Greatcoats and RAFAC

Another example of the ill thought through identifiers. Previously it was easy and cheap. If you were wearing rank on an epaulette, a gilt pin was added to braid. If the rank was worn in the cuff, gilt pins were worn on the collar. This signified that the wearer was not a regular member of the service. Simple!!! All the organisation had to do was to provide pins!!
Now we have the sliders, which are making Cadet Direct lots of money, not just on the initial issue, but by doing all the colours of the rainbow so diligent staff can look correct.
The easiest and cheapest option is to revert to pins (and by gosh, they are cheap!). But that would lead to red faces at HQ and reduced profits for Cadet Direct.
This thread is again showing that HQAC has gone for the expensive quick fix, without thought!!
I initially added this to the wrong thread!!!

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Totally agree, problem I see is that the rank braid is sown on a great coat, So the RAF slides don’t fit and the pins won’t go through the material. Best bet I suppose is to sew them on the lapels.

I don’t see what the big deal is. Private purchase item… So private purchase some additional pins to go with it.

But I say again that going to the trouble of deciding how we’re going to wear identifiers in greatcoats and creating new regulations to detail that is silly… Somebody has already done the work for us.
Just replace the name and swap “A” for “RAFAC”.
Boxed off.



Never seen a ‘Dental Badge’ - sparked my curiosity.

I think I’ve seen one once…
image

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But that is too sensible! If we had used gilt badges in the first place for the whole change, we wouldn’t have this situation!!
But no profits for Cadet Direct though!!

Out of curiosity, do RAuxAF still wear these? I thought they had been removed to allow them to be consistant with regulars.

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That’s correct; they no longer wear them.

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But they do on no 1s I think?

AFAIK they’ve been removed from No1s. More likely to wear them than the great coat so I would have assumed many oggies would have been chomping at the bit to get rid of them.

That’s what I was aware! There is no visible distinction between Regular and Reserve anymore. I think the only collar markings are branch identifiers such as medical and dental.

Snooping through AP1358C and I see in the latest update greatcoats are now permitted for parades/ceremonial duties

I noticed this, still a bit confused over how to badge up the rank though.

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You need to have the right coat. The perennial problem with the regs is that the picture of the ‘greatcoat’ got added by mistake. Because @Foley wore it to the photoshoot for a joke.

It’s not even a greatcoat!

An officer’s greatcoat has shoulder epaulettes, and the rank is worn there, on NCOs and ORs, there are no epaulettes

Christ knows there the RAFAC pins go?

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This is the question! The epaulettes are too fat to fit a RAFAC slide on anyway - and the colour match is awful.

At the moment my OC and I just do it the old fashioned way. Braid on the epaulette with a RAFAC pin through the middle…

The only other person in our wing I’ve seen wearing one has done the same, so…?

Absolutely do it braid. You can’t put slides on them, and it would look awful.

You don’t need to put RAFAC on the rank either. Look at ones.

Braid and collar badges, anything else would look gopping.

Fair enough, I’ll just move the pins from the braid to the collar, same position as ones and see if any WO’s get excited.

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Come on people, we don’t post pics of people on here just to mock them.

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I’m sure at the central Remembrance stuff last year they went the old fashioned way, with pin through the braid.

Am I correct in thinking it’s the same as ranking no. 1s for SNCOs?