20/07/2015 IACE comes to Wellesbourne!

On Monday 20 July MaPS hosted a special visit to 34 air cadets and staff from the International Air Cadets Exchange (IACE) who were in the UK to help with the organisation of the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford. The visit had been organised by our own David McCulloch, both a MaPS volunteer as well as Instructor with 150 (City of Oxford) Sqn, who himself spends nearly three weeks each year with his Squadron helping at RIAT. The visit was facilitated by Sqn Ldr Gordon McElroy (RAFVRT), the Wing Staff Officer HQ - Central & East Yorks Wing.

David brought two of the senior cadets from 150 Sqn to help with looking after the IACE cadets - it was a pleasure to have Cadet Cpl Asia Szalecka and Cadet Kaisha Smith with us; as Asia said afterwards "It was one of the best days of RIAT for me and I didn't realise just how much I knew about '655 until I was asked lots of questions and could answer them all!".

Wg Cdr Mike Pollitt was on hand as usual to host all the cockpit visits, and Charles Brimson, Eric Ranshaw and Nick Sarchet ran a systems demonstration and fielded hundreds of questions from the attentive and very impressed air cadets during their three hour visit with us. By all accounts it made a very welcome change for them from the intense activities that they had all been immersed in at Fairford.

The countries represented at the visit were the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. A representative from each country presented Charles with a certificate of appreciation signed by each visiting cadet - these certificates are now all proudly displayed in the Visitors Centre at the airfield. Here is the Australian groups' representative presenting their certificate to Charles.

The group photograph shows the complete contingent standing in front of XM655 smartly grouped by country, with the MaPS volunteers standing in the centre. The two City of Oxford cadets stand at extreme left and right of the photograph.

Hopefully we can make this an annual visit!