Page 226 - Demo

222When I got back to Church Fenton, I continued to think about what I wanted and realised that going on courses like that was during work time and so I did not lose any leave. Thus, I could enjoy outdoor pursuits and have family holidays. That made me think a little about the advantages of service life. I also put up a bit of a black that year. Every year the station had a preAOCs inspection from the training wing staff. They came and checked everything which to my mind was quite ridiculous. Apart from making sure that everyone had the proper current qualifications for what they were doing, they page checked everyone%u2019s reference books. The students all had a Students Guide and Jet Provost Aircrew Manual. In addition, the QFIs had an Instructors Guide and manuals for both the Mk 3A and Mk5A JPs. These were in large binders and were amended from time to time. The staff would page check every book and before they came, the students books were laid out in their quiet room and were all page checked by the QFIs. To get this done, the students did not actually have access to their books for several weeks. I had 4 QFIs on my Squadron and I refused to play ball. When the team came in to inspect they asked where the books were and I said they were all in the top drawer of each QFIs desk and I would get them out as required. However, they were in constant use so could not be laid out elsewhere. As our job was to standardise the instruction given to the students we would have to be able to refer to our manuals. The team accepted this and I got out the manuals for as requested. During this process, the Wing Commander came in and was unhappy that the books were not laid out for him. That week or perhaps the one before I had been given a new QFI and when they inspected one of his books they found he had not amended it. This was a major black, together with the books not being laid out. The Wing Commander put in a report that my Squadron was badly prepared for the inspection. And that was that. Oscar Wild wrote about it on my next appraisal and even though the Squadron had