Well not quite, however 13 lucky cadets and 2 staff were able to look around the amazing Aviation Training International Limited (ATIL) Army Air Corps Apache AH Mk1 Helicopter training facility based at Middle Wallop in Hampshire.

The visit took place on the evening of Tuesday 10th February 2009 where four staff from ATIL gave up their free time and provided a ram packed two hours showing the cadets a whole suite of training facilities that are used to train Army Air Corps air and ground crew.

The visit started at 1900hrs with a safety brief followed by a visit to the Fuel and Armament Part Task Training Facility, we were shown the munitions used to arm the Apache followed by a demonstration on how the 1200 30mm rounds are fed into the internal magazine of the helicopter. Cadets were then able to have a go at loading and unloading the rounds on an Apache trainer.

It was then on to the Mission Control Training Facility, a training sortie had been preloaded into the facility and it was explained how a sortie would be prepared and conducted, what threats were on route and how the sortie can be changed whilst the aircraft is in flight.

Next was a visit to the Classroom Maintenance Training Systems room, a computer simulation of the whole Apache system was at the finger tips of 12 lucky cadets. The simulator allowed the cadets to open panels, unplug cables and fuses that are used to train engineers and technicians in fault finding and other tasks. The cadets were then shown on the simulator how to start an Apache Helicopter after which they all had the opportunity to do so themselves.

Following this was a visit to the Full Mission Simulator. Two 17ft domes with full six axis motion and projection systems (one representing the front seat and the other the rear seat) are used by the aircrew to simulate real sorties. Whilst the cadets were visiting the facility two trainee aircrew were being put through their paces in an instrument only training sortie. The aircrew flew out of Middle Wallop with good visibility but didn’t know that visibility on their return would be reduced at Middle Wallop causing them to land at near by MoD Boscombe Down. The aircrew could see nothing outside of the cockpit and had to rely on their flight instruments and navigation systems.

The final visit was to a room which contained a mock up of the control system that is used to both fly the helicopter and fire the various weapon systems. Two lucky cadets had the opportunity to operate the weapons systems, select targets and firing rockets on to the unlucky virtual foe.

That was it; after a two hour visit that seemed to last only five minutes it was 2100hrs and time to say “Goodbye” to our hosts from the ATIL training facility. We all had a fantastic time and it was great to see what goes in to training the Army air and ground crew on an awesome and very complicated helicopter.