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How Skywriting Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:13
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's over there. Who's
0:16
Speaker 1: the only well one of the three of us, which
0:19
Speaker 1: is crazy pray. Uh, you and I are both sick
0:23
Speaker 1: at the same time. Yeah, I'm getting over mine and
0:25
Speaker 1: you're in it sounds like in the throes of yours.
0:28
Speaker 1: I am, yes, in the flummy thickness of it. And
0:31
Speaker 1: this is stuff you should know. That's right. It is
0:33
Speaker 1: written in the sky. It is we're in the stars. Uh. Yeah, well,
0:39
Speaker 1: now you can't do that at night, No, but you could.
0:43
Speaker 1: They tried to make it so yeah glow in the dark.
0:46
Speaker 1: Yeah you saw that too, spoiler. Yeah. So we're talking
0:49
Speaker 1: about skywriting, right. Uh. And I was trying to think back, Chuck,
0:53
Speaker 1: if I have ever seen something written in the sky.
0:55
Speaker 1: I'm like, surely I have. You've never seen the scar
0:58
Speaker 1: writing message I have like in in I've seen pictures
1:01
Speaker 1: of them are plenty, Like you weren't, Like, what is this.
1:04
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember back towards childhood, which is you
1:08
Speaker 1: know when I probably would have seen uh, and I
1:10
Speaker 1: just can't quite place it. But I have a vague recollection,
1:14
Speaker 1: um and nothing. It's me standing and there's grass. But
1:18
Speaker 1: then I'm like, look up, dummy, look up, what's in
1:20
Speaker 1: the sky. I just walk off and need a dandelion.
1:25
Speaker 1: This was this was actually my idea as an article,
1:29
Speaker 1: like we're flooding the website with new material now, which
1:32
Speaker 1: is great. Man. And uh, I pitched this like five
1:36
Speaker 1: weeks ago, not even bam, and here it is, whoomp,
1:40
Speaker 1: here it is. I thought you knew, Uh, this is
1:44
Speaker 1: a good idea, Chuck, thank you. I found this fascinating.
1:46
Speaker 1: Did you know much about it when you pitched it?
1:48
Speaker 1: Or had you seen a sky written message recently? Um?
1:51
Speaker 1: I think I got the idea from the great comedian
1:55
Speaker 1: Kurt Brauno or um did a Kickstarter in may you
2:00
Speaker 1: do a skywriting message? And I think his quote was,
2:05
Speaker 1: it's so stupid and I love doing stupid things. And
2:08
Speaker 1: thank god the Internet loves stupid too, because they funded it.
2:11
Speaker 1: And he let people vote on what to do, and
2:14
Speaker 1: they chose how do I land? And he had that
2:17
Speaker 1: written above the skies of Los Angeles and got some
2:20
Speaker 1: attention for it, and it was a funny little gag
2:22
Speaker 1: and Kurt's a great guy and a friend of the show. So, um,
2:25
Speaker 1: that's where I got the idea because I started wondering,
2:28
Speaker 1: how in the world do they do that? Like I've
2:30
Speaker 1: seen him before, but I thought, you know, when you're
2:33
Speaker 1: up there in the plane, it's got to be pretty
2:34
Speaker 1: tough spell something out to like massage the clouds over
2:39
Speaker 1: into to beat them into letters. Right, that's how they
2:42
Speaker 1: do it. Correct, that's not how they do it. No,
2:44
Speaker 1: that isn't how they do it. They use a certain
2:46
Speaker 1: type of oil and some high horsepowered planes and it
2:49
Speaker 1: takes a tremendous amount of skill, which is why it's
2:52
Speaker 1: not much of a surprise, um that it finds. It's uh,
2:57
Speaker 1: it's origins among War One flying asis. Apparently the Royal
3:03
Speaker 1: Air Force. There was a guy named John Clifford Savage, who, um,
3:09
Speaker 1: I guess invented skywriting for military purposes. Yeah, and back
3:13
Speaker 1: then I think there were several things they did with
3:16
Speaker 1: it in the military. One was to give messages when
3:19
Speaker 1: you know you're out of like radio control, because I
3:21
Speaker 1: think you can you can see messages for like hundred
3:25
Speaker 1: square miles. Yeah, there's a little tricky math to it,
3:29
Speaker 1: but there. They say that on a clear day, if
3:32
Speaker 1: you're standing on say the Great Planes or something, okay,
3:36
Speaker 1: you could you can see a skywritten message for something
3:39
Speaker 1: like thirty miles. And if you take into account all
3:41
Speaker 1: the thirty miles and multiplian, it's what did you say,
3:44
Speaker 1: like square miles, that's a that's a lot of exposure. Yeah,
3:49
Speaker 1: and if you're in World War One, your walkie talkie
3:51
Speaker 1: back then might not have gone that far. So they
3:53
Speaker 1: would send messages and apparently they would also use it
3:56
Speaker 1: to um cloak ships, I guess, fly around and just
3:59
Speaker 1: close them in cloudy smoke because detection, because what you're
4:04
Speaker 1: doing when you're writing is a sky message is basically, um,
4:09
Speaker 1: I guess you're you're basically just flying parallel to the ground, right, Well,
4:13
Speaker 1: I mean it's aerial acrobatics. You're you're spelling with your plane.
