Originally Posted by
Frelon
Well they really shafted the Volunteer Gliding Instructors during the "Pause!" I remember a question being asked in the House about the cost of the "pause" and the response being along the lines of 'the majority of our gliding instructors are volunteers so no costs involved with standing them down!'
It is little wonder that fewer volunteers are stepping up when they have been treated like this in the past!
Along with Pobjoy and others, the best years of our lives (and probably the Air Cadets)!
I was a staff cadet 1964 - 1970 and gliding was my 'stimulus' to start an aviaton career; I joined National Air Traffic Control Service (NATS nowadays) after school and this led me to a 49 year career which I may not even have considered without my voluntary Air Cadet gliding experience.
The efficiency and camaraderie of volunteering in the gliding organisation (I was still of course a member of my squadron) meant that it was easy for me to integrate as an Air Traffic Controller plus part of the training gave me a PPL and later experience allowed me to fly in several diverse types (Wessex, Puma) which are normally not available to civil pilots.