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Banner Towing, Dallas Redbird operation July 11, 2005 I'm back in the air! Sorry about the late report, but an FAA FSDO person flew up to Dallas a few weeks ago from Houston and observed all of us Dallas banner pilots pickup and drop a banner, so now we are all personally certified - in writing - by the FAA to fly letter banners up to 60 letters and billboard signs up to 4,800sq ft. We've all been flying our buns off making the regular clients happy again. We picked up a job in Shreveport, LA flying a banner for a local Hyundai dealership on every Saturday in July. The boss originally made arrangements to fly out of the former Desoto Parish (Mansfield, LA) airport. This is a 30 minute deadhead flight to Shreveport and back and when you're in the Bellanca Scout, you've only got 2.5 hours of flying time with banner in tow before the engine quits, so that only leaves 1.2 hours over target (with a reserve). The Scout holds 40 gallons of gas, but when you have a banner in tow, the angle of attack is so steep you can't use all the fuel in the tanks before the pickup tube gets uncovered. Anyways, I made arrangements with my father to fly out of his airport in Keithville, Blue Bird Hill (5F5). Blue Bird is a tricky airport to fly out of at best since it is nestled amongst very tall pine trees - and the winds swirl around because of those trees. The Hyundai job was originally for every Saturday in July, so I figured flying out of Blue Bird for just a few Saturdays wouldn't give me too much trouble. I found out today (7/11) that Hyundai likes our banner so much, that they want to continue flying it over Shreveport indefinitely. Knowing that our other banner pilots would NOT like flying out of Blue Bird, I made arrangements with my good friend, and my children's Godfather, Terry Sullivan, to store the banner in his hangar at Shreveport Downtown Airport (DTN). I made contact with the airport manager, the control tower and the local FBO to make sure the move to DTN would be okay with everybody. It's easy when you deal with airplane nuts because everybody thought it would be cool to fly banners out of DTN. More regular updates to follow..... Hugh II |
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02/10 Training Begins | 03/22 Dallas Redbird Operation | 04/06 WWII Bombers Descend on RBD 04/26 The "Hutch" Pawnee | 04/28 O540 becomes O450 | 05/12 Ooops | 05/16 Traffic Watch Again |