Cakers get their wings - with varying success
As part of our work with COI, Cake is working on recruitment campaigns for both the Royal Marines and the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm (the navy’s air force). And so to Somerset, where 3 intrepid Cakers - Chris Wood, Adrian Bassett and Matt Holmes spent the day at Yeovilton air base home of the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm. A morning of meetings was followed by lunch in the officer’s mess - where the navy’s finest were treated to soup, followed by curry (well, it was ‘curry day’ apparently…). Then came the tour of the base where our trio were treated to first hand tours of hangers housing various helicopters, classic planes and the air traffic control tower.
Highlight of the tour though was undoubtedly the helicopter simulator where a couple of the team decided that this was an opportunity too good to miss. Head of PR, Mr Wood took to the virtual skies first. Actually, he crashed within seconds. But having dusted himself down, he took off smoothly from the virtual air base and went out to sea in a surprisingly well piloted flight. As he made his return to the air base, all was looking good as colleagues looked on anxiously in the control room. He didn’t disappoint, crashing again as he reached base.
Next up Biggles Bassett took charge of the chopper. There was a slightly wobbly take off where he narrowly missed the control tower and where the instruction to hit the pedal (”what pedal??”) was belatedly obeyed, a smooth flight out to sea followed. The return to base was a blur of speed and controlled panic (”you’re losing speed, give it some welly”) and the landing was as smooth as - well, as smooth as a landing from a novice pilot could ever hope to be. No crashes anyway.
All requests from Messrs Bassett and Wood to fly a real helicopter were politely declined.
