Cats5
You really have no understanding of what the objectives of Air Cadet gliding was/is.
As a 16 year old living in central London I wanted to fly. The only way to achieve this dream was to join the ATC as my parents were unable to afford for me to travel on a regular basis to either Lasham or Dunstable,
and to pay for my gliding.
I went on a continuous (5 day) course at Hawkinge in Kent, had a travel warrant to get there, overnight accommodation provided by the RAF, and went solo in two days! No, I did not know how to thermal and would not have recognised a thermal if I saw one! What I did was to fly one of Her Majesty's aircraft (albeit a lowly Cadet MkIII) safely around the circuit three times.
That boost in confidence has been remembered all my life, I was not able to drive a car but I was flying a glider. All for free!
Having gone solo I became frustrated and investigated how I would be able to continue gliding and wrote to the CO at Hawkinge and asked how I could follow my dream of becoming a gliding instructor! He replied that I could join a BGA club and gain experience that way but it would cost a lot of money! Or I could join an Air Cadet Gliding School (which operated at weekends) as a Staff Cadet. This involved doing the labour intensive jobs on a gliding site, opening the hangar doors at 08:00h, getting the kit out, DI the ground equipment, refuel as necessary, driving the retrieve Land Rovers during the day, driving the winches, putting kit away at the end of each day etc. All this in return for one or two flights (maybe) at the end of the weekend,
I contacted my local gliding school and was taken on as a Staff Cadet and I was able to travel to the gliding site using a "Forces Leave" ticket courtesy of British Rail from Clapham Junction because I was in uniform!
I spent my weekends doing this menial stuff (along with other like minded 16/17 year olds) but in return I was trained to fly gliders and supervised by the best instructors.
Yes, we did graduate to thermalling and even did a few cross-country flights in the Swallow, but the objective with the air cadets was still the same - to get them flying three safe circuits around the airfield. If they wanted to progress beyond that they would have to join a local gliding club.
We were well aware that to graduate to a civilian club would need more intensive training, more and better lookout, more spinning, more stalling etc, etc.
But as other posters have intimated no club (even Lasham) would have the capacity to add another 100 plus launches per day in order to achieve the MOD requirements of getting today's Air Cadets off the ground, without upsetting the existing club members.
What this "Pause" debacle has done is to eliminate that group of willing volunteer youngsters - gliding school/squadron Staff Cadets, a pool of switched on boys and girls from which the future gliding instructors would come.
Well done Staff Cadets, old and new, I salute you.
