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Old 22nd Oct 2017, 00:10
  #60 (permalink)  
drustsonoferp
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Hampshire
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Be wary of judging the RAF based on UAS: it will be rather different. The difference might be similar to that required of judging BAE Systems or a bank on the basis of their future employees behaviour in the university Union bar.

Bar culture has changed significantly in the RAF, and an average night on an average station sees the bar relatively quiet. What else do people do? All the same things they do in the outside world up and down the country, though with better access to a free gym, climbing wall etc.

There remains a general truism that RAF stations are rural. There are fewer neighbours to wind up with aircraft movements that way, but that by no means results in a lack of access to civilisation in the real world when you want it. I have moved around the country, enjoying different scenery, mountains, coast, rolling countryside and a different view of things from life on the continent: all interesting, all different, and all full of different people.

I think it would be churlish to assume you won’t fit in just because of UAS bar behaviour you’ve witnessed, or that the infrastructure is in such a poor state that you will not enjoy whatever posting you might receive.

If, however, you are absolutely wedded to a proximity to your parental home, or inflexible in terms of how and where you are to work, you are right to question whether you would enjoy an RAF career-but you might well apply the same logic to any career elsewhere, which almost certainly will not look the same on the inside as it does from outside.

I’m not a pilot, so cannot offer any insight on that.
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