Hi - I’m not sure where to ask this, so I’ve come to the forums.
As a squadron, we’re looking to get some new leadership equipment on the squadron for Blue Badge / other leadership activities. Our leadership equipment on squadron has dwindled over time, through breakage, loss, and its general condition, so we’re now looking to get some more.
Staff on the squadron are reasonably new (or the leadership equipment was reasonably old) and we’re therefore not sure where to begin to look for stockists of equipment. We know what we’re looking to replace, but don’t know where to look for it! For wooden planks, would you look for any specific type of wood / treatment before letting the cadets use them (we don’t want to have to write a risk assessment for any random planks we got from Wickes)? Equally, is there anything ‘out of the ordinary’ that you use on your squadron for leadership activities?
Ask your local AFCO, armed forces (youth) engagement teams, Reserves (including UAS/UOTC/URNU) if they’ve got any spare. We did and got a load of stuff in great condition free of charge.
don’t over-complicate it.
Get the cadets wearing gardening gloves and put some grip tape on the top of the plank.
You could paint it before putting the grip tape down.
I’d just call up your local timber merchant, or see if a builders yard have any scafolding planks they would be willing to part with.
Most garages will supply old tyres free - they have to pay to dispose of them normally. I have a set of tyres marked up with numbers for Towers of Hannoi etc, and then some bigger ones for shark infested custard.
The blue level tasks were deliberately designed to only use basic inexpensive equipment that you can purchase cheaply. I purchased a box for my squadron containing all the items needed for all the tasks which is just brought out when we are delivering the courses.
If you have a Bader login, all of these tasks are on the new Cadet Training Portal. The list of items required for each task are below.
For the Bronze tasks you should run these on a sector level, or with a couple of squadrons at the very least. Silver courses are usually completed on a wing level, as the equipment needed is more complex. Again, the resources you’ll need can be found on the Cadet Training Portal in the Leadership section: Sign in to your account
If you want to buy your own, standard scaffolding planks are fine. We also use those large blue barrels you can get:
Always helps to get more, though. If like us you have a reasonably large unit, you get through the blue badge exercises in no time at all and the cadets learn them. You need to be able to mix it up and throw new things into the mix.
In fact, I don’t think I’ve done an actual blue badge ex as outlined in the book for a year (notwithstanding the shutdown…).
…And of course it’s not always about running the badge syllabus. Sometimes it’s just to have an interesting challenge activity for fun; when something physical with barrels, planks, ropes, and pine poles is the order of the day.
In the past I’ve taken inspiration from The Crystal Maze and The Krypton Factor.