4:17
Speaker 1: So um, you're loopti loop and you're doing all sorts
4:20
Speaker 1: of crazy stuff. So after John Clifford Savage invented this,
4:25
Speaker 1: like within a couple of years after inventing skywriting, somebody's like,
4:29
Speaker 1: you know, who would love this company's And companies have money,
4:34
Speaker 1: that's right, so let's charge the money to advertise their
4:37
Speaker 1: stuff in the sky. And a dude named Captain Cyril
4:40
Speaker 1: Turner was the first person, and I think to write
4:45
Speaker 1: a skywritten advertisement. Yeah, and I think he was. I
4:50
Speaker 1: don't know if it was his original idea, but he
4:52
Speaker 1: seemed to be doing this as a proof of concept,
4:55
Speaker 1: like let me let me write daily Mail the British newspaper,
4:59
Speaker 1: let me right that in the air, uh, and see
5:02
Speaker 1: how that works. And then later he went to the
5:05
Speaker 1: United States later that same year and said hello USA
5:08
Speaker 1: over time square and then Carl Vanderbilt, which is the
5:13
Speaker 1: hotel phone number where he was staying, and apparently the
5:16
Speaker 1: next two and a half hours he got, uh the
5:19
Speaker 1: switchboard lit up literally you can say that because it
5:23
Speaker 1: was the nineties and it was. They got forty seven
5:26
Speaker 1: thousand phone calls in just a couple of hours. And UM,
5:30
Speaker 1: I think that was his way of saying, this is
5:32
Speaker 1: gonna work. Yeah exactly, this is advertising. And it got
5:35
Speaker 1: the attention to some people, some companies pretty quickly. UM
5:39
Speaker 1: Lucky Strikes very famously got into uh skywriting for advertising.
5:44
Speaker 1: UM Snocco basically anybody who is anybody with the company
5:49
Speaker 1: back then was doing skywriting because the other stuff you
5:52
Speaker 1: had was the side of a barn, maybe some radio advertising, right,
5:57
Speaker 1: but skywriting, for the amount of money it costs, you
6:00
Speaker 1: could get a lot of exposure in ways you you
6:02
Speaker 1: just normally couldn't. And Pepsi was starting out at this
6:06
Speaker 1: time and they bought into skywriting so enormously that the
6:11
Speaker 1: company and skywriting are kind of, um, they go hand
6:14
Speaker 1: in hand in a lot of people's minds. Yeah, in
6:16
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties they started putting they didn't have as
6:19
Speaker 1: much money to advertise on the radio. So uh, from
6:22
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, I'm sorry, from the thirties. Of the
6:26
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, they like went all over the US, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, Canada.
6:33
Speaker 1: Just that was their main form of advertising. And uh,
6:36
Speaker 1: the New York Times at the time was they thought
6:38
Speaker 1: the skies were going to be littered, like polluted with
6:42
Speaker 1: with ads and they called it celestial vandalism, and uh
6:47
Speaker 1: they predicted uh, intricate pictures and colors and glow in
6:51
Speaker 1: the dark, like we said, But none of that really
6:53
Speaker 1: came to fruition, No, it didn't. Um, And I mean,
6:56
Speaker 1: there's pretty good reason to kind of worry about this, Uh,
7:00
Speaker 1: in alone. Pepsi alone commissioned two thousand skywriting projects and
7:07
Speaker 1: um for kind of more in the history of it,
7:09
Speaker 1: there's this good article called what Happened to Skywriting that
7:12
Speaker 1: was in The Atlantic. That's worth ning too, by the way,
7:15
Speaker 1: But um, the thing that undid skywriting. The answer to
7:19
Speaker 1: that question is television period. Television advertising came in and
7:25
Speaker 1: thanks to our friends at the Nielsen Company, you could
7:28
Speaker 1: uh really kind of target and taylor your ad in
7:32
Speaker 1: ways that you couldn't before with radio. And it was
7:36
Speaker 1: for the amount of exposure you got. It was definitely
7:40
Speaker 1: worthwhile to save your money for television advertising and funnel
7:45
Speaker 1: away money from your skywriting budget. You know, well it
7:49
Speaker 1: seems silly now, but it was like a legit form
7:51
Speaker 1: back then of advertising. Um. And like it points out
7:54
Speaker 1: in this article, uh, you have to have ideal conditions
7:57
Speaker 1: as well. It's got to be a clear sky, can't
7:59
Speaker 1: be cloudy, can't be rainy, um, can't be too windy.
8:02
Speaker 1: So there was a lot of things that that radio
8:06
Speaker 1: and television offered, like it doesn't matter what the weather
8:09
Speaker 1: is like basically, I mean, your reception is still gonna suck.
8:13
Speaker 1: People can still probably hear what you're trying to say
8:16
Speaker 1: that's a that's a good point. And actually Pepsi um
8:19
Speaker 1: as I guess it's fiftieth anniversary or something like that.
