First Remembrance Day Parade for me last Sunday. I received my No.1 uniform the Wednesday previous and had some minor adjustments to make on the belt. After that I needed to find braces (not allowed to wear a belt – no loops). Essentially, I ended up marching through Maidstone town centre at around 10:30 heading to the war memorial.
Amusingly the vicar taking half of the service, it was shared, was called Ian Parrish. It is something that will make me giggle for a few years yet! It turns out he used to be in the Army. I’m not sure I quite understand how those two jobs can lead into each other but he’s not the first ex-military vicar I have met.
I chose not to sing during the national anthem along with not taking part in any of the prayers or hymns. You might not have realised but I’m quite not-religious and also struggle with identifying with a country or even the hereditable head of state. See some musings here.
Here’s the important part, photos, I’m the one in the middle, in blue. Please don’t confuse me with the Navy officers next to me!
I spent the day at RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire and while there an RAF Tornado flew past at high speed. I was fortunate enough to take a few photographs, of which the following is the best. I haven’t cropped it or anything. [the other 5 photos were ok-ish].
My favourite thing about this shot is that you can see the Navigator/Weapons Officer looking at the ground as they fly by.
I spent a week recently on CCF Annual Camp at RAF Linton-On-Ouse. It was a busy week, travelling early one Saturday and returning late the following Saturday.
Here’s a rundown of the activities:
Invasion planning activity
Flight simulator activity
Ten pin bowling
Visit to RAF Fylingdales
Visit to Whitby
Obstacle Course
High Ropes
Elvington Aircraft Museum
Linton-On-Ouse Memorial Room
Sport
Section visits to:
Air Traffic Control
Flight Safety Equipment
72R Squadron
Flight Planning
Depth Engineering
Drill competition with the SWO
Dishforth Army Air Corps base
Armoury
Lynx Squadrons
Survival Equipment
Some things of note:
One evening we saw two V22 Ospreys fly over the base.
There were two fire alarms in the officers’ mess. One was about 0630 and we all left the building in whatever state of dress we were in. The next was later that day as we were all sitting down to dinner. No one moved for quite a while, we were all quite sure that it was not a “big thing”. Eventually someone told us to get out of the building and we wandered out the front door just as the firemen were walking in [they had driven from the other side of the airfield] I don’t think they were too happy with us!
Here are a selection of photos from that camp:
Adrenalin Obstacle Course
The North
RAF Fylingdales
Whitby
Halifax
JP
Not my shoes
Dishforth
Lynx Pilot
Tailgunner
DC3 Dakota
Bucanneer
Here’s a couple of amusing things, just because there probably isn’t enough humour on this site [it’s mostly me moaning about things].
This was a question that came up on some crappy Tv show I saw when I had a spare ten minutes just before dinner one evening:
Here’s a picture that I tweeted not long after a visit to Dishforth. This is probably the best toilet I’ve ever seen. It’s not glamorous but it does have a magazine rack!
Dishforth have it sorted
Also, here’s a running route I did. It was a standard PTI route I found when I was in the station gym.
This is a picture of a path at RAF Linton-on-Ouse. Either they ran out of money, expect people with very longs legs to use it or are just plain lazy.
Linton Path
Perhaps, as this base is where they train future fast jet pilots, it’s a lesson in looking forward and being aware. All I know is that I don’t understand how this could be considered logical.
This is a copy of my official OIC graduation photograph. It shows me receiving my Commission scroll [the actual one unlike my degree ceremony] from the Group Captain.
I know, I know. This is just another list of stuff!
So very true, but this is the biggie. This is why you join the cadets. If you want to see the other communications in this series then click here.
Just before I enter the list you may or may not be interested to know that aerobatics really messes me up. I positively enjoy the experience of aero but it will make me sick and turns me into a useless lump of cells for a few hours as my body recovers. I will go green and then white, I have headaches and everything spins for ages. After anything up to five hours later I will become very hungry, that signals the start of my recovery. I really enjoy flying and aerobatics but I just have to be aware of the consequences.
Powered FLying Log
My total time is just over 21 hours. That’s not bad even if it includes two flights to Cyprus which I’ve counted because I was flying “on duty”.
I also recently had a flight in a Grob Tutor while on camp at Brize Norton. I got around a 40 minute flight, it was a much better experience than the chipmunk.
I spent a week at RAF Brize Norton recently with the Combined Cadet Force RAF Section from work. I had a great time but more importantly all of the cadets we took had a good time. We were very busy and it was extremely tiring but I got so much from it.
Here’s a list of things that we did (mostly because I can’t be bothered to compose prose for this):
5.56 shooting at the outdoor range. After over twenty years of not shooting a weapon I was very happy with my twenty shot grouping.
Grob Tutor air experience flying with 6 AEF at RAF Benson.
