However they are not attempting to maintain their own flight of gliders or planes, apart from the model planes they make.
But they are making contacts with the local aviation establishment for whoch Squadrons should be pro-active. An aviation group I attend when they have a really interesting speaker drive 30 miles to attend and then go back, local Squadrons less than 5 miiles away. Talk earlier this month was by an F35 test pilot.
Yes, they are looking outside themselves maybe because they donāt have any aircraft of any sort themselves. Maybe the ATC Cadets should join the Brownies?
BTW couldnāt read most of the linked article because of the paywall.
I think at times the only thing keeping the Air in Air Cadets is breathing!
This is going to cause some upset for some 
- Stop putting money into the RAFAC plastic air force, the Tutor Flying and Gliding. This money could be far better spent providing transport and equipment for Fieldcraft, Shooting, AT and transport. ā¦ā¦ and perhaps a few more permanent Staff per Region whos tasking was to assist on the ground with activities, not juggle paper.
Then, the RAF should be saying to its Flying Sqns right, if you have aircraft flying around empty on crew training, you must attempt to get some Cadets in them by contacting WHQs or RHQs to get Cdts on the Aircraft.
Currently If a Cdt gets one Flight a year at present, thatās great (they have to take a day off school for this, get up at stupid oāclock in the morning and travel half way across the country, to get a 20-25 min Flight maybe. If they do, theyāve forgotten what theyāve learned on the first flight by the time they get in the air again.
Save money and get Cdts on the operational Transports and Helicopters I say. For the more remote Sqns, nothing stops the transport from dropping into non-transport Service Airfields around the UK to pickup and fly Cdts. And Helicopters can pickup from more places.
1 Like
Cost of operating a chinook per hour Ā£5k per hour if not more ā¦ cost of a tutor probably about Ā£300
Then it becomes cost benifit, 20 cadets on a Chinook is less than 20 single sorties in a tutor.
1 Like
Hardly equivalent experiences though, are they?
Totally different experiences.
I wonder how many cadets flew in the Tutor in the past 12 months compared to āother aircraftā?
Iāll bet there were a lot more Tutor sortiesā¦
As a Cadet Iād take a low level in a Chinook over a Tutor every day of the week and twice on a Sunday.
7 Likes
And if I were a cadet, so would Iā¦
The fact is that chinook flights for air cadets are very much on an ad hoc basis. Thereās no ācontractā for the RAF to take cadets chinook flying.
If I were a cadet interested in flying, Iād take every opportunity that comes my way.
1 Like
Oh agreed, when I was a Cadet I took everything that came up.
Iām still jealous of my Adj getting a night time low level over London in a Wokka though!
Nope
I chundered in a chinookā¦ i havent in a tutor
Thatās coz tutors are so dull!
The RAF has, over the last 20 yrs, suffered a significant draw-down of resources.
This means that where there were previously a larger choice of āmulti-enginedā aircraft that could get half a dozen (or more) cadets airborne at once, now things are very sparse. You can only beg / steal / borrow if the opportunities are physically there. No maritime from Kinloss, Lyneham closed, chances of anything out of Waddington = rarer than rocking horse poo, Brize = heavy tasking, so helicopter opportunities are probably the best / most flexible option.
Flights in Non-Service aircraft still seem to be on the forbidden list, so that doesnāt help.
Now, it would nice if someone in the Ivory Towers actually looked at this & said, āhmmm, yes, I see the difficulties, letās formalise this & throw a bit of money at it.ā
2 Likes
The draw down has been most noticeable during the camp period, even for ordinary AEF.
There is little hope of anything happening at the top of the Air Cadets to change anything, as they are not influential enough or have sufficient rank to get anywhere. This has been extremely apparent since 2014, when if the will and ability to affect change was there could have come to the fore and allowed access to non-service aircraft, although the irony of non-service aircraft being used to get cadets to overseas camps etc, remains as an oddity.