8:23
Speaker 1: They commissioned one of their their former skywriting pilots to
8:28
Speaker 1: go find some plane the type of plane that was
8:32
Speaker 1: used for skywriting. And this guy found like the plane,
8:36
Speaker 1: one of the main planes that Pepsi used for its
8:39
Speaker 1: skywriting campaigns because it was so deep into it it
8:42
Speaker 1: maintained its own aerial fleet, and this guy found it
8:47
Speaker 1: and they started another skywriting campaign for another like twenty
8:51
Speaker 1: something years, I believe. Yeah, it started in the seventies
8:54
Speaker 1: with the Marry Me Sue commercial? Did you happen to
8:57
Speaker 1: watch that? No? I didn't get a chance, did you? Like? Yeah,
8:59
Speaker 1: I mean I remembered it when I saw it, which
9:01
Speaker 1: was from nine. So that was the first startling thing
9:05
Speaker 1: that happened to me today. And you know how a
9:08
Speaker 1: commercial spectator just so like cam fisted, Like it's this
9:11
Speaker 1: cowboy at a barn trying to proposed to sue his wife,
9:15
Speaker 1: of course, and she's you know, you know, it's all
9:18
Speaker 1: acted out, but it's got music over it, so she's like,
9:22
Speaker 1: what are you doing? And he's like, oh, just wait,
9:25
Speaker 1: and she sees the word mary and she's like hmmm.
9:28
Speaker 1: And then she sees marry me and she's like whoa.
9:31
Speaker 1: And then she sees her name Sue, and she's like
9:34
Speaker 1: what yes, of course, and then they kiss and the
9:37
Speaker 1: barn catches fire. Now they're outside the barn. The barn, oh,
9:43
Speaker 1: I think he said bar. I'm a little stuffed up, gotcha.
9:46
Speaker 1: But uh, it's great seventies commercial fun. I recommend watching
9:49
Speaker 1: it on the YouTube. It would have been great had
9:51
Speaker 1: the Wicked Witch of the West flown in and written
9:54
Speaker 1: surrender Dorothy over marry me, Sue, because that showed up.
9:59
Speaker 1: Remember she sky wrote with her room. Really yeah, I
10:02
Speaker 1: don't remember that it was in uh. I guess it
10:07
Speaker 1: was shortly after which was about the gold standard um,
10:13
Speaker 1: but it was I think shortly after she discovered her
10:15
Speaker 1: sister had been smushed by Dorothy and that Dorothy was
10:18
Speaker 1: in oz and she jumps on her broom and flies
10:21
Speaker 1: up and surrender Dorothy with it and black smoke. Well,
10:25
Speaker 1: she like farting that out. She's squeezing flying monkeys. That
10:31
Speaker 1: that broom exhaust that we all know about. So let's
10:34
Speaker 1: talk about how to sky right, all right after the chuck. Um,
10:50
Speaker 1: they say in this article, but I probably they in
10:53
Speaker 1: general that skywriting is a lost art. It takes a
10:57
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of skill, and it's been so underfunded over
11:03
Speaker 1: the last few decades that like, there's literally a handful
11:06
Speaker 1: of people, maybe four or five. How many people fit
11:09
Speaker 1: into a hand Well, it says in here four people.
11:12
Speaker 1: I found that hard to believe. But uh. The article
11:15
Speaker 1: also points out that it's a lost art because it's
11:19
Speaker 1: you can't learn it unless you learn from someone who
11:22
Speaker 1: does it, and so few people do it these days.
11:25
Speaker 1: It's just a closely guarded secret. And back in the
11:27
Speaker 1: day they wouldn't tell anyone because competition among pilots. They
11:31
Speaker 1: would keep their little secrets to themselves. So there's really
11:34
Speaker 1: you can't get on the internet and learn how to skywrite. Yeah,
11:36
Speaker 1: there's not a handbook or anything like that. Um, and
11:39
Speaker 1: we should say we're talking skywriting. There's something separate called
11:42
Speaker 1: sky typing, which more people are involved with, but for
11:46
Speaker 1: for free hand skywriting, there's seriously possibly four to six
11:51
Speaker 1: people in the world that know how to do it. Yeah,
11:53
Speaker 1: well these days too. Um. I looked at a couple
11:55
Speaker 1: of the skywriding websites. I think there's probably only two,
11:58
Speaker 1: and it's it's sky riding in banner towing, which is
12:01
Speaker 1: the big things. So you got skywriting dot com and
12:05
Speaker 1: skywriting dot net. That would have made and that's what
12:09
Speaker 1: you see more of these days. If you want an
12:10
Speaker 1: ad or marry me, Josh, you're gonna you're gonna attach
12:14
Speaker 1: it to a banner and pull it behind your plane. Yeah,
12:17
Speaker 1: instead of that stupid smoke stunt. And actually, one of
12:20
Speaker 1: the people interviewed one of the very few people who
12:24
Speaker 1: know how to freehand skywrite, which is kind of redundant.
12:28
Speaker 1: It's skywriting is freehand. Um. She met her husband who
12:33
Speaker 1: was a banner tower and taught him how to skywrite.
12:37
Speaker 1: She was a pepsi smoke writer. Um and uh. When
12:42
Speaker 1: she got ahold of her husband, he was just some
12:44
Speaker 1: backwards banner tower. She's like, I'm gonna teach you a skill. Friend.
12:49
Speaker 1: He's like, but all you do is hook it up
12:50
Speaker 1: here and fly right, And she said, oh my, just wait,
12:55
Speaker 1: oh you're talking about the Yeah, he thought banner towing
12:58
Speaker 1: was like the different cult. Yeah, because he was crop
13:00
Speaker 1: dusting before that. But Suzanne Asbury Oliver and her husband,
13:05
Speaker 1: Steve Oliver. I believe um are two of there, possibly
13:10
Speaker 1: half of the total number of people who know how
13:13
Speaker 1: to sky right, is that crazy? And they're married. It's
13:16
Speaker 1: all in the family. Yeah, the secrets in the family.
