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The RAF Aptitude Tests

28th MARCH 2009

The RAF aptitude tests varied from brutal and demoralising to laughably easy and really quite fun.

Some were plain impossible, so I’d say to anyone about to take them not to panic if you find one of the tests mind-boggling. It’s probably the point. You get regular breaks, and the time flies by. Afterwards is the first nerve wracking wait to find out if you’ve achieved the aptitude for your chosen branch. At this pint we lost about ten people, mostly those who wanted to be a pilot or nav, and nothing else. Some said they’d come back next year, some said nothing.

Sobering end to the morning before a smaller group finished their packed lunches ( not that flash!) and went off to get our sexy green goon suits. Sorry, overalls. And here we found out why the calf length socks are so vital-health and safety, in case we TRIP OVER THE BOTTOMS OF OUR OWN TROUSERS. Um. Are we not applying to do a difficult and demanding job? If we are dozy enough to trip over the bottoms of our own trousers, should we even be there? I’ll say no more..

Then they split everyone up into 5 or 6 person ‘syndicates’ and dish out numbered bibs-you lose your identity totally at this stage and just become G4, for instance, for the rest of your time there. The afternoon begins with group planning. We were given as a syndicate very precise instructions on how to manoeuvre our chairs beforehand, then thrown a topic to discuss as a group. We got some pretty dry and dull topics, but we still had some good discussions. I tried to push my opinion quite early – I was normally the first to speak – and then the conversation goes from there and you can always relate to it. Then the group planning exercise-you get a laminate of the absolute bare bones facts and discuss a plan with the rest of the syndicate. Now forgive me if I’m wrong, but assumption is the mother of all f**kups, yes?

So you DON’T assume that there might be buses if you don’t know that there are… when the officers questioned us on our plan, one of them asked us whether we’d considered what other transport might be available. So I said that as it was a town with a train station, yes, I expected there would be other forms of transport we could make use of but that we couldn’t be certain at that stage. So he then said, don’t you think the villagers (who we were supposedly trying to rescue) might have a bus? Right then, I was resisting the urge to point out that if I just imagined what we MIGHT have, the problem they’d given us wouldn’t be difficult at all. Because MAYBE there’d be a US air base up the road that would like to just come and blow the whole bloody town up, and then we could carry on our way. Aaaanyway, as you might guess, I kept my mouth shut and said that we hadn’t considered buses. Haha.

End of the second day, ten down, how many more to go? We all grouped together as syndicates that night, and talked about the next day – the command exercises, and the big scary chop afterwards. Otherwise known as the announcement of successful candidates or the hour of reckoning. Didn’t get much sleep that night, but that was probably down to the whirring sleep deprivation device that seemed to have been installed under the floor of my room-it works in conjunction with beds like elasticated hammocks and extemes of hot and cold delivered by the heating system. Ended up with the mattress on the floor, and managed to get some sleep, until the fire alarm at 6am the next morning.

8th APRIL 2009

SO. Next day is the hangar where you get to do all of the leaderless and command exercises. Basically like the crystal maze in shark infested custard. Ludicrous missions, such as trying to get a great big wooden box over a ten foot high wall using only a rope, a slightly-too-short plank, some melted chocolate and an old sock…out of seven exercises that we did, nobody finished theirs. Mine was a total joke. I had a vaulting horse set over a mattress and had to make a sling to get the plank up to it so we could get over it. Ended up with three people on the horse trying to fix the sling, and they all fell off in one massive heap. I wasn’t sure if I’d blown it by finding this a tiny bit funny…? A few times, officers would stroll past and make a helpful comment like, “We’re laughing with you, not at you, honestly.” The whole thing was really good fun although a few people took it waaaay to seriously and got quite stressed and upset. There were some really comical moments were members of a group would be all jammed onto a tiny space together, trying their absolute hardest not to step off and jeopardise the exercise, and getting much more friendly with each other than we ever would have imagined!

Then the individual planning exercise, where we had to get out a country quickly because of an imminent crisis. And I found the same issue as the group exercise, they gave us the fact that the boat has a top speed of 4mph, so I had a few ways of speeding the plan up, and when the boarding officer had heard all of them, he asked whether Id thought of just going a bit faster in the boat. “Putting your foot down, perhaps?” Answer-I’d certainly give it a try, but without knowing for certain that it’s possible I couldn’t rely on it as an option. Not the reply that I was thinking of, but hey…

As I was the last in alphabet, I had to run back to the mess to get last few minutes of lunch, but we had to be straight back for the ‘announcement of unsuccessful candidates’ and I was feeling a bit too nervous to eat. Legged it back, and then they left us to sweat for OVER AN HOUR. This was made slightly more enjoyable because there was a University Air Squadron wandering around and one of the looked EXACTLY like a young Barack Obama. He knew it too and he was so embarrassed because everybody looked twice. Even the wing commander came in and did a double take. tehe. So then a guy from the medical dept came in and called some names (including me) and we left to an awkward silence. This was really brutal I thought – a little like X Factor, when they call out the names of the act who will stay to sing another night… We were obviously hoping that we were the group that had made it through, but we were given no clue until we were sat in the medical area. So we then had our medicals and a few of us had interviews.

A few people got bad news from their medicals, not getting the results they needed for their chosen branches. Especially hearing and sight for pilots. Bit quieter in the bar that night, only nine of us but a nice feeling to still be there. Made us feel kinda special.. And in the morning? What a treat awaiting us. A single jug of REAL orange juice. Not squash, not indeterminate pink stuff, but real orange juice. Made us feel very special.

RAF Cranwell for OASC

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