How Can Skytyping Get Your Message to the Public?

The sky is not the limit; it is the opportunity for serious mass advertising. The success of banner ads and skywriting prove that. A banner ad is a streamer or billboard dragged behind an airplane over a large gathering of people. Skywriting, on the other hand, contains no printed material. The plane actually writes the message with smoke on the canvas of the sky.

Skywriting involves injecting a paraffin oil into the exhaust of the airplane. This causes a dense, white smoke to form. When it is turned on and off at the right times, this results in letters being formed and, from the ground, a message conveyed. The letters are a mile tall at times, and somewhere between 7000 to 17,000 feet in the air.

A variation of this technique is called skytyping. This is done by five or six planes flying in parallel across the sky on a clear day. A computer, located on the lead plane, is programmed with the desired message. As the planes fly, the computer decides when each plane is to release the oil into the exhaust and for how long. The result is a series of dots and dashes in a straight line. Each dot or dash makes up part of a letter, written with disconnected lines. Skywriting messages are made by one or two planes with solid lines, but skytyping messages are made by five to six planes using dots or dashes of smoke.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each technique. The advantages to skytyping are as follows: The message is made much quicker and thus can be longer. While it takes a plane 60 to 90 seconds to form one letter in skywriting, the letters are formed in a few seconds with skytyping. This means the entire message is still visible when it is finished. With skywriting, a long message will mean the first letters have drifted away by the time the message is finished.

Skywriting demands a skilled pilot who can maneuver a plane in every direction. He must also be somewhat of an artist to make the message uniform so it can be read. The skytyping pilots only need to fly in a straight line. The computer does all the deciding when to make the white smoke.

Skywriting is done with one or two planes and this means it is much cheaper than hiring five or six planes to make one message. Geico insurance has made skytyping famous as a fleet of planes forms their name with puffs of smoke against the sky.

But both of these have advantages in common. First, the white smoke is environmentally friendly. The paraffin smoke leaves no lasting problems. Second, preparing a message is simple. No printing or design is really needed. With skywriting, the pilot must plan how he will form the letters backwards, since he is working from the top. The computer is programmed to do the work in skytyping. But with both the message can be in the air in a short time and can be repeated or changed as time and money permit.

Skywriting and skytyping also have an advantage in common with aerial advertising. All use the the sky to present their advertisement to a large attentive audience without any visible competition. This advantage has proven to be effective and well worth the skywriting cost.

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