RAF Section Visits to:
Air Traffic Control
Fire
Armoury
JADTEU
47 Air Despatch
Survival Equipment
SERE
Dog Handling
DMTS
Support Eng Flight
XXIV Squadron
Parachute Training School
DCCT – I managed to pass my RAF shooting test with a score of 65/75
Low Ropes
High Ropes
Laser Target Practice
Ten Pin Bowling
The Officers’ Mess was a delight and a wonderful building that overlooked the runway about half way along. My only problem was that the Friday of camp was the Officers’ Summer Ball and while my room overlooked the runway it also was directly above the bar and next to the funfair that was set up for the ball. That night I slept in the cadets billet as a supervisor rather than not sleep in my room in the mess.
Here’s a selection of photographs I took during the week. I can’t share some of the really cool stuff we saw because it’s covered by the OS Act.
At the beginning of June I travelled to RAF Cranwell to attend my Officers’ Initial Course. I have recently been commissioned into the RAF VR(T) and I had to complete this course before I could formally wear my rank tabs. I wanted to get the course done quickly so that I could then go on a week’s camp and not have to wear the white (trainee) rank tabs.
I drove up on the Sunday and Warned In to the mess [what normal people would call “checking in”]. We had a briefing and were told about the expectation of behaviour and where to be at what time and in what uniform. It was quite exciting.
The first day was a mixture of classroom activity and drill. It turned out that some of us weren’t very good at drill and we had to work quite a lot on the basics, which wasn’t too bad as the older ones of us needed the practice. Our homework for the day was to prepare a presentation in groups. I was not selected as course leader, which would have been good fun, but at least I wasn’t responsible for a bunch of people I had never met before.
Tuesday morning was our first inspection and I had spent some time shining my shoes to make them lovely and also ironing my shirt. My trousers I had left as they were. I passed the inspection but there were some points to work on: seams in shirt sleeves and tying my tie a bit straighter. We presented our talks and the feedback was pretty accurate. We had more classroom activities and plenty of drill. Tuesday evening Mark and I went for a drive to Lincoln, just to get out in to the normal world for a while.
Wednesday was another inspection and my comments were just to work harder on everything. The day was very busy with more drill, more classroom stuff and finally a lesson on leadership and a small command task in the ATF building. This was a good precursor to our work on Thursday. Wednesday evening was mostly about preparing uniform and helping a couple of others learn how to “bull” their shoes. The Flight Sergeant has asked me to help a couple of the other members of the course and so I had to make sure their shoes were shiny, but I helped them rather than do it myself. Some of the female members of the course had found an interesting currency to barter for shoe shining services from the Navy pilots staying at Daedalus mess.
Thursday was the final inspection from the Squadron Leader who was also ex-Queens Colour Squadron, so he knew about how to look good. The only comment he had for me was to lower my chin by a few degrees. That pretty much means that I maxed the uniform part of the inspection – I was very happy about that. For the rest of the day we were doing command and leadership exercises in the ATF building and also in “The Hanger” used by the Officer and Air Selection Centre. Think of “The Crystal Maze” but without all the fancy sets. My leadership task went OK and the feedback was good. The best part of the week was having the Flight Sergeant and Warrant Officer commanding us over a particular obstacle set. It was great to be shouted at and have everyone working together efficiently. We also had about 20 minutes to talk to them about how to use these skills in the field.
Thursday evening we had a lovely silver service meal in the mess. The Red Arrows flew by as the RAF Officers on their IOT had passed out that day and the Arrows were planned as part of their celebrations.
RAF Cranwell Meal
The Friday was about a final few lessons, our individual feedback and our graduation. We weren’t allowed to graduate in College Hall and so we had to have our celebration in Daedalus mess. It is a shame as I have not yet walked across the “commissioning carpet”. There is a carpet in College Hall that only commissioned officers are allowed to walk across. This would have been the final part of our ceremony but I will have to wait for another visit to RAF Cranwell.
The week was great fun, I met some lovely people and above all I surpassed my personal targets for the week. It’s a shame it was only one week, two would have been perfect!
RAF Cranwell
As we were told at Cranwell: It’s all about credibility.
I have received my commission in to the RAF VR(T). For those of you who don’t know, the VR(T) branch of the RAF is for adult uniformed officers in the cadet forces. I am officially now Pilot Officer Parish RAF VR(T). I am attached to Maidstone Grammar School Combined Cadet Force, RAF Section.
Commission
I have completed some duties already and I am looking forward to doing more in the future. I shall inform you of bits and pieces, but on the whole this isn’t really the correct forum for me to write or say anything about work as this website is public. The CCF unit is attached to the school where I work and so I will write communications when I think it is suitable. It’s a bit like my twitter account: I am quite aware that everyone can see it and so I control what I write. My friends know the real me, not necessarily the readers of these communications.