13:20
Speaker 1: So these planes are going about a hundred and fifty
13:23
Speaker 1: miles an hour. It's pretty fast. And in order to
13:27
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen a skywritten message, it's it looks
13:29
Speaker 1: a little like a child has drawn it because they're
13:33
Speaker 1: riding it with a plane, And it's just very difficult
13:35
Speaker 1: to do. Um. And in fact, the word pepsi itself
13:39
Speaker 1: apparently takes seventeen different maneuvers and I think like fourteen
13:44
Speaker 1: smoke releases just to make those five letters. Yeah, that's
13:48
Speaker 1: just pretty tricky, right. Um. Even before that, though, you
13:52
Speaker 1: have to have perfect conditions, Like you were saying, the
13:55
Speaker 1: whole thing starts at about ten thousand feet up because
13:58
Speaker 1: up there it's cold enough sometimes it's human enough, um
14:01
Speaker 1: that the smoke will stay together, so it'll last as
14:05
Speaker 1: long as like twenty minutes under ideal conditions. Plus it
14:09
Speaker 1: can't be cloudy or else. Your stuff just kind of
14:12
Speaker 1: blends in with everything else, right exactly, So you you
14:17
Speaker 1: have to have ideal conditions first, and then after that
14:20
Speaker 1: you have to get in your little uh air acrobatic plane.
14:24
Speaker 1: So they used to use UM. I think the Pepsi
14:27
Speaker 1: plane was a Traveler, that's what it was called. That
14:32
Speaker 1: was the company that made it. UM and it's now
14:34
Speaker 1: in the National Air and Space Museum by Dullus, which
14:38
Speaker 1: is well worth the visit. Yeah, there's a space shuttle there,
14:43
Speaker 1: there's a s R. Seventy one Blackbird. There's a lot
14:47
Speaker 1: of really great stuff there, and apparently there's the Pepsi
14:50
Speaker 1: plane too, but UM. Suzanne Asbury Oliver says that she
14:54
Speaker 1: uses a Chipmunk now, which is a small light, very
14:59
Speaker 1: highly maneuverable plane with a high horsepower. That's another key, sure,
15:05
Speaker 1: because with high horse power you can generate a lot
15:07
Speaker 1: of heat. And you're gonna have to generate a lot
15:10
Speaker 1: of heat up there because you need to burn off
15:12
Speaker 1: your oil. Yeah, it's a paraffin oil UM liquid paraffin basically,
15:17
Speaker 1: and it needs to in order to reach that smoke point,
15:21
Speaker 1: needs to hit the engine at fift degrees and then
15:24
Speaker 1: it is just spit out through the exhaust. And I
15:29
Speaker 1: think the letters themselves always wonder from the ground like
15:33
Speaker 1: how big they are. Apparently the letters are about a
15:36
Speaker 1: mile high and once the smoke expands about seventy five
15:40
Speaker 1: ft wide, which is bigger than I thought. Yeah, I
15:43
Speaker 1: had no idea they were mile high letters. And pepsi
15:47
Speaker 1: can be the word pepsi. It can be up to
15:50
Speaker 1: about five miles across. Yeah, and um, so when you're
15:54
Speaker 1: doing this you have no frame of reference. Um, like,
15:57
Speaker 1: you can't see what you're doing, is the author of
16:00
Speaker 1: this article points out. Julia Layton says, it's basically like
16:04
Speaker 1: drawing a picture in the dark. Yeah, Um, backwards and backwards.
16:08
Speaker 1: It's a very good point, which I didn't understand why
16:11
Speaker 1: they had to do it that way, because the way
16:13
Speaker 1: you're flying, the ground is below you, but the people
16:17
Speaker 1: looking up at the message, this guy is above them.
16:22
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, sure, I guess that makes sense. So when
16:23
Speaker 1: you're writing pepsi like this, if you were beneath it
16:28
Speaker 1: would be backwards to you. So since you were doing
16:31
Speaker 1: it for the benefit of the people on the ground,
16:33
Speaker 1: you the skywriter, has to write the whole thing backwards.
16:36
Speaker 1: They probably learned that the hard way a couple of times. Yeah,
16:39
Speaker 1: I would guess. So they're like, hello USA, backwards. What
16:42
Speaker 1: does that say? Yeah, apparently there was one guy I
16:44
Speaker 1: read in the Atlantic story in New York in the
16:47
Speaker 1: early days that did such a bad job. He landed
16:49
Speaker 1: and went back up and put a drew a line
16:51
Speaker 1: through his message and started over. Yeah. I like that though, Yeah,
16:55
Speaker 1: I mean it makes sense. I was wondering if there
16:57
Speaker 1: was a technique for like flying through your old letter
17:00
Speaker 1: or whatever to break them up and start over. But
17:02
Speaker 1: the line will do it too, because I never thought
17:04
Speaker 1: about that. It's a good idea. But um, so to
17:08
Speaker 1: to make these letters, you're using, um, the ground. Any
17:11
Speaker 1: anything you can on the ground is like a frame
17:13
Speaker 1: of reference, like streets um in some cities, or form
17:17
Speaker 1: a grid like pattern. So in an article I read,
17:21
Speaker 1: they basically said that's kind of like using lined paper. Um.
