Blue Eagles

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Blue Eagles Team News Archive

Archived 4 September 2001

The first Blue Eagles displays of 1998

Doesn’t time fly? It only seems a week or so ago I was warning of the imminent approach of the display season and now we are well into it.

As promised I managed to acquire a picture of Mac McKeown outside Buckingham Palace with his MBE!

A Lynx and what is that? A SAAB no less!

(What is it with the Blue Eagles pilot’s and SAAB’s?)

Silverstone

The sun shone and as you can see Rod Lambert’s sparkling eyes and “Mr Whippy” hairstyle attracted some new fans!

Mildenhall

We displayed on both days and enjoyed every minute of our stay there. It was great to be reunited with many of our regular followers and meet some of our newer email correspondents at the caravan. Of course, the Dutch contingent were out in force this weekend and our new design Breitling baseball caps seem to be a hit with them! It was also the debut of our dramatic 1998 team poster – a must have item from the caravan. The Lynx backflip caught a few of you by surprise! The only opportunity you will get to see a helicopter totally inverted. Some people say that it is impossible – you can now say you’ve seen it with your own eyes!

Southend

What a crowd! Pity about the strong wind and it was a little chillier than last year. Again we displayed on both days and guess what? Yep that’s right the Dutch were there on Monday! Don’t you guys work?

Woodford

If you remember last year when it rained and rained and rained, this year it only rained. We managed a full display and then (thanks to those busy folk in Manchester air traffic control) went off direct to….

Bolton

This venue is a new one to us. It is a British Aerospace factory and they had a full flying display booked until the weather stepped in. Nevertheless, the Blue Eagles displayed and none of us will easily forget the sight, as we ran in for the final maneuver, of thousands of people waving madly! Thank you Bolton. We shall return!

Middle Wallop On Thursday evening we flew an abbreviated display as the London Philharmonic Youth Orchestra faultlessly performed a “Short Ride in a Fast Machine” – an unusually dramatic number that reminded the team of the film “Psycho”! As the program was running a little late we once again displayed in near darkness which made the scene even more dramatic.

Friday was a preview day for the press and it was glorious weather. We flew our display in beautiful sunshine under calm blue skies with the warning that it might rain tomorrow…

Did it rain? A statistic from Graham in our Met office showed that more rain fell on Saturday at Middle Wallop than did in ALL of May!

The caravan was inundated with enquiries as to whether we sold umbrellas.

We displayed on both days despite the weather. Our excellent new Yashica digital camera’s were being experimented with and Lynx crewman Grant Meekey eventually managed on Sunday to take this great shot of the crossover break viewed from the Lynx.

The mud, on Sunday especially, had to be seen to be believed and a few vehicles fell foul of it. No worries – our gallant ground team equipped with the team’s very able 4WD Vauxhall Frontera soon had them on their way but not without a little mud soiling Clare Conway’s flying suit.

The 25th anniversary of the Gazelle in Army service was celebrated by 25 Gazelles doing a formation flypast led by the “Silver Gazelle” painted especially for the occasion. Although it has our Blue Eagle on the tail you should note that this year is the 30th anniversary of the Blue Eagles. Watch out for it!

And so it is off to Waddington….
Come and see us there and if you see a team member with his/her Yashica digital camera, smile! Who knows? You could see a picture of you on this site!

Archived news is available by clicking here.

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