Afternoon all!

Please see a summary of our progress and achievements throughout the second quarter of this year!

ATC Training

This quarter saw the restructuring TG1 & TG2 into a Tower Training Group and an Approach Training Group, with instructors dedicated to each rating programme. This move towards a more linear structure has allowed our mentors to operate across different positions more easily, and has drastically improved our instructors ability to personalise our students' training - more info can be found about there here.

With this change we welcomed 4 new (and not so new!) faces onto the training team - @James Yuen, @Adam Farquharson, @Charlie Watson and @Jacob Edwards.

Content development for our S2 Aerodrome Control has been completed and is being imported to Moodle (our e-Learning platform) as we speak! Our S3 Approach Radar Control course has now been 95% written and is also being imported into Moodle.

Along with the development of our Moodle courses our instructors have been working on seminars that are aimed at providing our students with a bridge between self-learning and their practical mentoring -(see here and here for screenshots).

Pilot Training

Preparations for the new pilot ratings continue with our PPL(A) course nearing it's final stages of development - a preview can be found here. We re-opened our P1 (Online Pilot) course to new students from March through to June, due to a change in the timetable of the ratings planned launch date. We have now closed the P1 course whilst we work through our current students before the changes take effect in September.

Our recruitment for a VFR Flight instructor has almost come to a close and recruitment for a Development Flight Instructor will start next quarter.

General Training

Now for the exciting bit...

Back in September of 2018 when the ATC and Pilot Training Departments merged into one - I was adamant that the ATC Training side of things needed an Operations Manual similar to the manual we are required to have as past of our ATO for Pilot Training. The purpose being to provide anyone who operates within the Training Department with guidance, advice, and direction on how we operate so that everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet.

When we started making this manual we suddenly realised that there was vast amounts of policy with significant cross over tat had built up over the years. So we set out to review everything... (almost everything).

After just over 19 months of work we are now in a position where @Oliver Rhodes and I, are happy with the procedures and the experience that our students encounter when they come through our training system. As a result of that, we are now able to publish our new ATC Training Handbook and Pilot Training Handbook.

There will always be room for improvement. We will continue to review every process and procedure we have, in order to make training accessible to as many members as possible, to be realistic in our expectation of students, and so that everyone enjoys their hobby!

More info can be found here.

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After what can only be described for most people, as the most disruptive and eye opening 3 months I think we will experience for a long time. Our students, mentors, and staff have taken this opportunity to embrace our Training system, to use it as a place to focus, and to enjoy themselves. My thanks cannot be expressed to all of those who have helped make a difference to so many people over the past few month.

Thanks,

Dan ✈️