Day: July 16, 2012

Colleges come together to showcase Best of the Fest

 Over 4,000 people attended a series of events, designed to showcase student talent and success, as part of Edinburgh’s biggest student led festival. The Edinburgh Colleges Festival brought together the collective student talent present at Edinburgh’s Telford College, Jewel & Esk College and Stevenson College Edinburgh ahead of the proposed merger set to take place later this year.

Proving they can work together to offer the very best in student focused further education across a variety of sectors, the event featured the work and performances of over 1,000 students from all three colleges.

Showcasing sporting, arts and design, music, performing arts and hospitality achievements as well as many others, the festival programme featured an impressive 43 events over six weeks.

Brian Lister, Interim Principal for Edinburgh College, said: “This year’s festival has been a huge success, not only in terms of its size and scale, but the fact that it demonstrates the potential of the Edinburgh College, for offering one of the biggest and best further education facilities. The merger of the three colleges has the interest of the students at its heart and so it made sense that we brought together the collective talent of the combined student body for the Festival.”

He continued: “I attended several of the events myself and it was a great pleasure to see the hard work and talent of all the students involved. There are definitely a few future stars out there and we wish every single student the very best of luck in their future careers. We look forward to building upon the success of this year’s vent in years to come and not only make next year’s event even bigger and better, but ensure that the positive and collective hard work of all three colleges is taken forward under the Edinburgh College brand.”

Feedback about the festival from an online survey was extremely positive and revealed that 100% of people would like to see an Edinburgh Colleges Festival in 2013 – 34% of these being members of the local communities surrounding the colleges.

Highlights of the festival included a Celebration of Achievement event at Jewel & Esk College, which recognised and celebrated the talent of its FE students, as well as the ‘Exposed’ photography exhibition, featuring work from Stevenson’s final year photography students which was attended by over 300 people.

A final highlight was the Gala Launch dinner hosted by hospitality and catering students at Edinburgh’s Telford College, with music and performances by students from across the three colleges. The event was also attended by Mike Russell, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning.

The new Edinburgh College will be formed later this year when Telford, Jewel & Esk and Stevenson Colleges merge. The merger will bring together around 35,000 students across four main campuses.

SELEX celebrates sixty years of success

SELEX Galileo marked 60 years involvement in airborne fire control radar with a unique celebration event and the publication of a fully illustrated book at last week’s Farnborough Airshow.

It was in 1952 that Ferranti – one of the corporate antecedents to what is today SELEX Galileo – began initial engineering studies and technology development work at its site in Crewe Toll, Edinburgh, for the airborne intercept radar that would eventually equip the RAF’s Lightning interceptor.

Paying tribute to its rich UK-Italian heritage in air-to-air and air-to-surface radar technology, the company exhibited 17 radar sets – ranging from the AI.23 system equipping the RAF’s Lightning fighter to its latest solid-state active electronic scanning array (AESA) products – at a reception to launch ‘Looking Forward: 60 Years of Fire Control Radar’.

Entering RAF service in 1960, the AI.23 was the world’s first high-power fighter radar to employ the monopulse technique. Its development was a huge engineering challenge, made doubly difficult by the absence of any established component supply base. Virtually everything from the smallest piece parts upwards had to be designed and built from scratch. Engineers pioneered the use of numerically-controlled milling techniques to machine the precisely matched waveguide system from a solid block of aluminium.

AI.23 laid the foundations for a high technology business that came to excel in the realm of fire control radar. Products such as Blue Parrot, Blue Fox and Blue Vixen went on to become part of the lexicon of British post-war military aviation.

In Italy, the story unfolded in the 1960s when FIAR – another of SELEX Galileo’s forebears – undertook the license build of the North American Autonetics NASARR radar to equip the Italian Air Force’s F-104G Starfighter interceptor. The company later produced the much evolved R-21G/M1 Setter radar, a solid-state evolution of NASARR conferring the updated F-104 ASA with a true look-down/shoot-down capability.

Later, FIAR had the vision to invest in the development of a family of lightweight pulse- multi-mode fire control radars, identifying the growing worldwide demand for fighter avionics upgrades. This gave rise to the best-selling GRIFO family, still a leader in its market with more than 450 systems sold and in operations on many different platforms.

Building on this heritage of success, SELEX Galileo has gone on to develop the modular Vixen family of affordable, high performance multi-mode AESA radars. It is also part of the multinational Euro radar consortium developing the next-generation CAPTOR-E radar for the Eurofighter Typhoon.

Speaking at the Farnborough event, Fabrizio Giulianini, CEO of SELEX Galileo said: “I am honoured to be here today representing years of outstanding individual, industrial and technological excellence. For many years armed forces around the world have relied on our radar to support airborne missions and come home safe. The United Kingdom and Italy have looked at SELEX Galileo, and all its previous incarnations, as the trusted partner to deliver the capability edge to counter enemies and threats.”

“Building on a continuous evolution of technology and techniques, SELEX Galileo today stands as the cornerstone of Europe’s sovereign capability in airborne fire control radar,” said Alastair Morrison, SVP Radar and Advanced Targeting. “The company has brought together the complementary experience, knowledge and lines of business from Italy and the UK to create a world-class airborne radar capability uniquely positioned to meet the needs of a diverse and demanding global customer base.”

SELEX Galileo