Skywriting
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"Jesus" skywriting over Gore Hill cemetery and skywriting over Oshkosh, WI during EAA's Airventure 2008.
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Skywriting is the process of using a small aircraft, able to expel special smoke during flight, to fly in certain patterns to create writing readable by someone on the ground. The message can be a frivolous or generally meaningless greeting or phrase, an advertisement aimed at everyone in the vicinity, a general public display of celebration or goodwill, or a personal message such as a marriage proposal or birthday wish.
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[edit] Description
The typical smoke generator consists of a pressurized container holding a low viscosity oil such as Chevron/Texaco "Canopus 13" (formerly "Corvus Oil"). The oil is injected into the hot exhaust manifold causing it to vaporize into a huge amount of dense white smoke.
Wind and dispersal of the smoke cause the writing to blur, usually within a few minutes. However special "skytyping" techniques have been developed to write in the sky in a dot-matrix fashion, and are legible for longer despite the inevitable blurring effect caused by wind.
In a 1926 letter to The New York Times one Albert T. Reid wrote:
- A newspaper paragraph says skywriting was perfected in England in 1919 and used in the United States the next year. Art Smith, who succeeded Beachey in flying exhibitions at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915, after the latter had been killed, did skywriting, always ending his breathtaking stunts by writing "Good night." This was not a trial exhibition but a part of every flight, and was always witnessed by thousands.[1]
Major Jack Savage, former RAF pilot and writer for Flight magazine, had a successful skywriting fleet of Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5 aircraft in England. He flew throughout the 1920's and 1930's, bringing the practice to America as well.[2][3]
Satellite navigation is now used in modern skywriting aircraft, so that the message can be programmed beforehand, resulting in greater accuracy.[citation needed]
The first use of skywriting for advertising purposes was in 1922.[4]
[edit] Popular culture
The Wicked Witch of the West skywrites "SURRENDER DOROTHY" in the motion picture version of The Wizard of Oz.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Notes
- ^ "Skywriting in 1915," The New York Times, October 9th, 1926, p. 16
- ^ Air Trails: 48. Winter 1971.
- ^ obituary Flight 1945
- ^ Harriet Veitch (2006-12-02). "How big are skywriting letters?". Sydney Morning Herald. http://www.smh.com.au/news/big-questions/how-big-are-skywriting-letters/2006/11/30/1164777710309.html. Retrieved 2008-09-17.
- Bibliography
[edit] External links
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