What did you do at the Weekend??

By Malcolm G7VRT

Some people do the gardening, others the shopping. Well for the last, I don’t know how many years, I have been involved with the Air Cadet Organisation.

This is a uniformed youth organisation and is funded by the Royal Air Force, indeed it is part of the RAF, being formed by a Royal Warrant in 1941. I started as a Cadet many years ago and progressed to a Civilian Instructor before taking a Queens Commission in the training branch of the RAF Volunteer Reserve. I ended up as Commanding Officer of a unit in East Barnet, spending about 10 years looking after other people’s children though good and turbulent times. Standing down as the Commanding Officer last year has given me a little more time to spend on my secondary duty as Deputy Head Quarters Air Cadets Radio Communications Officer.

Having organised a Radio Communications radio demonstration station at the Royal Tournament for many years, I was asked to help set up a demonstration Radio Communication Station at this year’s Royal International Air Tattoo (RIAT), RAF Fairford.

All I had to do was find some suitable Radio equipment. This I did by asking Kenwood Electronics for the loan of some of their demonstration radio transceivers, and they proved very helpful by lending us three radio sets.

We were lucky in that the stand we were going to use was designed by the Marketing Section of the RAF Directorate of Recruiting and built by their contractor Babcock HCS.

Air Cadets operating the Radio Station at the recent Royal International Air Tattoo (RIAT) at RAF Fairford

The radio operators were drawn from various parts of the Country, five staff to set up the equipment at two locations, we had a shadow station at a nearby Air Cadet Unit at Highworth and this was used to provide radio traffic when things were quiet. Three cadets, one from London and two from Plymouth did the operating of the radios.

Jerry 2e1jod chats to Prince Philip at RIAT

One of the Cadets held an Amateur Radio Licence and he concentrated on using the Amateur frequencies, talking to other licensed Amateurs in the area.
For the other two Cadets I arranged for Nimrod Aircraft to contact them on long range High Frequency (HF), this was by kind arrangement of an ex cadet who is now Sgt Aircrew at Kinloss. In addition I arranged for some "Easyjet" aircraft to contact the station. On the Sunday morning the Cadets joined the regular Sunday morning network of air cadet stations and during this period we were visited by the Air Commodore in Chief Air Cadets the Duke of Edinburgh. He took time to talk to some of the Staff and Cadets and he was very knowledgeable about radio matters.

Without the help of the Air Cadet Organisation it would be unlikely that the event would take place. Over 300 Air Cadets and Staff turn out to help, sleeping on site in tents and being fed by contract caterers. Not wishing to sleep in "tent city" the Radio team stayed at our shadow station in Highworth. Although we had only a small Air Cadet hut we made our selves at home. There was a shop across the road for provisions and a pub next door but one, which did good cheap meals.

Malcolm G7VRT

• Home
• Articles Index
  
• Send this article to a friend

• Link to the Air Cadets Organisation website