I think you misunderstood my question.
If you tell young people to go and join the scouts, why do you still bother being a RAFAC CFAV? If you think the scouts are so much better, why don’t you go and volunteer with them instead?
I don’t do it there as that’s daft, I sell it as hard as I can but ensuring they go away knowing that Air Cadets doesn’t mean they will go flying as members. It’s when people in general ask me about the organisation that I say I can’t see why youngsters join as we offer very little that other similar organisations don’t. Doesn’t mean I turn them away if the come to us.
Topic?
This is on topic.
If you are have a purple CF you need each group to has to have it’s own uniqueness and we don’t.
When you look on a number of threads you could be mistaken for thinking this was a water sport organisation. Very little actually talking about aviation and aeronautics in the same way.
I can assure you… that is not a National picture!
None of my cadets have flown in anything at all in last 2 years.
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As @Paracetamol says not a national picture.
We haven’t had any cadets fly since 2018 and of those only 1 remains, but I doubt for much longer as they are just finishing Y12 and no desire to stay beyond 18.
Your list is shockingly poor and not something to crow about as I doubt it would be sustainable. Why include flying simulator. you may as well list FIFA and say the cadets have played football. Although I grant you that’s about as close as most would get.
The Corps has not had “flying” as a viable activity that can appear in any blurb for 5/6 years.
Go back not so many years and only the very newest cadets would have not had at an AEF and gliding entry and maybe something more interesting at camp, within a year of joining. Over a period of 6 years at camp we had cadets fly in Chinook, Merlin, Herc, Nimrod and Puma, (I know as I was on those camps) plus the normal AEF and gliding, which included 11 GS.
Didn’t a squadron do this as an April
Fools a number of years ago? Memory is a bit hazy but pretty sure they mocked up purple berets/stable belts for the ‘press release’ and referred to it as MoD Cadets or something similar.
MB
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Probably Bedford sqn
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AEF and PTT don’t really provide any value. AEF is just a bit of fun and PTT is a slightly upgraded (at the time) and probably still obsolete home flight sim game. PTT should be scrapped. It was an embarrassing purchasing error by 2FTS (or whoever).
The real benefit of joining the old Air Training Corps came from gliding scholarships and providing a way for the best cadets (regardless of socioeconomic background) to become QGIs. That opportunity has now long disappeared for the majority of cadets outside LASER.
I don’t have any answers, but I think all squadrons should be issued with a decent VR flight sim. Let’s not pretend that it has any genuine aviation value, though; let’s just accept that it’s a computer game that will entertain bored air cadets, while their school friends in the ACF, SCC and scouts are outside firing guns, sailing warships and ging-gang-goolying.
One way to give direction and purpose to the RAFAC would be to seriously focus on drones & STEM. Rebrand the RAFAC as the premier youth organisation for brainy cyberswots and UAV pilots. Maybe HQAC can stop wasting £££££*10^6 and invest in a few real flight sims (scrounge them if necessary) and bribe QFIs/QGIs to provide cadets sim training that they can actually log should they decide to continue their pilot training.
While we’re at it, let’s scrap the stupid progressive syllabus. Handing out blue wings to 12-year-old Johnny, who has two left feet and no hand-eye coordination, simply devalues the achievements of all those cadets who actually worked for their scholarship wings.
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Great if you get the ‘right’ stations, but my own cadet career in the relative good old days of the 90s and 00s saw me go on 7 camps but get only 1 flight, as we always went to fighter stations.
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That’s the one! Was that really nine years ago? 
MB
I think people make too big a deal out of flying and gliding in particular as a reason why Cadets used to stay.
When I was a CWO there were 8 of us spread across the 3 local Squadrons, none of us were Staff Cadets, we probably all had Blue or Silver Wings but I don’t remember any of us going back to do our Gold Wings, our interests were all in different areas, we had some who were very shooty and some of us who were very AT focussed, I think 7 out of the 8 of us had Gold DofE’s.
Yes I’d love to see a shed load more Flying for Cadets but I think it’s underselling the other activities we run to think that Cadets don’t join and stay for other reasons.
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My post wasn’t to anger people it was as an observation. Sorry.
But how do those other things make us stand out? Does every single squadron have unfettered access to these If you had all three CF go into an average school and make a pitch, what would draw them to us over the others?
You never had cadets not putting their names down for “flying”. I was always clear those that had been previously would only be selected as reserves in strict order. We used to get 20-24 slots a year and never failed to fill one, until 5AEF moved and started playing silly buggers with last minute call offs. I got to the point on a Monday night cadets would ask if the flying was on as their parents needed to plan for the weekend. Mind you by that point staff were asking the same question.
It is a struggle to sell some of the other things we offer.
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I’m actually always surprised at how few cadets are keen to fly.
A few years ago we did quite well with AEF allocations, and had 3 cadets get their bronze wings as they had enough sorties - they flew multiple times as no other cadets on squadron wanted to fly. We even provided squadron transport each time…
They came back from one sortie with over 40 minutes each logged as other squadrons didn’t turn up.
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I’ve noticed though that this has happened alongside the increase in cancellations.
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Ours don’t put themselves forwards because they don’t want to get stuck on simulators. They just want to go flying.
But so few of them can get time off school it’s not worth it.
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We can only fill weekday slots with Cadets who are at college / working. Most local schools won’t give permission. Even those that have in the past, have categorised as exceptional authorised absence rather than education out of school, which can cause attendance issues for the young person later on.
There was a letter produced a while back which you could give to schools reminding them that the DfE said attendance shouldn’t be classed as absence. Might be worth giving them that if you haven’t already.
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