Cadets by India and Chloe

Cadets by India and Chloe

15 March 2018

Cadets: can you?

The air cadets provides the opportunity for people aged 13 to 18 to take part in a huge and diverse range of exciting and challenging activities. Many are organised at national or regional level, many others take place locally at wing or squadron levels.

As a cadet, things such as flying, sports, adventure training, camping, engineering, shooting, drill, music, water sports, abseiling and overseas travel can normally take place. These all are provided by the Air Training Corps, (ATC.)

The ATC develops personal qualities and a sense of community and citizenship valued by employers, both military and civilian.  

A large percentage of serving members of the Royal Air Force were air cadets. Therefore people looking for a service career, air cadets will give you a head start. Research has shown that ex- air cadets stay in service for longer than their colleagues, who don’t have the advantage of cadet membership, as they have already learnt all the skills.

At cadets you can receive many badges including: heart start, leadership, communications, Duke of Edinburgh, music, shooting and many more. The ATC radio communications badge allows a cadet to progress along a structured route, providing that they become competent in using a radio. This also includes learning the phonetic alphabet such as A is Alpha and so on.

Leadership is testing your skills on teaching a lesson or task. You have to use the skills of SMEAC. This means: Situation, Mission, Execution, Any questions, Check understanding. You base your brief on this to make sure your team know what they have to do.

Your heart start badge consists of many different stages. The first stage is learning the recovery position. Then following on from this is choking, for this you get an Anne doll and you have to perform Heimlich manoeuvre and back blows to ensure your pass. Then you move on to serious bleeding, this involves applying a bandage and helping to stop arterial bleeding. Finally you have to learn CPR. Here you have to successfully perform this through using D.R.S. A.B.C. This stands for look for Danger, check for a Response, Shout for help, check Airways, check if they are Breathing and if needed do CPR.

Cadets is like a giant family as everyone loves everyone. It is a great opportunity to build and make friendships with people younger or older that you will probably stick with for life. It also can help with your career choices as they organize many different things such as police coming down to squadron and showing everyone what their job entails.

For more information visit:

https://www.raf.mod.uk/aircadets/