17:25
Speaker 1: You also can use the shadow on the ground that's
17:28
Speaker 1: reflected by the clouds to kind of show yourself like, Okay,
17:31
Speaker 1: that that letter looks good, I can move on to
17:32
Speaker 1: the next one. But you're also using timing too, so like,
17:37
Speaker 1: for example, to make the upright in a ffort a
17:41
Speaker 1: P or an L or something like that, you're gonna
17:44
Speaker 1: hold your smoke trigger for like a fifteen count or
17:47
Speaker 1: something like that, right, and you'll know what that's gonna
17:49
Speaker 1: look like. I mean a lot of practice goes into
17:52
Speaker 1: this too, for sure, because that's just one streak when
17:56
Speaker 1: you have to go make the rest of the P
17:59
Speaker 1: or an R or something that's very difficult. And Suzanne
18:02
Speaker 1: Hasbury Oliver points out writing Chinese extraordinarily difficult, like in
18:08
Speaker 1: the sky. I wasn't sure what she meant by that.
18:12
Speaker 1: I think she met in this guy really yeah, man,
18:15
Speaker 1: I thought you were just equating it with writing Chinese
18:17
Speaker 1: on paper or something. I don't know. She's the best around,
18:20
Speaker 1: all right. So once you have written this message, if
18:23
Speaker 1: it is on a good day and it's not super windy,
18:25
Speaker 1: you might get twenty minutes out of it. Um usually
18:29
Speaker 1: less than that. I've seen anywhere from like eight to
18:31
Speaker 1: ten before it starts to dissipate, and you can see it,
18:34
Speaker 1: you know, for a while too once it dissipates. But
18:37
Speaker 1: on a on a good day, what you're paying for
18:39
Speaker 1: is not a lot of time, exposure time. So that's
18:43
Speaker 1: why back in the day they used to do over
18:44
Speaker 1: things like Times Square or sporting events. Of course, is
18:47
Speaker 1: where they do the banners now. The same idea back then. Um,
18:51
Speaker 1: And like we said, Chuck, they use a paraffin based
18:54
Speaker 1: oil and they have a reservoir tank that usually holds
18:58
Speaker 1: something like thirty gallons. This is a hundred and fourteen
19:01
Speaker 1: leaders for our friends outside of the US and Liberia.
19:04
Speaker 1: And um, that's enough typically to to write about twelve letters.
19:09
Speaker 1: Not much no, so these messages are are typically fairly short,
19:13
Speaker 1: although there was one that's way more than twelve letters
19:15
Speaker 1: and I couldn't find out, but it seems to me
19:17
Speaker 1: from what I've seen, it's got to be the longest
19:20
Speaker 1: skywriting message ever, the one that John Lennon and Yoko
19:23
Speaker 1: oh No commissioned. Uh oh, is it over Toronto? Over Toronto?
19:28
Speaker 1: War is over? If you want it, Happy Xmas. They've
19:32
Speaker 1: saved a few bucks there from John and Yoko. Um.
19:36
Speaker 1: The only thing I can figure is they might have
19:39
Speaker 1: had a couple of planes at work, maybe because that's
19:42
Speaker 1: way more than twelve letters. Yeah, I mean, if the
19:45
Speaker 1: thing sticks around for twenty minutes, they could be Yeah,
19:48
Speaker 1: I would guess they'd have to use more than one.
19:51
Speaker 1: And then uh over Austin in March of this year.
19:54
Speaker 1: That had to be for south By Southwest or the
19:57
Speaker 1: first several hundred digits of pie. So they must have
20:01
Speaker 1: had a couple of planes over that too. Pie in
20:03
Speaker 1: the sky. Um, it's gonna cost you some money. Uh.
20:08
Speaker 1: In the article it says five thousand, but I saw
20:11
Speaker 1: the other website. Maybe they're undercutting. Um said that they
20:14
Speaker 1: started about fift bucks for the most basic message, which
20:18
Speaker 1: is just an I I guess so, and it goes
20:22
Speaker 1: up from there. Um, I know Kurt Brownell are raised. Um,
20:25
Speaker 1: Like I said about sixty eight hundred bucks. Uh, that's
20:28
Speaker 1: not bad for a lengthy message like that. Yeah, how
20:33
Speaker 1: do I land? Yeah? And the Kickstarter apparently the founder
20:36
Speaker 1: of Kickstarter heard about it and was in town and
20:39
Speaker 1: like delayed his trip an extra day because Kurt had
20:42
Speaker 1: a big party on a rooftop and um, he stayed
20:44
Speaker 1: and went to the party just to I guess say,
20:47
Speaker 1: like this is what my company has become. Or I
20:50
Speaker 1: had something to do with this too, Yeah, probably so. Um.
20:53
Speaker 1: And if you're worried about what is being used for smoke,
20:56
Speaker 1: like we said, it's paraffine oil. Um, And it's actually
21:00
Speaker 1: non toxic, biodegradable, the good stuff. And if you're like, hey,
21:04
Speaker 1: skywriting is polluting, but I'm cool with air shows. Well,
21:09
Speaker 1: I have an eye opener for you, pal. They used
21:12
Speaker 1: the same stuff at air shows. That's right. And if
21:15
Speaker 1: you are a pilot, like let's say you're a crop
21:17
Speaker 1: duster and you've got a little tavil and chipmunk and
21:20
Speaker 1: you want to get into this because it seems like
21:22
Speaker 1: a good time to be getting into skywriting. Um, it's
21:26
Speaker 1: also the worst time to be getting in the skywriting.
