Brian 48nav (your #8735),
...Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken...[Kipling: "If"]...
Drafted a long and well thought out Post to you on Notepad this morning (having learned, from bitter experience, that there is a malevolent gremlin in PPRuNepad which craftily waits till you have almost finished before "losing" all your text beyond human recall). Answer: draft on Notepad, and gremlin can't win, as you've always got it on Notepad to copy/paste again.
Watch out! Gremlin has sussed this out and moved across to Notepad with his knavish tricks. Caught out once or twice. Answer, save text immediately on completion, safe again. But this morning, "senior moment", forgot - disaster!
...And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools...[ibid]...
So here goes:
...so in about 1963 they introduced their own cadet scheme...
IIRC, they took in boys and girls at 18. From
MPN11:
...I was rejected for the civil Cadet Scheme in 1964, as the Civil Service Commission were insistent on A-levels and wouldn't budge...
So it seems that they required a higher educational level than the OASB for ATC entry ! Also, I think they would accept applicants up to 35 with 500 hrs as pilot or nav.
Could you confirm that they got their cadets up to PPL as part of the Course ? This would be a most valuable 'perk', and it confirms that the CAA saw value in flying experience. I have said somewhere here that flying experience is a "desirable" but not "necessary" requirement for ATCOs. It enabled them to put themseves in the place of poor Bloggs (hot and bothered, bawled out by a sadistic QFI (in justified fear for both their lives), and so not receptive to their gentle advice fom a comfortable seat in a nice warm Tower.
...and hated the 'factory environment' in the middle of a council estate in West Drayton...
My sentiments exactly ! And where does a poor junior ATCO and his family live (at London prices). In cardboard boxes ?
Your #8740:
...A few weeks back both Danny and you, I think, were promoting display of users' ages for 'orientation' purposes. I explained I used to have my age displayed until a rabid poster, on ATC issues threads, took umbrage with my view on something and suggested I was a coffin-dodger, an expression I took in simple terms to mean that I ought to be dead...
Young (I assume) chap should be horsewhipped ! It is contemptible to mock the afflicted, and when the affliction is old age, stupid as well. I clearly remember a meander in Louth (Lincs) Parish churchyard. An old sarcophagus was tastefully carved with a frieze of skulls, bones, shrouds and skeletons. To drive the message home was an inscription:
As you are now, so once was I
As I am now so will you be
A chill passed over the warm summer afternoon. Your young accuser might ponder the words. Rabid animals are best dealt with by a dose of lead at the back of the neck from a .45 Colt. Take no notice, Brian - "publish and be damned". I've often thought that for members of PPRuNe it should be mandatory to state true age.
Cheers, Danny.