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A New Twist On Skywriting
Nugget writes "The advent of Internet-based flight tracking technology enables an entirely new kind of skywriting. Gulfstream Aerospace sent up one of their $50M business jets today on an 8.5-hour test flight spanning 11 states for the sole purpose of leaving their mark on the Net in the form of a flight track that spells out 'GV' (the nickname of the Gulfstream V aircraft being flown) when viewed online."
Someone give these guys something to do, STAT! :D
Global warming is a cube.
At a time when global warming is ruining our climate, this is obscene.
... are we looking at a new type of spam?
Can't wait to read "Enlarge your peanus" right above some skyscraper...
Ignore this signature. By order.
ok lets see, with the target demographic of someone likely to be going through flight paths... you are likely to advertise internet dating sites or burkahs.
-Sj53
...the super bowl was an incredibly stupid waste of advertising money for a dot.com
I guess they found a way to trump stupid
- Nobody would know what RTFA meant if it didn't need to be said all the time
I don't remember ever seeing any FAA regulation that you can only fly direct lines between airports.
GVV for global vvarming.
The latest Slashdot meme.
Doesn't it remind you of the drawings that you used to do with an etch-a-sketch ?
Well if you've got to send up a plane empty to do some flight testing, I guess it's a pretty good result if you can sucker the world's media into giving you global coverage about your company on the side!
As long as your not in restricted airspce you can fly in what ever circle you want. the sky is like the water, while there are "lanes" they are loosely defiend and fill a fraction of the total area in which one can fly.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Indeed the only regulations that interfer with your flight are the no-fly zones, the rest is up to you.
LEDs on a plane? That's dangerous. If it flies over Boston, they might consider it a hoax device.
With a size of 3 billion points, breaking an earlier record, couldn't they have afforded a slightly more sophisticated typeface, such as Courier?
My browser (Firefox) doesn't go beyond 72 points. Is there a skywriting plugin available somewhere?
Leela: "Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?"
Fry: "Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no sir."
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
Or with vista, just stand by the cockpit and shout stop stop stop or eject eject eject ;)
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
Maybe you missed the part of the article where they said this was a test flight. As in, they were testing the plane. The choice of route was a stunt, granted, but if they hadn't flown a great big "GV," they probably would still have done the test flight, and just flown around in a circle, or some other arbitrarily-defined pattern. It's just that flying in this particular pattern got them some extra press, so why not?
Calm down a little before you flip out, next time.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Except for all of the regulations on exactly which flight levels you're allowed to fly at, depending on your direction of flight.
Oh, and the equipment that you've got on your aircraft.
And the time of day (in some circumstances)
And the day of the week(in other circumstances)
And the fact that Air traffic control needs to know where you're planning on flying.
Europe is even more difficult to fly in based on all of the restrictions that they put against the flight paths attempting to adjust the air traffic flow.
Oh, or were you basing the comment on the tiny non-jets(piston/turboprop) that can't fly very high.
(speaking as someone who's attempting to manage this data for commercial flight planning purposes)
You might wanna check the altitude again.
While your point in general is correct about VFR flight, this guy was cruising at FL400 - Class A airspace.
He would definitely had to have an IFR plan on file, otherwise he'd get a message from the tower to call a phone number when he landed... and that would be the end of his days as a pilot. That's assuming he didn't have a fighter come along to say hello beforehand.
I would have liked to hear DEN Center asking wtf they were up to when it came time for that little loopy bit and back-track for the bottom of the "G"
-- El Sacarino tiene gusto de la chocha