The Patrouille Suisse are famous in Switzerland !  They are a display team flying very precise and spectacularly  in the national colours red and white. This year is their 50th anniversary. They make it possible for the average public to see and experience the absolutely impressive skills of these F-5 Tiger pilots ( which are of course backed up by a high tech ground crew ).

Now I was “lucky enough”  to be sick and lying in my bed at home. See, they have to practise, and they usually do that over the Zürich Lake, on which border we live. If you don’t know they are coming… well, you will as soon as they arrive, the noise can’t be missed ! So at first I figured oh, it’s them practising. But curiosity got the best of me, and I got out of bed, camera ready and watched. This is prime photo position once again, they fly right over our house !!!

The weather was absolutely lousy, very cloudy and hardly any sun, so no advertising pictures, of tiger jets in red and white in a clear blue sky, but the clouds created some special moods. This is the best I could do in this weather !

These guys are incredible, believe it or not but the distance from one airplane to the next in the formation is 3 to 5 metres ! The separation in hight is also 3 to 5 metres, an additional level separation of about 2 metres is necessary  to avoid the turbulance created by the airplane in front ! These pilots need steady hands and nerves !

Imagine for a looping the initial speed is about 850 km/h, the force 4 to 5 g , and the diameter needed is 3’000 m , wow !

Enjoy the rest of the bad weather shots, it mustn’t  have been that bad though because I did see them do loopings and they only do that in the “good weather” program. Click on the first photo to start the slide show.

And for those of you which are interested, check out their  webpage, in english and in german. It offers tons of  information and some cool photos ( in good weather )!

For the link to the patrouille suisse webpage click here

And as you can see, these pilots inspire our youth. This is an airplane my favourite neighbour, aged 6, made for me !

And do watch this space, the next blog, by the end of the month, will be from BOTSWANA where we are doing a photo workshop…. !