Are the any definitive boundaries for Wings (this is not as simple as getting county boundaries - many Wings arbitrarily cross county boundaries)? Even more unlikely, has anyone produced shp / kml / any other standard GIS format for them?
I don’t believe there is really a true map of this. I think HQAC had one once but those lines will be made up on a map as the structure of the wing is only really the units in it, there are no hard and fast recruitment boundaries etc.
agreed with that - Bristol and Gloucestershire wing will, by dint of Tewkesbury Sqn, have plenty of kids from Worcestershire in it, Newtown Sqn in Mid-Wales will have, by dint of being the nearest town for large areas of Shropshire, have plenty of English kids in a Welsh Sqn.
Hmm, I didn’t really mean boundaries of where cadets are from, more that I wondered if there was a definition of where the theoretical boundaries are. It’s easy to see that the English-Scottish border could (/should) be the border that HQAC have defined between North Region and SNI, but the border between Merseyside and Staffordshire Wings is more vague - Northwich Sqn (in Cheshire) being in Merseyside, but the Sqn in the next town south, Crewe (also in Cheshire), being in Staffs.
I thought it might be a bit far-fetched that the limits are explicitly defined, bit maybe that’s done on purpose to prevent too many arguments about catchment areas…
I suspect wings are vague, but I think the regions are delimited on county boundaries.
I’m pretty sure the borders of Scotland & Northern Ireland Region are unambiguous.
I know of sqns that get moves from wing to wing I know Buxton sqn has moved from Trent wing to Manchester wing recently. Also Manchester wing is a new wing after a reorganisation of ECSM, MSM and what was Cumbria and lancs wing, cant remember what it was called. This happened when North went front 6 wings to 5 wings.
Yes, the reorganisation did mean Sqns got moved - this happened in North and SNI regions. I must admit I didn’t know that Sqns get moved outwith these reorganisations (as in the case of Buxton - this would also be a move of Region from C&E to North!), so obviously this means the Wing and Region boundaries are changed. In this case, it would also mean that the North Region boundary doesn’t follow a county boundary, since Buxton is in Derbyshire. The North and SNI reorgs happened about 6(+?) years ago though, so any recent definitions I was hoping to find would be reflected in this…
There are Wings on definite county boundaries but there are some where the borders are a bit more arbitrary, such that as far as the addressing goes you could have squadrons in 2 or 3 counties, but part of the arbitrary ATC area.
Wales always seems to have been the most obvious with Wings 1,2 and 3, which will have different counties.
I’ve often wondered if they’ve created Wings by divvying up squadrons so there are similar numbers, hence some the “region” Wings.
There used to be a nice map with regions and wings on one side, CCF TEST areas on the other. I don’t think it exists now
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