Good stuff Danny, it all sounds to have gone as I suggested. Good to hear that the ELO is aware of the guidance and referencing your UKPS membership. Its goes to show that membership of the UKPS is more than worth the measly £20 per year!
During the process of the ELR and creation of the guidance, I suggested organising "training" of the regulations (explanations of each area in the guidance document). Naturally, this would cross over into practical aspects of experimentation as well. As it stands, nothing as yet been planned. As you can imagine, this in itself it a big piece of work to undertake and must be designed and implemented to ensure 100% legality - we can't make any mistakes when creating training materials. This is why the guidance document took so long to generate, it has to be watertight from a legal standpoint.
In the short-term, I would suggest that competence is gained by:
- Sharing knowledge through the UKPS and its forums
- Reading pyro literature
- Organise meetings with other UKPS members
- Joining the IExpE who already have entry tests
Remember, the UKPS is your society, it doesn't mean that everything has to organised by the committee. You could start writing your own training material with a view to rolling this out as a training course provided through the society - everyone can play a part!
PS. I will be updating the guidance document in the next few days following my discussions with a group of prominent ELO's. They are only minor changes, but the feedback I got regarding the guidance document was fantastic. They were very complimentary and appreciative of the effort that has gone into the guidance. This really demonstrates how far we have come and how accepted experimental pyrotechnics has become!
Its an exciting future!