So why do officers get berets issued…?
Because it’s part of their uniform and they are scaled for them.
WOs other than WWO and above don’t get issued No 1 badges because they have no scaling for them.
You may continue to wear the single crown until you are issued with your new slides.
I keep hearing this, even amongst the higher-ups but I don’t know where it has come from. The Cadet Direct slides are exactly what we are being issued. They’ve been the ‘official supplier’ since we introduced the new woven slides to replace ATC pins.
That said, don’t buy additional sets from them because they are massively overpriced.
Go to ‘Contact Left’ and buy exactly the same thing for £4 all in:
https://www.contactleft.co.uk/pair-rafac-nco-snco-wo-rank-slides-blue.html
The only supplier for No 1 badges seems to be Wyedean Stores:
https://www.wyedeanstores.com/badges-by-type-rank-badges/warrant-officer-class-1-wo1-raf-royal-arms-rank-badge?limit=100
They were back in stock again recently but naturally sold out pretty quick. You can set up an email alert for when they restock.
Except they’re not issued any uniform to wear it with.
Seems a pretty arbitrary distinction, is all. It must cost more to issue all officers with berets that they can only wear with private purchase uniform than it costs to issue all WOs with the cloth badges that they can only wear with private purchase uniform…
Ah, I see where you’re coming from.
Yeah, arbitrary indeed.
Although… I now have a vague recollection that our resident historian came up with something a couple of years ago which suggested that the original intention had been for all ATC officers to wear berets (or something along those lines)… Could be that it’s an historic scaling based on that idea which has persisted.
Anyone know where to get a good quality WO rank slide like this:
Don’t suggest Cadet Kit Shop or Military Kit direct, we’ve tried. One sent us the regular ones with yellow thread instead of gold that look gash, the other sent a nice woven version…without RAFAC branding, despite both showing the above picture…awful customer service too.
Any ideas?
Basically non existant currently but I’ve asked some Questions… Keep an eye on green frog promotions social media channels 
I have been told that Snaith are selling them: https://www.ecsnaith.com/raf-air-cadet-wo-royal-arms-slides.html
But I can neither personally confirm nor deny that these are the decent gold ones.
As I hear it, Snaith did a run of fancy gold ones because, for a time, someone was toying with the idea of having special WO rank slides for the Command Warrant Officers.
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Spot on, cheers.
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