Blue Eagles

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Blue Eagles Team News Archive

Archived 4 September 2001

1997 – A Year in Review

The display season for 1997 has now drawn to a close and so it is an ideal time to reflect on the ups and downs during the year and perhaps give a taste of what is planned for 1998.

The Blue Eagles 1997 season started with individual practices in January and February. The weather isn’t particularly pleasant at that time of year and many practice slots had to be cancelled. The practices were conducted either early in the morning or early in the evening so as to ensure that the busy flying programme of the Army’s School of Army Aviation at Middle Wallop was not interupted. The team manager, Major John Davis, was busy liasing with sponsors, finalising the display calendar and arranging the manufacture and delivery of the "blue suits" (which costA3400 each!) as well as running a busy Squadron. He also ensured that we had Upavon to ourselves for a week in March when the display routine, which team leader Capt Steg Williams had devised, could be put together.

All the pilots for the team had been selected earlier from volunteer flying instructors from the School of Army Aviation at Middle Wallop. The team are not full time as during the week they have to do their normal jobs of teaching soldiers to fly and they have to fit in practices and displays into their own free time.

HRH The Duke of Kent Meets the 1997 Blue Eagles

The display routine must be flowing and entertaining but above all safe. The routine should be able to be performed in a variety of weather conditions with little difference for the pilots. It should also be of a predictable length to aid the planning of display organisers. Every manoeuvre must be within the aircrafts flight envelope and the display must comply with the regulations concerning air displays. A rigid set of constraints from which a flowing display must emerge. It did and the week at Upavon went very quickly and the display came together with surprisingly few problems. A "practice" display at Middle Wallop on the Thursday was, to the teams surprise, the authorisation check where senior members of the Army Air Corps view the display and decide whether it fulfills the requirements. It did and the distinctive blue flying suits of the Blue Eagles were awarded to the team. We were ready to display.

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