E-Bluey

When British Forces are deployed on operations they are entitled to free aerogrammes (colloquially known as "blueys" because of their colour) to and from their families and friends. This service has been in place for a considerable time. blueys as we know them today were issued for the first time during the early days of the Northern Ireland deployment. More recently BFPO, working in conjunction with SuperLetter.com, has pioneered an electronic form of the bluey known as 'e-bluey'.

The e-bluey is a Hybrid mail system that allows service personnel, relatives and friends to maintain a personal and private contact with each other while serving on operations or exercise for more than 60 days duration. Probably the most important factor is that the system is two-way. This means those service personnel with access to the Internet can send e-blueys back home  

You can either compose your message online or offline using a word processor or the Quick Letter Writer. This message is sent to the e-bluey server, where it is stored prior to being down-loaded by the Forces Post Office (FPO) in the appropriate operational theatre, or by BFPO Northolt and Denfence Mail Centres for e-blueys addressed to the UK.

It is then printed and sealed before being passed into the local FPO/Royal Mail mailstream. The system is private and personal as the text is only seen by the originator and the recipient, there are two stages of encryption to ensure that the message remains private and personal. The specialist machinery prints and seals it automatically without the e-bluey being seen by the operator. The service is free to the user, although the MOD pays a fee for each letter transmitted. The time of transmission of a letter to the adddressee can be dramatically reduced, as it is not necessary to physically transport the letter through the military mail system between theatres.

Service Personnel, Relatives and friends of service personnel who are deployed on operations are entitled to use the e-bluey service. Both the BFPO and e-bluey web-sites have a list of entitled BFPO locations that can be reached through the service. Revenue protection measures are implemented from time to time at the BFPO Headquarters in London and by the e-bluey administrator to ensure that the system is being used correctly.

Photo-bluey is a feature within e-bluey that allows you to insert a photo, either colour or black and white, at the top of an e-bluey. The photo to be inserted must be on your computer and can be any size. However the area available on an e-bluey to insert the photo is limited to 185mm wide x 115mm high (7.2 x 4.5 inchs or 700 x 434 pixels).

Photos smaller than this will be printed actual size, whilst photos larger will be automatically reduced proportionally to fit as closely to the 185mm x 115mm area. Please remember that the larger the photo the longer it will take to upload to the e-bluey server, so please be patient when you are uploading large photos.