I’ve seen lots and lots of planes towing banners at the beach.
How does the banner stay vertical? I would think it would have a tendency to roll horizontal, which would seem to be more stable.
Weights at the bottom.
I want to know what the stall speed is on those planes…they seem to be flying impossibly slow from my perspective.
The ones I’ve seen up close are light planes with low stall flying along the Jersey coast, generally into a decent head wind. But there have been a number of accidents with this type of flying in the past. Even though this is allowed in most airspace in the US (last I heard), I think it is heavily regulated in other parts of the world.
Also, the only signs I’ve seen close up were basically large nets with mostly open space with letters that could be quickly changed on the same carrier. I’ve seen in the sky recently larger more solid signs, which look more dangerous to tow. But they seem to be higher up and moving faster.
Banner planes are generally flying at 60-70MPH with a stall speed of around 40MPH. You don’t want to be flying right at your stall speed.
What really interesting is to watch a plane pick up a banner. You really can’t take off with the banner attached. So, the banner is laid out on the ground with the the connection rope tied up high between two poles. Then, the tow plane flies toward the banner, in the opposite direction that the banner is facing and hooks the line - kinda like a carrier plane would hook a restraining cable on a carrier. That way, the banner rolls back over itself as the plane flies by and slowly gets up to speed. If the plane hooked it from the other direction, it’d instantly jerk the banner from 0-70, which wouldn’t be good for the banner or the plane.
Never done it myself, but I used to work at an airport that had a banner plane hangered there.
That is interesting. You’d think it would be easier to have it rolled up in a compartment on the back of the plane that you could open remotely. Or at only 60 mph you’d think you could just open a plane window and toss it out with it already tied to the tail.
Only if you don’t mind it occasionally tangling in the control surfaces on the tail causing you to crash and die. But if that doesn’t bother you, your way is easier.
That would be … unwise. :eek: I’ll leave it to the actual aviators to explain why, because I would no doubt muck up the aerodynamics, but for starters, lets just say you don’t want something with that much drag suddenly yanking hard on your tail.
ETA: Also what TriPolar said while I was out having a smoke, and didn’t refresh the page to see before posting.
Thanks for the explanation. Thinking about it, these banners are probably a lot bigger than I imagines. I was thinking flag size – the kind a house might fly, but this is clearly much too small
Yeah, the banners are much too big to fit in the types of planes I’ve seen towing them. Even if they did fit inside, you’d have a difficult time flying the plane and getting out of the cabin. Most of the planes are two seaters, so there wouldn’t be room for a passenger to chuck it and the banner itself.
Banners vary in size, but the traditional *message spelled out in letters *banners are 8 or 10 ft high and 100-150 ft long. They’re as light as they possibly can be and still be durable, but they still weigh a few pounds per character, or 100+ pounds for the whole thing.
I towed banners to work off my license as a kid.
Stall speed depends on the aircraft. The Piper J-3 we used would stall at about 37mph, but higher with a banner on - more like 50-52mph.
The Grumman Ag-Cat stalled at about 65, but was much more powerful and could pull bigger banners.
Either way, you just don’t want to fly there if you don’t have to. There’s always a headwind somewhere, so you can get your groundspeed down to 30-50mph most of the time. At 200-500 yards away from your target - beach, highway, etc… - that’s just a crawl to the observer.
The fun part is telling your boss you accidently pulled the release and dropped the banner somewhere in the next county.
Somewhere.
You’re sure someone will call soon…
Okay, how do they land with the banner? Or do they dump it by the runway before landing? Or other…
I’m a little surprised you don’t know that, but whatever…
In the cockpit of a banner tow plane is a lever that, when pulled, unhooked the banner from the airplane. Normal procedure is to fly low over the airport or a nearby field (empty of people, etc.) and pull the release lever, dropping the banner for later retrieval on foot, then land the airplane.
In an emergency the banner can be released at any time or altitude, though that will complicate retrieval and the pilot will be liable for any damages caused by such a falling banner
Landing with the banner would be hard on the banner. It also invites snagging the usual barbed wire fence at the end of the runway, runway lights, etc. There is a weak link in the setup to prevent damage to the airplane should such occur, but best not to test it.
They make a pass down the runway or taxiway, and drop it prior to landing. There is a remotely operated release on the tail of the airplane, usually a standard glider towing tail-hook.* The airplane takes off with a short rope with something like a grappling hook on the end, which snags the loop on the banner. This is the other reason for laying the banner out “backward”…there is no danger of catching the banner with the hook instead of the towing loop.
Besides what is mentioned above, there is a style of banner where the letters are not on a background. They are cloth and have cord horizontal members and stiff fibreglass rods for vertical support. These clip on to one another to make up the message.
*This may not be standard practice…all the banner towing I have seen done was as a side business by glider operations. Glider tugs are pretty much ideal airplanes for banner towing, being mostly Ag planes with the tanks and other spray gear stripped off.