6 WING CADETS ACHIEVE GOLD The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award
6 WING REMEMBERS THE FALLEN Centenary of the Armistice, 2018
A CADETS LIFE in 5 minutes
Further Reading and Listening Pleasure
Feedback
Keep in Touch // 2019 + Beyond
Until May, Fly Safe
Don’t forget to update your email address when NBN comes to you
From the Editor
Welcome back to Your Alumni Magazine. Great to see that you made it through the Christmas break without too much damage to the scales. I will try to do my bit by trimming down the excess in this, the February edition. I must admit, I was disappointed at the lack of feedback with letters and quiz answers from our November magazine. Perhaps our readers are still ploughing through the stories, I would like to think so, but alas, I think it could be otherwise. Thanks to Paul Rosenzweig for some great material on the 6 Wing activities and to our two contributors to our November Quiz, Rob Nieuwenhoven and Mick Gilbert. As usual, it is almost impossible to stump Rob and Mick. My apologies to Mick, we missed seeing your submission for the August Quiz. We liked your additional information regarding the Trackers. 'Pin-wheeling' is the practice of berthing an aircraft carrier using the engine power of its aircraft lashed to the deck. Anyone who has watched the Korean War movie 'The Bridges at Toko-Ri' would have seen an example of the practice. We don’t receive much in the way of material or suggestions from our readers to scope what our alumni wish to read. At least in this issue we have material from Pete Condon on his life as a FAC in Vietnam and some history notes from David Crickmore also some great work from Paul Falconer-West on the RAF Centenary celebrations and the WA connection. Hopefully we try to give you a cross section of what our cadets and alumni are up to, together with a few stories with an aviation theme. If this is not what you would like, here is an opportunity to tell us where to go in future.
Are you ready for your fill with another Alumni Magazine? It never ceases to amaze me that when I catch up with people and find that they are ex Cadets; they all have great tales of how the Cadets moulded their life and that they wouldn’t be where they are today if it hadn’t been for those years in the Air Training Corps, AirTC or AAFC. At our last AAFC National Council meeting I heard it from two of our Council members that it was their time in Cadets, be it the Air Training Corps, AirTC or the AAFC, that set them on the road for their very successful career. Why am I mentioning this? Well with all that material out there, it would be even better if we could share your story. Hopefully we have provided a few hours of light relief for you over these 30 odd editions.
Welcome back to our regulars and a very warm welcome aboard to our new recruits, some old and some young. All of our alumni are most welcome to contribute. We are finding that some of our new recruits have some great stories to tell.
If you like what you read in your magazine, you are most welcome to share and invite your friends who are ex Cadet or Staff members to join. If you don’t like what you are reading please tell us, AlumniDirector@aircadetsalumni.org.au We hope that our magazine can remind you of your time in our great organization. We are always on the lookout for articles and photographs that you may like to share.
Please update your email address when you change providers Perhaps it may change when you go to NBN. We understand that you may be accessing the newsletter from the web site, but sometimes we just might like to contact you direct. In particular, those who have a Cadetnet or Defence email address may have trouble with our emails. There are still plenty of Defence email accounts in our database. You might like to check with your friends to see if they have been getting our emails. Our regular Newsletter is sent by email at 1000 on 1 November, 1 February, 1 May and 1 August. Registration is FREE and is open to all ex Cadets, ex Staff, current Staff, both uniform and civilian. We also invite our friends from likeminded organizations.
In this edition, we continue with aviation stories, work that our alumni are up to and an insight to what our current cadets are doing. We will endeavour to keep you informed about activities as we hear of them from the Wings or through the grapevine of facebook. You can help us out if you hear of news from the Wings.
We have been trying to increase our exposure and possible increase our membership. To that end, we have contacted numerous Aviation Museums, Aviation organizations and Airlines. We have offered to provide some space in our newsletters to showcase their operations while at the same time, they display our material.
There is some great reading again and all the material is just one click away from the Contents page. We have a few stories that may remind you of your past glories and stories from some of our alumni. Do you remember Air Clues? We have an extract. We have some Aviation Museum material and a glimpse of how they recruit Aircrew for our Air Force of today. 6 Wing features again through the efforts of Paul Rosenzweig. I’m sure there are plenty of stories worth printing from the other Wings. We have The End of an Era, 4 Wing Aviation as it changes direction with the impending introduction of the Diamond DA 40 aircraft. We hope to bring you further details on the introduction very soon. You may like to contribute the story of Aviation in your Wing. You may remember, we ran a Centenary Writing Competition last year for Cadets and Staff. We didn’t get a great deal of support, so this time we have opened the competition to our Alumni. Details of the competition can be found in the Competition flyer.
If you think you have missed out on some of the earlier Alumni Newsletters, the good news is you haven’t! They are available on the Air Cadets Alumni website, www.aircadetsalumni.org.au and go to the Bulletin Board.