21:28
Speaker 1: But um, it'll cost you anywhere from three to six
21:33
Speaker 1: grand to outfit your plane to be able to do this,
21:36
Speaker 1: which I mean you can make that back in a
21:38
Speaker 1: couple of messages, maybe one. Yeah, that's not bad. Yeah,
21:41
Speaker 1: if John Lennon hires you, yeah, I don't know if
21:43
Speaker 1: that's gonna happen anytime soon. No, but Yoko still could.
21:46
Speaker 1: She's still around and kicking. That's true. We saw her
21:49
Speaker 1: in New York in person. Yeah, no way, what just
21:53
Speaker 1: like walking No at a restaurant. Oh, that's a big one.
21:57
Speaker 1: It was a huge one. Yeah, they're neat or if
22:00
Speaker 1: you're shy a La bouff. Oh yeah, yeah, you know
22:05
Speaker 1: that guy, that jerk. He's not famous anymore. It bags
22:08
Speaker 1: says though he uh he did that you know, he
22:11
Speaker 1: was in the ad that played Jars in Scandal earlier
22:14
Speaker 1: this year. I didn't know what that was about. He
22:16
Speaker 1: did some h I think, I'm not sure exactly what
22:19
Speaker 1: he did, but he supposedly played giarized Daniel Clothes, a
22:21
Speaker 1: graphic novel like pretty heavily and he was just killed
22:25
Speaker 1: for it. For what did he have a graphic knowledge? Now?
22:27
Speaker 1: I think he did a maybe it was a play
22:29
Speaker 1: or something. I can't remember exactly, but he was called
22:32
Speaker 1: out and nobody likes that guy anyway, so people are
22:34
Speaker 1: ready to pounce on him anyway, So he did. He
22:38
Speaker 1: spent grand two higher skywriters, one that said I'm sorry,
22:43
Speaker 1: Daniel Clothes or clouds, I'm not sure I was pronounced,
22:47
Speaker 1: and then another one that said stop creating because if
22:53
Speaker 1: you're a creator, they're gonna come after you. I guess
22:57
Speaker 1: grand Um and I believe though, were digital skywriting, which
23:02
Speaker 1: is whoa, whoa. We're gonna get into that right after this.
23:10
Speaker 1: So digital skywriting the Wave of the future, Yeah, the
23:14
Speaker 1: Wave of the Future that originally originated in the nineteen forties. Yeah,
23:19
Speaker 1: I was really surprised to see that. So remember how
23:21
Speaker 1: we said there was like skywriting which is freehand. There's
23:24
Speaker 1: also sky typing, which is basically like dot matrix printing,
23:28
Speaker 1: but in the sky. And in the forties, the guy
23:31
Speaker 1: named Andy Stennis whose family is still involved in sky typing.
23:36
Speaker 1: They run a UM, one of the bigger sky typing companies.
23:40
Speaker 1: As you can imagine, UM he invented this process where
23:44
Speaker 1: you would use multiple planes and they basically just fly
23:49
Speaker 1: across the path to sky information. So kind of like
23:54
Speaker 1: you remember that chalk holder that you you would make
23:57
Speaker 1: like the the music stripe with ye, yeah, I think
24:02
Speaker 1: they used it to UM. When your first learning cursive
24:05
Speaker 1: like lined paper, or if you got in trouble and
24:08
Speaker 1: you have to write something all over the chalkboard, you
24:11
Speaker 1: can just use that thing and knock out like five
24:13
Speaker 1: at once. I totally forgot about this. This is like
24:15
Speaker 1: that but with planes. And in the fourties, Andy Stintness
24:18
Speaker 1: was like, I'm just gonna put five planes in the
24:21
Speaker 1: service together. We'll fly in formation uh in one direction,
24:24
Speaker 1: we'll all go back and fly above that in the
24:27
Speaker 1: opposite direction, and then above that back in the original direction,
24:30
Speaker 1: and then UM you print out basically a message that way.
24:34
Speaker 1: So you're building it from the bottom up or the
24:36
Speaker 1: top down, going from side to side, just like a
24:40
Speaker 1: dot mate like exactly like that. Yeah. The thing is, though,
24:44
Speaker 1: is it's not um. It's gonna look neater than your
24:47
Speaker 1: hand drawn when it's not gonna look like a five
24:48
Speaker 1: year old druid. Well, especially since in the sixties they
24:51
Speaker 1: introduced computer programs that control it too well exactly, and
24:54
Speaker 1: it's um. It's little puffs of smoke like the dot matrix,
24:57
Speaker 1: So the computer can trolls it. The pilot just flies
25:01
Speaker 1: the plane. It's got the message all loaded into the
25:04
Speaker 1: little program and it knows when to to burp out
25:08
Speaker 1: those little puffs of smoke UM, five at a time,
25:11
Speaker 1: and then back and forth and back and forth until
25:13
Speaker 1: you've got you know whatever, you're silly messages shila boof.
25:18
Speaker 1: So if you're if you're making a mile high UM
25:23
Speaker 1: message and the five planes are flying in like a
25:27
Speaker 1: half a mile wide formation, then they're gonna one passes.
