The Red Arrows are the Royal Air Force's premium display team. They are renowned throughout the world as ambassadors for both Britain and the RAF.
Founded in 1965 they have taken part in over 4,000 displays in 53 countries.
The pilots are all fully trained RAF combat pilots with a minimum of 1,500 flying hours and have to have completed at least one front line tour.
The aeroplanes they use for their displays are the BAE Systems Hawk T1. This dual controlled trainer aircraft has been the aeroplane of choice for the Red Arrows since 1979. The high manoeuvrability of this aircraft allow the team to do the fantastic coordinated display flying they are world famous for.
On the day of the display one of the pilots had been taken ill with chronic food poisoning which meant the display had to be done with only eight planes.
They use white, blue and red smoke which trails behind the aircraft adding an extra dimension to their display.
The planes screaming by at 400+ mph are only feet apart. The pilots don't use computers to keep the tight formations, instead they line up simple reference points using trigonometry to line up nose to wing, or wing to tail, thus keeping the planes a safe distance apart throughout the manoeuvres.
Sweeping in towards the crowd line.
Roaring past the crowd smoke trailing.
T-formation.
The bright red of the planes makes sure you can see them for the whole display.
You can't even notice one plane is missing as they have tweaked their positioning to compensate. Not an easy thing to do when you are flying so close together at high speeds.
Precision flying!
Red and Blue smoke trailing as they loop around one another whilst flying straight for the crowd line.
Climbing straight up!
Followed by one of the big fan breaks of the display high overhead on the way down.
The display by the Red Arrows at RAF Waddington was fantastic even with one plane missing. If you want to find out more details about this team then you can visit their web site at:
4 comments:
very good :) the pictures of them are amazing.
Thanks, they put on a great display.
Great showing with the Red Arrows my friend.
Did you know - that they have a female pilot now too.
Thanks imac, yes unfortunately it was the female pilot who was off with food poisoning.
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