A ROYAL Navy officer from Selkirk has taken a giant step towards earning his Observer Flying Wings, after graduating from Basic Flying Training at Royal Naval Air Station Culdrose in Cornwall.

Lieutenant Nik Wielbo, who studied at Selkirk High School before reading Geography at Stirling University, was one of three students on the BFT17 course with 750 Naval Air Squadron.

He picked up the Westlands Trophy for the highest level of motivation and enthusiasm as well as an excellent attitude during the course.

Since joining, the 28-year-old has flown in the King Air 350ER ‘Avenger’ aircraft, learning its systems and sensors and how to operate in all weathers and environments.

Over the past 16 week he has been taught to use state of the art equipment, in both the airborne and ground environments.

The equipment is capable of replicating a whole range of front line sensors, such as Radars, Electronic Support Measures and Tactical Data Links. Nik knows how to to employ these in basic strategic scenarios.

Nik told us: “It’s been a really good course.

"I’ve learnt and really enjoyed it. It was challenging, but very rewarding looking back on what we’ve all achieved.

"The volume of work and material we have had to cover has really been enormous.”

Nik gained a variety of new skills including how to command a crew, operate and deploy an aircraft tactically as well as build on elementary navigation skills taught at RAF Barkston Heath and Cranwell in Lincolnshire.

He has also learned how to hunt for survivors in a Search and Rescue environment and controlling other aircraft to seek out and find a potential enemy many miles out to sea.

The Observer Trio graduate has flown around 20 hours on the Grob Tutor, 50 hours on the Avenger and countless hours in the ground based training simulators.

After 750 NAS, Nik has been streamed to train on the Merlin helicopter at RNAS Culdrose, one of the Royal World’s most advanced maritime helicopters.

Nik will now spend time at RAF Valley in Wales where he will continue his flying training with the Specialist Search and Rescue Unit before starting Merlin flying in the New Year.