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Concept
Skywriting
Summary
Skywriting is the process of using one or more small aircraft, able to expel special smoke during flight, to fly in certain patterns that create writing readable from the ground. These messages can be advertisements, general messages of celebration or goodwill, personal messages such as a marriage proposals and birthday wishes, or acts of protest.
The typical smoke generator consists of a pressurized container of viscosity oil, such as Chevron/Texaco "Canopus 13" (formerly "Corvus Oil"). The oil is injected into the hot exhaust manifold, vaporizing it into a huge volume of dense white smoke.
Relatively few pilots have the skills to skywrite legibly. Also, wake turbulence and wind disperse and shear the smoke, causing the writing to blur and twist, usually within a few minutes. For these reasons, computer-controlled "skytyping" has been developed where multiple small aircraft, flying in line abreast formation, write in dot-matrix fashion, creating messages that can be much longer, and legible for longer periods, than those of traditional skywriting.
The beginnings of skywriting are disputed. In a 1926 letter to The New York Times, Albert T. Reid wrote:
A newspaper paragraph says skywriting was perfected in England in 1919 and used in the United States the next year. But Art Smith, who succeeded Beachey in flying exhibitions at the Panama–Pacific International 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.
Major Jack Savage, former British Royal Air Force pilot and a writer for Flight magazine, had a successful skywriting fleet of Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5 aircraft in England. He flew throughout the 1920s and 1930s, bringing the practice to America as well. The first recorded use of skywriting for advertising purposes was over the Derby at Epsom Downs Racecourse in the United Kingdom in May 1922, when Royal Air Force Captain Cyril Turner wrote "Daily Mail" above the track.
Official source
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