One of the benefits of Guild membership is the chance to visit locations that are not generally accessible to the public. A good example of this came on 18th March when eleven Guild artists attended the SE Region visit to the Royal Naval Air Engineering and Survival Equipment School (RNAESS) at HMS Sultan, in Gosport.

The event was made possible through Phil Hadley who made the initial contact and secured an invitation for the Guild to hold a sketching and painting day at the naval base – thank you Phil! I followed up with a visit in December last year to look at the venue and make arrangements with our HMS Sultan host, Lieutenant Matt Dunn.

The RNAESS is part of the Defence College of Technical Training and provides training for Royal Navy Air Engineer Officers and Air Engineering Technicians.

For our event in March, we were given access to three sites within the base; the 764 Naval Air Squadron hangar which provides initial engineering training using Westland Sea Kings, the 760 Naval Air Squadron hangar which provides a more advanced training environment with Westland Lynx helicopters and an external area where a number of mostly redundant airframes are located.

We began the day with Phil Hadley’s presentation to our hosts of a splendid painting titled ‘Daedalus’ which he had kindly prepared in advance. The painting shows engineering trainees
working on a Lynx helicopter and was received with thanks by School Warrant Officer Ian Morcom.

At the end of a hugely enjoyable day the group gathered in 760 NAS hangar for a review of the day’s work. Phil and I ran the critique and we were pleased to be joined by some of the RNAESS
staff, keen to see what we had been working on.

We finished at 5pm with a final thank you to our hosts who offered an invitation to return in the future. I think it is safe to say we will be back. HMS Sultan is a very rewarding location to paint and sketch with its interesting and unique subject matter and very welcoming hosts.

David Livesley GAvA
South East Regional Organiser