Whenever costs and waste get mentioned …I always love to think back and wonder over the years how changing the woolly pully so many times was cost effective (not just the AC movement, bit for the RAF as well!)
Each time they changed the design …V / No V …pen holders…etc etc …and then back again…etc etc …
…I wonder how much that cost each time, and did changing them make any huge differences to service efficiency!
I expect the consultancy companies that were undoubtedly used each time did very well out of it! 
would there have been a cost though? were these not simply introduced as part of new contracts/old contracts coming to an end and the new contract offering only the alternative woolly pully?
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In a sensible world I agree …but this in MoD procurement we are talking about!
What’s your source for this? It wasn’t mentioned on the call that I remember.
Except, somehow, everyone in KCS (even the fresh faced AS1s) has the old crew neck woolly pully.
Not in the Public Interest = “We don’t want to tell the public…!”
There’s a difference though between the public interest and what the public are interested in.
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I do agree, and I’ve said so. The trouble is that unless they are in touch with the current GA scene, senior RAF officers tend to think of tricycle microlights rather than the modern 3-axis type (or, at best, the sort of rag and tube microlight that came in between).
But… if the extra layers of oversight make gliding expensive, then surely the same will happen with microlights?
A bigger worry for me is that conventional winch launched gliding requires (as the RAF sees it) dedicated segregated airfields. These sit unused for most of the time (5 days a week, on the whole) which is surely going to lead to some questions in future over the value the taxpayer is getting for these ‘surplus military airfields’, when there’s a housing crisis.
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Do weekday gliding scholarships not happen anymore?
I agree the airfields are underutilised, but my understanding was they still had weekday usage. Just nowhere near enough.
No much, no, and when they did, not many weeks of the year. It’s not zero weekday usage but it’s low.
As I recall from when I was a cadet the week courses were mostly school holiday times and not all year round.
Being a bit of a procastinator I regularly find myself with FR24 open and a few minutes ago there was a hawk over topcliffe and Juno doing circuits at Tern Hill, there are regularly RN stuff near preddanack.Glider was out at Syerston though so some of the sites are in use by more than RAFAC and I think the airspace above a lot of the VGS is a lot busier during the week generally.
Could you imagine the cost of gliding if they had to employ enough staff to operate all the VGS during the week rather than use volunteers.
From the dial-in transcript;
volunteer Gladys Squadrons are operating and on track to fly 5000 cadets this year.
So the Gliding contract that supports 2 FTS
is fixed at over £3,000,000 a year,
£3,000,000 divided by 5000 cadets = £600
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Hereford Aero Club at Shobdon - and nowt extra for touch and go
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Some crazy comments here.
Suggest people visit a VGS and understand the staff currency requirements they have before saying they are inefficient.
Syerston operates midweek due to central gliding school, not the VGS down there.
I even saw something a while back about an army NCO doing gliding at Syerston as service AT… Is that a good use of possible air cadet GS time? Maybe it helps justify the cost…?
Suggest you visit a BGA club to see how they can do it 8 times cheaper, and remain current.
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I don’t think people are criticizing the staff. It’s the system that they have to work under that’s being attacked
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There’s a right way, a wrong way, my way and the highway… and then there’s the RAFAC way…
Cheaper isn’t always better….!
It’s worth comparing the BGA and RAFAC accident rates in gliding training.
Which, to the best of my googling, are both zero.
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Just found 4 BGA accident reports for 2023 alone.