Anyone on here done the course?
Trying to get a member of staff qual’d, it is like trying to knit fog. Can not find anything on Bader and my mate has looked on Westminster, nothing there either.
Any info would be great. Thanks. G.
I know our Wing looked at it and gave up as its a Civvy Qualification and is very expensive £5K sticks in my head for some reason.
Our Wing did the ERCA course through Vertex Training about 5-8 years ago. The uptake was good from staff & cadets - and the training was fantastic.
The staff, I believe, only managed to use the qualification a couple of times during the period due to access to our various low/high ropes sites, the MOD messing about with access/insurance validity and 101 other reasons.
At the end of the 3 years, nobody could afford/justify the refresher course to keep their tickets valid when it wasn’t used that much.
Our advice? Get a Service Instructor to do the course through work, then use them as a provider for the Wing! 
i am one of those Staff and second what Batfink has said.
our two if not three local MOD sites were either closed (the most local condemned pending assessment following minor injury) or the contact was constantly unavailable/out of area.
The occasions I know those in the group did use it was away on an annual camp. They happened to be at a camp where there was a low ropes course and it was open and available.
As Batfink has said, I would just get in external instructors.
If you are serious about it, find a centre you can use first, at least then you know where you can use the ticket. They may also be able to offer the training or know who can.
The ERCA instructor we had claimed that to stay competent we should be using a low ropes course monthly. Now that was only a recommendation, and not policy or a condition of the qualification (although should something go wrong it is bound to be questioned the number of “hours” the lead instructor had and the last time they exercised the qualification) it is something that we as CFAVs all laughed at.
Shooting and road marching are the only activities I know of that occur monthly, one being a Corps activity, the other highly prized by the Cadets given the experiences available – low/high ropes is an extension to the usual AT much like Mountain Biking is.
On the assumption there is someone willing to run a regular monthly ropes experience, or even every other month, I can’t see it being an oversubscribed course, certainly not in our Wing and so limit the benefit in holding the qualification while maintaining the “approved competency”
Thanks for the feed back. It does seem a lot of red tape just to uses every so often. Thanks again. G.