There is to be a lot of CWCs see a lot of their annual income disappear to the detriment of Squadrons, maybe this the plan, then why do you need CWCs if they canāt raise funding?
Already got two lined up, small community events relying on our longstanding relationship for support, they certainly donāt have the volunteers to step should we get cut off at the knees. There goes 70% of our donations for the year.
Sussex Wing used to do a significant amount of this sort of thing in the summer, as a wing wide activity, namely Shoreham Airshow before the crash and Edenbridge and Oxted show before someone realised we were being used as cheap labour to line some peopleās pockets. But these events went on for years without incident (relating to parking cars at least, many other incidents!)
It was always made very very clear, you never stand directly in front of the car when guiding it to where you want to go. Want to use a hand signal to get them to pull forward? Always stand to the side. The briefings were always thorough, even going as far as āpractisingā by getting all the staff with cars to come and park etc. And on show days when cadets were parking real cars, staff were directly supervising. Risk managed. Done.
I think whatās changed & cause the knowledge how to operate safely to be lost is
covid where we stopped doing the events & the knowledge passed on between generations of cadets was lost
reduction in VGSs where staff cadets could regular attend & learn the marshalling skills for aircraft that could be used at community events.
changes to the syllabus with less emphasis so the classification topic covering marshalling is no longer studied.
Some sqns do car parking & excell at it but with the reduced staff & reduced knowledge base itās becoming more of a specialist skill than something that could be run with some common sense.
This organisation is very close to being in the bin if this is true. If not, Iāll happily take 2% of our dear leaderās salary a year to fund the events weāll now have to cancel.
correct - there has never been traffic marshalling by Cadets at RIAT. there have been examples of access gates being manned by cadets (which is simply to open the āgateā (rope) and track it across the publicās path thus stopping the two ever meeting but never car parking
this was always my understanding of the set up.
Car parking as such was never on the approval list (not saying it was on a banned list) by ātraffic marshallingā was the correct wording to get approval - which is simple pointing cars in the direction they should go, there is never any hand waving " a bit more, a bit moreā¦right stop there sir" to line cars up in a straight line along the rows
now I was always under the impression this involvement of ātraffic marshallingā (car parking) was banned although I know I wonāt find a reference for it.
I am sure on an SMS event Wing commented words to the effect āCadets and Staff are not to position cars into a parking spaceā
remember to consider drones should you be carrying them between buildings
Not right now itās not, thatās exactly what this stop order has stopped. Which is why @emz was asking about it at RIAT, given itās only a couple of weeks away. You said there has never been traffic marshalling by cadets at RIAT, and then proceeded to describe cadets traffic marshalling
Interestingly I note that ACTO 010 suggests that ācar parkingā as an activity requires minimum Wing sign off anyway so this isnāt simply a case of not trusting Sqn OCs to do thing correctly, but not trusting Wingās approval process to ensure appropriate measures are in place.
A really good point! So this is already considered a higher-risk activity that needs a higher sign off anyway. I had assumed given the stop order this was self-approvable.
in my mind traffic marshalling = directing where traffic should go
what i meant by the above was the closest to traffic marshalling was:
cone and rope barrier blocking off an access road at two ends, to permit pedestrian traffic to pass. as and when vehicle traffic reached the cone and rope, the Cadet team would swing the rope 90Ā° to block off the pedestrian access and in turn permit the vehicle traffic to continue along its route.
this is the closest Cadets got to ātraffic marshallingā at RIAT
it there is no arm waving go in this direction, it is more a junction control situation. the traffic know where they want to know, the Cadets were simply opening up the road to them by blocking off the pedestrians
Thereās clearly an expectation that this stop wonāt be lifted for this weekend. This spreadsheet shows C&E COS cancelling events already approved for this weekend.
They are also listing events as far out as November, which is concerning.
