'Kin What???
'Kin What???
As an ex-Dopey Brush myself, can someone please tell me what's going on? If I'm reading rightly, the trade group of PTR/FNR is finished - WHY!!! Do they really want civvies to do it?
It was one of the most highly paid SAC jobs to be in so it must be about money. I remember being just £45 pounds a month short of the GD Sgt in the guardroom. What about the guys that don't want to leave (there can't be many, but maybe some) are they being remustered to what was the sister trade group, the parachute packers!
Why are'nt there more painters on this forum talking about it and sharing tales of woe?
This makes me remember the days of sitting in 55sqn's crewroom and saying that it's the start of the end. Not only did Her Majesty's Royal Air Force start using French made civvilian vans to get us around camp and giving us shirts that ripped when you put your arm down one of the sleeves, but we had to go from shed to shed to find a bog with toilet roll in it. It's all about money trust me. Bring back the Cold War and the NI threat.
Lets hope that they don't want a Chinook painted ARTiF (Alkalie Temporary Removable Finish - Desert Pink to those who only came and saw us when you wanted your shoes done for AOC's) in the middle of the night and then 20mins after we have left call us back because the SAS wo are waiting outside to use it say it will be too visible at night, so we have to dull it down with black over spray stripes as quickly as possible. The civvies union wont like that now will they?
On a serious note, the trade of Painter and Doper as it was origionally titled during WWI and WWII when most airframes were made of fabric and had to be dope treated and then painted to provide the structural integrity of the airframe, is one of the oldest and most important trades in the RAF. When things all went metal we bacame known as Painters and Finishers and over the years with technology petered out from just being known as the blokes to get your shoes done.
Expect to see a much scruffier RAF from now on gents, not so much in the air but certainly anything to do with GEF type stuff, ladders and
DT_Xtremez_42: :
: vehicles - the Army will laugh at you.