 Name: Steve LoweRank on Exit: Sergeant
Years of Service: 22 years
Qualifications Gained: Distance Measuring Equipment (DME)
Sergeant Steve Lowe left the RAF in 2008 after 22 years in uniform, having specialised as a Communications and Information Systems (CIS) Technician and served at locations such as RAF Brize Norton, RAF Innsworth, the Falkland Islands and Bosnia. ‘The skills taught during basic recruit and trade training – although carried out over 22 years ago in my case – have proved invaluable for my transition to civilian life,’ he says. ‘We were taught skills in self-discipline, leadership, communication, motivation and organisation. Later in my career I completed promotion courses as well as leadership courses, and these enabled me to fine-tune and advance the skills I had been taught earlier.’ In addition, during his time in the RAF he obtained an ONC in Electronic Engineering.
He found the Career Transition Workshop he attended ‘useful, because it gave me the self-belief that the skills and experience obtained through my career in the RAF were going to be advantageous to future employers’. He also undertook resettlement training courses in Distance Measuring Equipment (DME) at Carlisle Airport and a Radar Course at Gloucestershire Airport.
He is currently working as the senior air traffic engineer at Gloucestershire Airport Ltd: ‘This is my first job since leaving the RAF, and came about when the airport director, who just happens to be a friend of mine, persuaded me to apply for the role of air traffic engineer. My job means that I am responsible for the following at the airport: all the navigational aids equipment; ground-to-air VHF communications; ground-to-ground UHF communications; meteorological equipment and associated ancillaries; on-site telecommunications and IT equipment/infrastructure; airfield ground lighting. I like the fact that, due to the diversity of the types of systems/equipment I am responsible for, no one day is the same.
‘Some of the systems I deal with are like those I worked on in the military. And the way you have to log everything you do is also similar to the way things were done during my Service career. But the major difference between that and my current job is the chain of command: in the RAF there is a rigid reporting chain; however, in my current job, it is a bit more flexible. It has taken me a while to get used to this!’
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