Culdrose air engineers scoop top awards

Two Leading Air Engineering Technicians (LAET’s) from Royal Naval Air Station Culdrose have scooped top awards at a prestigious national competition. 

LAET’s Aiden Campbell, 824Naval Air Squadron and Mikala Atkinson, 771 NAS were selected for their outstanding application and exceptional military standards. They attended the National Apprenticeship Awards held at the LG Arena inBirminghamto pick up their awards. In addition members of industry put their best trainees up against others within their respective fields as part of the World-Skills UK (WSUK) Finals. 

Aiden who works on the Merlin Mk 2 secured the Gold medal through completing tasks that involved build and fault diagnosis on AC motors and the Merlin aircraft’s AV control systems. In the Mechanical category his Culdrose counterpart Mikala claimed a well deserved Silver medal for completing tasks including compressor blade blending, gas turbine boroscope techniques and hydraulic system design. 

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was amongst the VIP guests to recognise the countries top apprentices and apprenticeship providers with 11 winners selected from over 1400 entrants across British industries. In addition a special award to commemorate the 100th anniversary of The First World War was presented to an apprentice from each of the three armed forces with AET Matthew Stanton, from HMS Sultan representing the Royal Navy. 

Leading in to the Finals WSUK had held regional competition in 70 different categories. A total of 12 aeronautical engineers from across the industry which included 3 representatives from the Royal Navy and 2 from the RAF competed at the Aeronautical Engineering Final. 

“It was a great honour and surprise to have been selected for this award,” said LAET Mikala Atkinson. “Then to receive a silver medal was the icing on the cake.” 

Taking on a number of timed tasks one of which was a daily inspection on a GR9 Harrier that had been provided by the RNAESS at HMS Sultan the engineers set about displaying their skills. For the avionic trade this is the end of the competition, however the mechanical trade will go on to a skills boot camp in the spring of 2015. The winner of this will go to Sao Paolo, Brazil as the UK representative for International World Skills.