Uni might be out for summer, but students of Yorkshire University Air Squadron have swapped long lie-ins for sleeping under the stars and putting their leadership skills to the test.
One of fifteen University Air Squadrons in the UK, the YUAS team, based at RAF Leeming, prides itself on doing something a little different for its recently completed summer camp. In place of the more usual flying camps, it offers a broad range of military challenges and tough decisions within a scenario-based leadership exercise, or LeadEx.
Built around a humanitarian scenario, this year’s Exercise was written by more experienced Squadron members and staff and designed to teach broad range of skills from setting up camp and sleeping under a basha, to patrols and giving a presentation. They were then put to the test in the great outdoors near Ripon.
Squadron Leader Pete explains: “The staff were there to help and guide them, because they’d never done anything like that before. We used the more experienced students to help set up the scenario. We try to ensure that everyone has the chance to lead – it's very much about experiential learning.
“University Air Squadron provides an education that you can’t get in the classroom, whether that’s during Camp or on a training night. We provide a safe environment to learn and to try things where it doesn’t matter if something goes wrong – it doesn’t matter at all. And the next time it’s a bit better, and the time after that it’s a bit better again. It takes a lot of work to put together but we find it very rewarding.”
In his fourth year at YUAS, Officer Cadet Harry was helping to mentor some of his more junior colleagues. He said: “LeadEx is always awesome. People develop from doing things for the first time whether that’s sleeping out in the field to leading a serial and making their own decisions. It’s a bit intimidating at first but the Squadron provides you with all the resources.”
Having completed his degree in Aerospace Engineering, Harry has completed his YUAS journey. He said: “YUAS has a lot of people from the big engineering universities, but we also have people who do politics and the arts – all sorts of stuff.
“One of the biggest things that I've personally got out of the Air Squadron is confidence to speak in front of the crowd. Another really cool thing about the Air Squadron is that it pushes you outside every comfort zone. I've been to Norway and Andorra, done Nordic skiing, station visits, and adventurous training. I'm now a qualified mountaineering instructor. I've had the best time ever – it’s been a great mix of flying, travelling, and studying pretty hard.”