25:31
Speaker 1: They're gonna make the bottom half of like pie yeah
25:34
Speaker 1: or stop creating or something. Then the next pass will
25:37
Speaker 1: be the top half of it from one side to
25:39
Speaker 1: the other, and then you've got a perfect, very very nice,
25:43
Speaker 1: like you said, very clean sky typed message. Yeah, and
25:46
Speaker 1: you can still see the dots. I mean it puffs out,
25:49
Speaker 1: but it never quite connects like a skywritten message. And
25:53
Speaker 1: I guess that another think about grand that's five planes
25:58
Speaker 1: at five grand apiece, which is a minimum price, so
26:00
Speaker 1: I guess that makes sense. Yeah, that's that's one of
26:03
Speaker 1: the main reasons sky typing is so much more expensive.
26:06
Speaker 1: You can get way more letters out of it. Like
26:08
Speaker 1: when they did Pie in the Sky in Austin, they
26:11
Speaker 1: did um, I think a couple hundred of the of
26:14
Speaker 1: the places after the decimal Like that's a tremendous sky
26:20
Speaker 1: type message to Don't wonder who paid for that. I'm
26:22
Speaker 1: sure it was like a Google or somebody. Huh. Probably
26:25
Speaker 1: they got deep pockets. But that's one of the reasons
26:28
Speaker 1: why it's so expensive, because you have to hire five
26:30
Speaker 1: or more planes, Like it's a minimum of five planes. Yeah,
26:33
Speaker 1: you might need more than that. Yeah, and um, I
26:36
Speaker 1: think who wrote this one? Julia Layton. Julia Layton says
26:40
Speaker 1: that the digital skywriting requires less piloting finesse. I guess
26:46
Speaker 1: that's a one way of saying it, because you're not
26:48
Speaker 1: doing loop de loops. But if you're flying five at
26:50
Speaker 1: a time in formation. That's some piloting finesse. That is,
26:53
Speaker 1: it is piloting finesse. But they're not like they're not
26:57
Speaker 1: doing like you say, a loop de loop to make
26:59
Speaker 1: the part of a are Yeah, you know, like they're
27:03
Speaker 1: just basically flying in formation and then some computer is
27:06
Speaker 1: measuring exactly like their altitude and their distance in relation
27:09
Speaker 1: to the ground and spitting out a puff of smoke
27:11
Speaker 1: to form these letters. Like they're not doing any of
27:14
Speaker 1: the writing. Yeah, but it's still it's better than I
27:17
Speaker 1: can do. I'll give you that. Um. Yeah. And there's
27:22
Speaker 1: predictions that, uh, skywriting is making a big comeback. Um,
27:27
Speaker 1: so much so. And I found this interesting. Microsoft, did
27:31
Speaker 1: you see this where they got a virtual skywriting patent.
27:35
Speaker 1: There's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. They got a
27:37
Speaker 1: patent where you can send in a picture of a
27:39
Speaker 1: blue sky and tell them the mess, tell them the
27:42
Speaker 1: message you want, and they will insert a fake skywriting
27:45
Speaker 1: message into your photo and you can show people like, hey,
27:49
Speaker 1: I got a photo of a skywriting message. That's not real.
27:52
Speaker 1: That's cheating. That's gonna ruin the industry maybe. But um,
27:57
Speaker 1: apparently the patent the picture that they used to get
28:00
Speaker 1: the patent ordered was of a real skywritten message that
28:04
Speaker 1: was actually copy written, so they I think it's still
28:08
Speaker 1: went through even though they had infringed on a copyright
28:11
Speaker 1: to get the patent, And I don't think they've done
28:13
Speaker 1: anything with it yet. There's not an app yet. But
28:16
Speaker 1: um no, I would know about it if there were
28:19
Speaker 1: look out for it in the future. My friend, you
28:21
Speaker 1: might be able to fake you me out. Yeah, let's say,
28:24
Speaker 1: look at this photo. And she's like, that's weird. What
28:26
Speaker 1: Usually people just walk you outside and show you the thing.
28:29
Speaker 1: I would say, no time for that. Just look at
28:31
Speaker 1: the photo. We're a busy couple. Yeah, um, and they're Actually.
28:35
Speaker 1: It does sound like there is something of a future
28:37
Speaker 1: for skywriting thanks to social media, because there's the the
28:44
Speaker 1: novelty of a skywritten message like a real one, not
28:47
Speaker 1: then Microsoft fake out like how do I land? And
28:50
Speaker 1: you've got things like Instagram and Twitter, so people are like, oh,
28:54
Speaker 1: check this out what somebody did over the sky of Austin,
28:57
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, something that was visible to
28:59
Speaker 1: everybody at south By Southwest is visible to the entire world.
29:02
Speaker 1: Well that's how Kurt brown Ewers blew up. It was
29:05
Speaker 1: on Reddit and like weeks after he had done it,
29:08
Speaker 1: he got a little bit of pressed, and then it
29:10
Speaker 1: popped up on Reddit weeks later and he got a
29:12
Speaker 1: whole new round of press and did interviews about it,
29:15
Speaker 1: and it became a nice little comics stunt for role Kurt.
