Hello, Quick question
When my squadron goes road marching is the DPM pattern combats required?, also if there is any good uniform links out there for No1, No2 and No3 Dress that would be great!.
Thanks
Down to your squadron; no specific ruling. And all depends on what you are already wearing.
Our Wingās Nijmegen Team wear MTP, but we also see CS95 out there.
What event are you doing? My team train in whatever they have, so a mix. Which is fine.
However, at Nijmegen, the whole team must be dressed alike on each day. So in the past teams have taken 2 sets of each and not mixed them. That rule doesnāt apply in Arnhem, so normal dress regs apply, allowing a mix of colours.
This is where the short-sighted rule on banning Brown boots with DPM becomes a bit of a headache, and why I recommend black boots still.
Sometimes short-sighted rules should me ignoredā¦
Nobody has ever noticed any of my cadets wearing brown boots in DPM .
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Agreed - anyone in the ACO who gets upset that a cadet is wearing a pair of brown Meindls/Alt-berg/Lowa rather an utterly rubbish pair of black S8ās shouldnāt be in the ACO.
Personally I think they should be tied to Garve Island by their own entrails, but thatās just meā¦
Harsh!.. but probably fair 
I have no idea what an S8 is, but any sensible person would get black Meindls/Alt-berg/Lowa which offer the flexibility of black and can be used in civilian life without making you look like some sort of nonce.
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The S8 is the Black Assault boot.
The MOD bought them for about Ā£9 per pairā¦
Decent brown boots are massively more available and massively cheaper than decent black boots - just hit eBay - and much more flexible for cadet blogs. She can wear them with jeans, or civvy walking gear, or DPM/MTP. Black boots donāt have that.
What annoyed me most is that at one point the Dress Regulations accidentally allowed brown boots to be worn in DPM. I commended this to ATF as being a sensible policy and was told it was a mistake which would be rescinded in the next edition! The inability of ATF to filter RAF rules into our regs and consider whether they make sense to our organisation and its different uniform provision āstructureā really winds me up.
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If they issued staff or cadets No 3 uniform there fair enough enforce the rules. But and this is a very big but. The RAFAC to a greater extent has to buy its no 3 uniform including boots. If a cadets wants to get No 3 uniform and most do. Smock Ā£30,Jacket light weight, Ā£20, Trousers Ā£20, Set of Goretex Ā£45, t shirt Ā£10 and boots for a half decent pair Ā£60. That is over Ā£150, yet you can get it much cheaper but also it can also be a lot more expensive. You can say about scrounging kit but many parts of the UK do not have RAF stations and a storeman who will give kit in exchange for a pack of biscuits. And considering the ACO is bigger than the RAF there isnāt the gash kit in the system to scrounge for every cadet.
I find it galling that people who make the rules will get issued No 3 uniform are imposing rules on people who are trying their best with for some families with limited funds to get their children into No 3 uniform.
If HQAC want us to look the part then they need to bite the bullet and
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Time to get technical with a long-standing bugbear of mine, MTP and DPM are the same thing!..kind ofā¦
DPM (Disruptive Pattern Material) applies to all ācamouflageā clothing whether desert, woodland, MTP, multi-cam, digital, British, foreign, new, old etc
The old āgreenā stuff is Woodland (Black boots only), the new stuff is MTP (Multi Terrain Pattern), both describing loosely the ācolourā of the uniform.
The style or pattern would be CS95 (Combat Soldier 1995) for the old stuff and PCS (Personal Combat/Clothing System) for the new stuff.
Although you can get anomalies like MTP CS95, Woodland PCS (Trial Kit). And RAF blue PCS (Trial kit that wasnāt accepted by the RAF).
Unfortunately people like replacing one TLA with a new TLA so the term DPM was replaced with MTP and not Woodland for MTP. We all still wear DPMs, just different colours and patterns.
Now you know the difference you can carry on calling the cabbage kit whatever you like 
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Thereās always one 
Well it was only a matter of time before someone said it! lol
Saw these on a Facebook mercedes advert. So maybe tailored DPM with white shirt and brown brogues are acceptable?
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a visit to any geographic Bde HQ should give you the answer to that one.
pretty sure i saw a former CDS wearing MTP trousers, windproof, and boots with a white shirt and sparkly Generals tabsā¦
DPM may describe what it is, but it is specifically a system name - in much the same way that CS95 is a personal clothing system, but it isnāt the Personal Clothing System (PCS).
So itās all your fault?
Nah, it was already on the list of changes.
Really annoys me and has for years that kitting scales are so pathetic for cadets and staff for that matter.When I was first appointed as a Warrant Officer in the 90s the then WCO said he liked all his Warrant Officers to be smartly turned out at all times.Especially for formal parades.āSo where do I go to get my no.1 issuedā I naively said.Oh you have to scrounge it came the answer.Yet the RAF sells clothing to second hand dealers for a pittance they then sell it on to cadets for Ā£30 a pop or more.Its a scandal.I was at my local unit the other week looking to exchange old short sleeve shirts for new.Apparently there are none to issue at the moment and according to the storeman theres no contract in place to supply them at the moment either.
As to DPM/MTP at one time we werent even allowed to wear it.Cadets would do outdoor activities in coveralls which were never designed for that sort of thing.On my own sqn some cadets have gone out and got their own MTP. Me im old blue Air Force and rarely wear greens but if I do its CS95.As has been previously stated cadets who are financially challenged can suffer because of the way the powers in the towers interpret the rules.
I remember no combats and doing it all in coveralls and TBH it got the job done and no one got over excited. I remember the to and fro and general confusion when we were first allowed around wearing OGs and DPM and this pathetic nonsense about what we can and what we canāt, given that none of it is issued, unless your one of the chosen few, so you have to buy (then only really Silvermans) and get what they have.
As for shirts I imagine Double Two and so on are doing a roaring trade as the MOD procurement idiots canāt sort out a contract for something this basic. TBH the Double Two shirts are much, much better than the Primark level procurement manage to arrange. I got two a while ago and they are much nicer to wear than the issue ones and you can get them in menās sizes!!
This has gotten me thinking and basically I donāt actually wear any issues uniform anymore except on the 2 or 3 times a year that I wear a tie!
My shirts are double two, my trousers and forage cap are from snaiths, my berets from gieves and hawkes and my MTP is from eBay!
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Belt and shoes?