Colour Tabs/Slides

Folks I note these colour tabs are used in some wings. Does anyone know were I can get some?

I recommend that you don’t: there is nothing in dress regulations that permit them.
Name tags can be worn on courses and those can be colour-coded if necessary.

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badge police inbound

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I don’t think there would be an issue to use them on squadron parade nights but not on parades or Wing events.

You are not allowed to wear name badges on uniform unless attending ATF or a course where they are required (1358C)

Make it a requirement of your course then

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We use colour tabs on parade nights to denote the different flights. One of the CIs made them AFAIK

We had something like these for years, but the cadets kept them and when they got too few we didn’t bother anymore. I’ve still got my flight tab in a tin somewhere with my old badges.

Use them on the squadron, but be wary of the saddos from Wing and other squadrons who with little else to worry about, get too excited about something that doesn’t concern me. If you make the fatal mistake of putting something online in some way, be prepared (or more correctly the OC) for tiny minds commenting.

Can’t the cadets remember which Flight they’re in? Maybe a Flight list on the wall? Verbal briefing?

I’m not being facetious here but there’s generally other ways of making cadets aware.

Buy some ribbon from a shop & needle & thread them. Could make it a “Project” ;-D :sunglasses:

We have two flights on our squadron of many cadets, for staff…or just me they seem a good idea so we know which Cadet is in which flight. I can barely remember a hand full of cadets names out of the 60+ we have :expressionless:

All of the things you mention are true, I’m still a fan of them however, I like the visual distinction between the flights, it makes life easier when you have a large number of cadets.

Plus and more importantly for me it starts to build flight identity, pride, competition, visual ownership/responsibility for the NCO’s of “their cadets”.

When I was a cadet we had them and it was a big deal which fligh you were in.

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Or, to look at it the other way…

Be wary of the saddos on Squadrons who want to dress their cadets up with coloured bands, where the Corps has decided it’s just not needed…

:wink:

I can definitely help build the sense of identity.

So what about schools? Our school like many others have ‘houses’ and at our school the pupils have a different colour band on their tie denoting their ‘house’ and the competitive nature is fierce when it comes to inter-house competitions. In other schools I’ve seen coloured tabs on blazers, coloured enamel house badges and different colour ties.

What about the bands that new uniformed staff wear?

Maybe the only reason the Corps frowns upon them is the worry they’d be saddled with the cost, although they seem quite happy waste money in other ways, but if squadrons are quite happy to pay for them, who does it hurt?

Corps makes a lot of decisions…

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I’m playing Devil’s advocate here, but…

Well. We’re not schools so what the local comprehensive gets up to doesn’t really matter.

We can still have inter-flight competition on our squadrons. It doesn’t require coloured additions to the uniform.
We’re dealing with flights of a dozen cadets or so; not a stream of couple of hundred, where the RAF might consider the use of coloured identifiers necessary.

There are plenty of oddities out there… Some squadrons seem to have an unnecessary desire to introduce all sorts of weird stuff.
It just seems to me that coloured flight tabs fits right in with dressing duty personnel in red British Army SNCO sashes, special “NCO only dress regulations” like wearing stable belts outside the jersey, and giving the OC a “symbolic whistle” as a badge of office.

There is nothing to say schools have to have form of identifying members of houses or groups.

It is baffling that every single squadron does things differently wrt organising training and what it does generally and no one bats an eyelid, yet do something with uniform or as suggested ‘symbolic whistle’ and it creates problems. If they’re not hurting anyone does it in the grand scheme of things really, really matter?

Dress regs in the Corps should be to ensure a standard supply of main dress items and people left to do their own things within their own walls. I’ve visited a number of squadrons and seen some of the things mentioned and thought nothing of it. We have effectively left the RAF and people should start to get onboard with this and stop trying to mimic an organisation that only wants us when it suits them.

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Treat yourselves to these then!

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Do you have a link for them - for a course where ranks are removed they would be ideal!

Same please!

Surely a different coloured tutu for each flight would be more in keeping with the traditions?

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