29:20
Speaker 1: Now he has a car, that's right. Uh, you got
29:24
Speaker 1: anything else? I have nothing else, sir. Okay, Well, if
29:26
Speaker 1: you want to know more about skywriting, this article commissioned
29:29
Speaker 1: by Chuck, you can type skywriting one word into the
29:33
Speaker 1: search bar at how stuff works dot com and it
29:35
Speaker 1: will bring it up. Since I said sewarch bar, it's
29:37
Speaker 1: time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this another
29:42
Speaker 1: vulture vomit revisiting. That's the gift that keeps on giving. Yeah,
29:46
Speaker 1: we did a podcast a while ago on vultures and
29:50
Speaker 1: how their defense is to vomit on you, and uh,
29:52
Speaker 1: it happened to this guy, which is kind of neat.
29:55
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, I'm a bit of an amateur speed lunker.
29:58
Speaker 1: A few summers ago I made precarious climb up a
30:01
Speaker 1: cliff to explore a cave overlooking a river. I had
30:03
Speaker 1: a friend with me, as you always should for such adventures.
30:06
Speaker 1: But the narrow ledge only allowed for one of us
30:08
Speaker 1: at a time to get to the mouth of the cave,
30:10
Speaker 1: so I went first. I got into the cave, and
30:13
Speaker 1: the droppings in foul stench let me know that it
30:15
Speaker 1: was a vulture nest, but nobody seemed to be home,
30:19
Speaker 1: so I ventured a little deeper and found, in my surprise,
30:22
Speaker 1: a nest of hissing, angry little vulture lngs. I bet
30:27
Speaker 1: they are. Uh. They were as aggressive as they were fuzzy,
30:30
Speaker 1: and the biggest one tried to challenge me and chase
30:33
Speaker 1: me away, which I thought was really cute. That's the
30:35
Speaker 1: big brother, until I heard a thump behind me in
30:38
Speaker 1: a much louder hiss. I turned around to see that
30:40
Speaker 1: Mama had returned, and her bulk blocked almost the entire
30:44
Speaker 1: entrance of the small cave. I decided to make a
30:47
Speaker 1: fake rush and yell to scare her away, and when
30:50
Speaker 1: I did, she reared her head back and projectile vomited,
30:54
Speaker 1: kidding me in the side of the face. Oh man,
30:57
Speaker 1: I have to tell you, guys, no other chemical current
31:00
Speaker 1: in nature compares to vulture vomit. I was shocked for
31:03
Speaker 1: a moment, and when I caught the whiff of the
31:05
Speaker 1: disgusting mess running down my neck and into my shirt.
31:08
Speaker 1: I basically went mildly insane. I pushed past the vulture,
31:13
Speaker 1: leapt from the cave and slid down a tree growing
31:16
Speaker 1: next to the cliff, tore off my shirt and jumped
31:19
Speaker 1: into the river in a mad dash to get away
31:20
Speaker 1: from that smell. Despite a good washing in the river,
31:23
Speaker 1: I still stank and I had to ride home in
31:26
Speaker 1: the bed of the truck. That, my friends, is why
31:29
Speaker 1: you should never scare a vulture, And that is from
31:31
Speaker 1: James Ashford in Springfield. Missoo nice. Thanks a lot, James.
31:35
Speaker 1: It's funny how vulture vomit will focus the mind. Yeah,
31:38
Speaker 1: I bet it's um. Have you ever been skunked or
31:41
Speaker 1: been super close to something that's been driven on the
31:45
Speaker 1: highway through its skunk? Not the sane. I've never been
31:48
Speaker 1: anywhere near now. Yeah. Our dog Lucy got skunked when
31:51
Speaker 1: we lived in l A and I woke up. I
31:53
Speaker 1: might have told this before I woke up in the
31:55
Speaker 1: middle of the night. And this was during this post
31:58
Speaker 1: nine eleven. I thought that someone had set off a
32:01
Speaker 1: dirty bomb. It was unlike it doesn't smell like it
32:04
Speaker 1: does on the road. It smelled like the harshest, most
32:07
Speaker 1: bitter like acrid chemical. It was just in the air
32:11
Speaker 1: and I was tasting at my mouth, and I was like,
32:13
Speaker 1: we've been attacked. We've been attacked. I I yeah, because
32:15
Speaker 1: there's something almost like vaguely pleasant about like skunk smell
32:19
Speaker 1: far away. Oh yeah, I love it. But actually see
32:21
Speaker 1: how it would just like make you lose your mind
32:23
Speaker 1: and it is not the same thing close up and
32:26
Speaker 1: burn your skin or anything. No, it didn't. It was
32:29
Speaker 1: really gross. So, I mean she smelled for We gave
32:32
Speaker 1: her the tomato juice bath, which is supposed to help.
32:35
Speaker 1: Did it work. I mean it's sort of massed a
32:38
Speaker 1: little bit, but it basically just has to wear off
32:41
Speaker 1: over of course some days and days and days. Yeah,
32:43
Speaker 1: it was really rancid. Did you like shaver her fur anything? Like? No,
32:47
Speaker 1: I thought about it. It was so gross. It is
32:49
Speaker 1: very gross. Yeah, I didn't know there's skunks in l A.
32:51
Speaker 1: That might be the fact of this podcast. They're all
32:54
Speaker 1: over the place, skunks, coyotes, mountain lions, and smelly dogs
33:00
Speaker 1: a wild place tomato sauce dogs. Uh. If you want
33:05
Speaker 1: to tell us a story that has to do with
33:07
Speaker 1: one of our old episodes. We love hearing about that,
33:09
Speaker 1: especially if it brings up a counter story by Chuck.
33:13
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33:16
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
33:18
Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email to
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33:27
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33:33
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33:41
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