You know what really grinds my gears? The Gears Strike Back

No - they will have increased the price again by then !! :rofl:

Being transfered over to Digital Voice home phone service by BT today so I took the day off that I could have done without doing at the moment - busy jobā€¦ BTā€™s contractor ā€˜engineerā€™ was at my home for about 4 mins. Not a good use of my time or precious leave :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

I did however confuse the bejeezuz out of the so called engineer by having a spinny dial GPO 332 handset plugged in to the wall. He didnā€™t know how it worked.

Wings that feel they can add extra BS in the name of being cintrol freaks

When my wife says (and had done several times this past month) ā€œi knew this would happenā€

Iā€™m not sure if its just a turn of phrase or if she genuinely did know but its getting on my goat as if she did ā€œknowā€ why didnā€™t she step in and do/say something than wait only to be the first person to comment i hindsight!

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Wimmen innit?

Finally, got allocation of slots for 5AEF at Witteringā€¦

BUT - the date is a weekday (term time) in Sep, as are all the other allocated days. What the heck?!?! Sub-optimal to say the least, I think the correct descriptor is a load of :poop:

Staff driver will not be easy (it never is, even at weekends) & as for getting permission for time off from school, that will be even harder. If anything, it might be biased towards cadets (more affluent parents?) who are home-schooled, which is not fair at all - wonā€™t go down at all well.

Annoyance registered with CoC.

Wittering is always midweek slots. I forget the reason, but they canā€™t fly at weekends. I think theyā€™re trying to get it changed as, amongst other reasons, they struggle to recruit flight staff cadets.

They didnā€™t use to be. AEF start-up at Wittering got delayed as the stn hadnā€™t read the briefing document for the move from Wyton - air traffic needed at weekendsā€¦

Seriously not impressed - from a ā€œcustomerā€ point of view, itā€™s dire.

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Good point. Iā€™ve corrected it.

Although weather stopped a few of our allocated dates from getting in the air which was midweek, we asked which cadets were interested and we sent them to school with letters explaining about them having the day off without losing a mark so they could experience flying. Donā€™t know if it was just our prisoā€¦sorry schools, but they were actually ok about it and we had parents drop them off and pick them up. It wasnā€™t ideal weather in the end but would have been an experience for them.

Hand them back if you canā€™t fill, Iā€™m sure another squadron will fill.

Probably a CCF dropped slot. Seen other ATC squadrons filling slot mid-week there.

Nah, theyā€™ve had a huge gap with no AEF - this looks to be their onward ā€œscheduleā€ - weekdays in term time only for AEF.

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Our AEF has never offered weekend slots in the 15 years Iā€™ve been around.

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Benson moved from weekend and weekday to only weekday a few years back. Crap decision, made easier for those paid to be there not for volunteers or cadets.

Boscombe down arent flying over the summer at all atm

They are starting back up beginning of August thankfully, but certainly been a few months of nothing!

Been a GMG for me in recent years.

My memory is a little patchy pre covid but centrainly post covid all our slots at 12 AEF have been mid week.

Always a challenge with a small staff team having someone willing and able to take annual leave to cover it.

but if people are being paid to be there - it shouldnā€™t matter what their hours are, they are getting paid for it!

Yes that was my point exactly. Focus on the wrong thing.

Unfortunately it will be due as much to the support services required to operate at weekends
ATC Cover, Fire cover etc
Fire cover for air ops is different to duty Fire cover for ā€˜normalā€™ station

I would not expect station establishments to be inclusive of these weekend activities

ā€¦now if your AEF was at a QRA airfield or the Oxfordshire Airport there might be people sitting around pleased to have something to doā€¦