The Merry Christmas GPS track. Here's another way to do sky writing. Click this link to see the results.
http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=905604&code=4ca0ac9c616f63c774d56e6e91bd7359
Here's how I did it. I've been thinking about doing this for a long time. If I could pull it off, it would be pretty cool. I just couldn't think of anything to write that would be appealing to a broad range of folks. Then, just a week or two ago, it occurred to me to use this phrase. I didn't know how I would accomplish it at first, so I penned it out as frilly and loopy as I thought I thought could fly it. It had to be big enough so I could make some pretty quick turns, but doable at lower speeds in the Ercoupe. I had to figure out how big to make it. So, I just started out creating a flight plan adding way points in the AvMap GPS, spelling out the letters. I kept the spacing far enough apart that I thought it would work. When the flight plan was done, it said it was about 70 miles long! That should take about an hour, good enough to warm up an airplane that had been sitting for a little while in the cold. I called a buddy and asked if he'd like to go flying. I said I needed an extra pair of eyes to look for traffic, since we would be maneuvering quite a bit and hope he didn't mind a lot of turns 
He was game and off we went. As it turns out, I had unwittingly did some things right in the plan. The base of the letters were actually along a road, which made it much easier to anticipate the turns. In the future, I'd make sure I did it on purpose. I think I also could have spelled Christmas backwards so I wouldn't have to always write left to right. Dotting the 'i' was a nice steep turn, a fun maneuver before heading back to the airport. This was the first attempt, and it worked the first time pretty nicely. I thought it turned out pretty neat, so I thought I would share it with you all.
Files Attachment(s):
Sky_Writing.jpg (58804 bytes)