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THE ARMED SERVICES AND AUXILIARY SERVICES

intake of 140 recruits joined the volunteers in 1986 following a successful campaign which attracted over 1 800 applications.

The Regimental Headquarters is located in the busy residential area of Happy Valley on Hong Kong Island where the volunteers have been based since 1950. The regiment does not have a training camp of its own and has to share the training facilities of the British Army in Hong Kong.

The training commitment is two evenings and one weekend each month as well as centrally organised regimental training, such as regimental camps and exercises. Regimen- tal camps, the highlights of the year's training, take place over seven days each in April and November. For the November camp, the regiment is deployed on the border to relieve a regular battalion of its anti-illegal immigration duties. During the year, selected volunteers were sent for overseas training in the United Kingdom and Malaysia. All officer cadets are trained at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.

Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Air Force

The Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Air Force, based at Hong Kong International Airport, provides a variety of flying services for the government. It operates a fleet of seven aircraft: a twin-engined Cessna Titan, a Britten-Norman Islander, two Scottish Aviation Bulldog trainers and three Aerospatiale Dauphin twin-engined helicopters. With a self-sufficient engineering squadron and an establishment of 83 permanent staff and 131 volunteers, the RHKAAF can operate round-the-clock for seven days a week during an emergency. A total of 3 400 hours was flown during the year.

In 1986, the RHKAAF responded to 120 requests for emergency medical evacuation and rescues. Some of these requests came from the local fleet of about 5 000 fishing boats, many of which now have high frequency radios enabling them to call for assistance when necessary. Sixty search and rescue operations were carried out, involving both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. During the dry season, the Dauphins assisted in over 100 fire-fighting operations and dropped over 600 tonnes of water on bush and forest fires in areas inaccessible to conventional fire-fighting appliances.

The Royal Hong Kong Police Force and the Correctional Services Department made frequent use of helicopters for training and operational purposes. Helicopter flights were routinely provided to transport engineering staff to hilltops to carry out maintenance and repair work at communications repeater stations. During the year, about 5 700 government officers were flown to various areas in the course of their duties. Flying services were also provided to give official visitors from overseas an overview of the territory.

The Titan and Islander maintained regular offshore patrols in connection with anti- illegal immigration operations and were also heavily employed in support of the Buildings and Lands Department's continuing need for aerial survey, photography and map-making. The Bulldogs provided pilot training for the squadron's own volunteers and student air traffic controllers.

Civil Aid Services

The role of the Civil Aid Services is to provide a uniformed and disciplined volunteer force of men and women trained in counter-disaster duties, in support of the regular emergency services and government departments. Members of the Civil Aid Services are trained to handle a wide variety of emergency duties in connection with tropical cyclones, landslips and flooding, search and rescue, building collapses, forest fire fighting, refugee feeding and camp management, oil pollution, crowd control, life saving, and mountain rescue. The