The story begins:
Banner Training, Pearland, TX - just south of Houston
Thursday, February 10th, 2005
As some, or none of you are aware, I have been flying part time over the D/FW
Metromess for the last 3 months or so as a traffic watch pilot in a C172. I fly
WBAP 820 AM reporter, Monte Cooke. We pull from a pool of about 10 pilots, so I
usually fly once or twice a week for a 2.5 hour mission. Why do I do it you may
ask.....it sure as hell ain't for the money :-). I get to fly somebody else's
airplane for free and they pay me peanuts to do it! It's just for fun of
course. If you're still reading and interested, the plot thickens.......
A couple of weeks ago we were doing the traffic watch gig and passed a Piper
Pawnee towing the largest damn billboard sized banner I have ever seen. I
struck up a conversation with the banner tow pilot on our common freq and found
out that they needed more banner tow pilots. Well heck, anybody can bore holes
in the sky in a plain vanilla Cessna spam can, but it takes a pilot with a
certain swagger in his step to jump in a tail dragging, low wing Piper Super Cub
(a-la 235HP Pawnee!) and drag a cloth billboard through the sky for 2.5 hours!
I gave the gentleman my contact information and didn't think any more about it.
Well here I am in beautiful Pearland, TX (10nm south of Houston
Hobby airport) hacking out an e-mail message about my checkout towing banners!
My lovely wife and I jumped into our Sunset Orange Pearl Honda Element (dad
calls it the Elephant) and headed to Pearland this morning for my checkout
flight and to "shack-up" without the kiddos. Bobbie spent the afternoon at
Space Center Houston (NASA) and I flew my pants off in a Bellanca Scout. The
normal procedure is to fly from the back seat, then the front seat, then move
onto banner hook-up training, but after looking at my logbook and hearing about
my glider towing experience, my instructor told me to get in the front seat and
fly.
We setup 4 "gates" (a gate is two PVC poles 6' high and 12' wide that the banner
rope gets suspended from) with yellow plastic caution tape instead of a rope to
practice grabbing the banner with a grappling hook. You take off with a 12'
long rope hooked to your tail with a 3 prong grapple tied to the end. You put
the attached rope into the cockpit and throw it out the window after you take
off - making sure you don't entangle the empennage when you do it. My instructor
demonstrated the "Grab" on the first pass. You get about 10' above the ground
and hold 90-100kts, then 15-20' before you get to the "Gate" you jam full power
in and pitch ABRUPTLY up to about a 45 degree AOA (angle of attack). You then
proceed to climb out at 60kts to 1,000' AGL. I attacked the next 3 remaining
gates with gusto and hit the "rope" on 3 out of 4 tries. My first attempt was
WAY too mild! We then landed (did I mention the stiff crosswind?) and
debriefed and discussed our upcoming mission. I was to be the number 2 ship in a formation banner tow over the Houston Metromess that afternoon. An hour or so later, ship number one took off
(Pawnee) and we followed in the Scout. I missed the first two grab attempts and
finally "hit" on the third try after I asked the instructor to call out the
"pull" point. Man it's weird jerking back on the stick BEFORE you get to the
"gate", but that maneuver is what throws the grappling hook abruptly DOWN so it
will snag the rope. We then flew formation for 2.5 hours while the Pawnee did
all the radio calls and I just tagged along - just like formation flying at an
airshow! Boy, did I have FUN!!!!! I get to do it all over again tomorrow for
one more mission before I drive home.
Friday, February 11th, 2005
Show time was 10am on Friday morning. While briefing the upcoming
lunchtime mission, a new banner arrived via UPS. Since I'm going to be
running the Dallas operation solo, I asked the crew to show me how to setup a
brand new banner. We unpacked the new banner and found the leading edge.
We proceeded to stuff about 44' of PVC pipe in a pre-sewn pocket in the leading
edge to give it rigidity. We then anchored the PVC with rope (and lots of duct
tape) at the top and bottom of the banner so the pipe wouldn't slide out.
How does a banner know which way is up you might ask? You add 5lbs of
chain to the bottom of the PVC and encapsulate the chain with a wad of silver
duct tape so it doesn't flop around (they use a ton of duct tape in this banner
operation). By the way, did I mention that these banners were HUGE?
This sucker was 100' long and 42' high and weighed less than 100lbs. After
rigging the new banner, we loaded up the two signs we were going to be pulling
today and headed out to the grass runway to set them up. Following are
photos of today's mission.
Hugh II
The photo above and below show the traditional type of banner that most of you might be familiar with. These are all individual letters and numbers that just snap together to form a quick sign of your choice. Occasionally I will have to put together one of these types of banners in Dallas for one-time deals.
This picture shows a rack full of the huge fabric signs that I mentioned in the
narrative above
This is one of at least 4 Piper Pawnee's that I saw in and around the hangar
This is a 300HP Stearman that the shop mechanics are restoring when they aren't
working on tow planes. I'm told they pulled a banner once with the
Stearman but it turned out to be a lousy tug.
Here is one of two 180HP Bellanca Scouts that they use to train new banner tow
pilots. Both of the Scouts are equipped with leading edge vortec
generators so the airplanes will keep flying at extremely slow airspeeds (I
buried the airspeed indicator on the SLOW side of the dial several times during
our formation banner tow). The airplane doesn't really stall when you get
too slow with a banner, it just starts descending faster.
Goofy signs like this were all over the hanger, on the ground equipment, and
also inside the airplanes. These guys have fun!
This is a prototype automatic hook release system that they are developing for
the Pawnees so that the pilots won't have to throw the hooks out of the door
anymore.
This is the same Pawnee showing the attach mechanism on the airplane.
Notice that they are the same type of mechanisms that you will find on glider
tow planes. They all have a release installed in the cockpit for the pilot
to be able to drop the banner at the end of the mission prior to landing.
I don't have any idea why this airplane is equipped with two hooks. What
happens if the release mechanism fails? You land WITH the banner of
course. The procedure is to cross the runway numbers 1,000' AGL (so you
don't drag the banner through any fences, etc), you then chop the power and
descend/flare/land as quickly as possible. The goal is to be on the ground
PRIOR to the banner touching down. If the banner hits while you're still
in the air, you'll quit flying rapidly! I'm told that it's rather drastic
looking, but no big deal.
Here is the rig used to haul the banners out to the pickup zone.
This is the gate with the banner rope installed ready for pickup by the airplane
This is the other end of the 270' rope that attaches to the banner harness which
is connected to the banner itself. Look real close and you can see the wad
of tape on the left end of the banner that has the chain wadded up in it.
Is it easy to pickup a banner? Well like anything, it takes practice.
On my first mission on Thursday, it took me three tries to hook up. My
second mission on Friday took 4 tries. The crew on the ground said each
time I missed, the hook barely slid above the rope. I just have to start
my "pull" maneuver slightly earlier.
You can see the Pawnee lead ship to the left as we are closing in on our
formation flight.
A photograph just doesn't do justice to the size of these things. This
banner is also 100' by 42'. 4,200 square feet of fabric!!! Believe
me, you can tell when the tow rope goes tight and you start lifting the banner
off of the ground after a successful grab! Just keep holding 60kts and
pray you keep climbing!
Here we've sucked it up a little closer
The Pawnee lead ship
I tried to get the wing in the picture to give you some perspective of size
That's my banner instructor, 25 year old Brad. A graduate of Embry
Riddle. I can't tell, but I think I bored him to sleep :-)