ve seen is the return to sqn parade night document with the massive checklist and unsuitable Generic RA