While I completely agree with Pobjoy on technical issues and the direction that would be best for air cadet gliding we have to face the fact that the the world has moved on and the public perseption of risk has changed from an acceptance that risk is part of life to an almost fanatical attitude that there should be no risk in life and this should be assured by someone in charge.
It therefore follows that the public perseption is that their children should be exposed to no more risk than flying with the air cadets than they would if they get on an airliner to go on holiday, so despite the excellent stewardship of gliding demonstrated by the BGA their standards of maintenance and operation would be branded as unprofessional by the lawyers and as cheapskating with children’s lives by the press. I can just see the headlines if a cadet dies in an a accident powered by an autiomotive derived VW “ RAF kill child with in aircraft powered with second hand car motor “ would be the cry from the BBC.
It therefore follows that the minimum standard for maintenance is EASA145 with operations standards that match, this of course comes at a price but the RAF could keep this in check by looking more carefully at the way airlines run EASA145 rather than it’s own triple gold plated interpretation of the regulations .
Like Pobjoy I can remember that days when people realised that life was risk filled and it was a personal responsibility to manage that risk, unfortunately we have moved on to a culture that thinks risk is someone else’s responsibility and there are the ambulance chasing lawyer to back up this perseption. This is the world that the RAF have to work with and the current policy towards air cadet gliding has to be seen in this light when managing air cadet flying safely.
The one place that the RAF could improve its delivery of cadet gliding is in managing the performance ( or lack of ) by its contractors with a minimum fleet serviceability rate that if not met would attract financal penalty’s.