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During a 2011 performance over Quonset Point, Rhode Island, the Skytypers soloists cross within 50 feet of each other.

One of the airshow teams performing precision aerobatics this season can also be hired to do typing. Want to get your message across in letters as tall as the Empire State Building and stretching across eight miles of sky? Call The Geico Skytypers. Currently, they’re the only flying team offering skytyping services. According to team spokesperson, Allie Schotanus, the average cost of a sky ad is $1,500.

The Skytypers fly North American SNJs, the Navy’s version of the T-6 Texan combat trainer. To type a message, five aircraft fly abreast about 250 feet apart, each one signaled to release puffs of smoke at a pre-programmed spot. The lead aircraft carries a computer programmed to send radio signals to the other aircraft in the formation; the radio signal commands the smoke release. The “top” and “bottom” aircraft (numbers 3 and 5) are single seaters; their back seats were replaced by larger smoke oil tanks than those carried by the other SNJs because those two have more typing to do in the formation of the letters.

Six SNJs, combat trainers designed for maneuverability in practice dogfights, fly the aerobatic routines. On a skytyping job, the sixth airplane sits it out. (Photo: Chris Parypa)

No surprise that a computer does the typing; what is surprising is that the system of radio commands was invented in the 1940s. At that time, the radio signals triggered switches in a control board carried in each aircraft, according to a 1949 issue of Popular Science. Each board had 200 switches that created the dot-matrix messages. One of the founders of the current skytyping teams inherited a 1964 patent on the digital version of the system and formed the group in 1979.

You can see the team perform their aerobatic routine at 10 airshows this season. And if history is a guide, you may also see a very big marriage proposal or two.

Here’s what skytyping looks like from the ground:

Jimmy Leeward's P-51, the "Galloping Ghost." (Photo: Julia Kirchenbauer)

On Wednesday the National Transportation Safety Board issued preliminary findings on the cause of the accident that took the lives of race pilot Jimmy Leeward and 10 spectators last September 16. Based on its preliminary findings, the Board made seven recommendations to increase the safety of air racing. They all seem reasonable enough, and many race fans, wondering whether or not air racing would even continue after last year’s horrific accident, probably breathed a little easier when they saw words used in the recommendations like “evaluate the feasibility of ” and “develop a system that.” What many of us feared were words like “stop.”

One finding in particular demonstrates the value of external review. It came in a letter to Thomas Camp, the president of the National Air Racing Group Unlimited Division. The raceplanes in this division are almost all modified warbirds, like P-51 Mustangs or Hawker Sea Furys, that weigh at least 4,500 pounds. (Leeward’s P-51 “Galloping Ghost” was racing in this division when it crashed.) In the letter to Camp, the NTSB pointed out that the division’s rules for highly modified warbirds are not the same as those for airplanes custom-built to race in the division. Owners of custom-built airplanes have to prove that their aircraft are structurally sound within the anticipated flight envelope, but the warbird modifications are not required to be flight tested “while operating within the speed and flight regimes that would be encountered on the race course.”

According to Reno Air Racing Association spokesperson Valerie Miller-Moore, the association will consider the NTSB’s recommendations with those of a blue-ribbon panel the association put together last January. That panel, says Miller-Moore, was also directed “to look at the event as a whole, at everything and anything,” and was given maps of the course and layouts of the stands. Members of the panel are race pilots Steve Hinton and Jon Sharp, former NTSB chairman Jim Hall, and former FAA associate administrator for aviation safety Nick Sabatini. Miller-Moore says the association expects the Blue Panel report within two weeks. Though declining to specify which ones, she also says that the association has already implemented some of the NTSB recommendations.

The racing association has scheduled the 2012 event for September 12 through 16.

NTSB member Robert Sumwalt at today's hearing.

As far as Washington hearings go, today’s National Transportation Safety Board panel on air race and air show safety was cordial. But the questions and answers suggest a battle brewing.

Panelists, including FAA officials and air show professionals, described procedures and regulations already in place to assure safety at shows and races. Board members were, politely, looking for more—some response to last year’s terrible show season, when a pilot and 10 spectators were killed at the Reno air races and five pilots were killed in airshow crashes. It appears that just strengthening existing procedures may not cut it.

The sternest moment of the morning session came when NTSB Chair Deborah Hersman pressed Reno Air Racing Association officials to explain how the prescribed 1,000-foot buffer zone between spectators and the race track had been decided. She assured RARA president Mike Houghton and rules chairman Michael Major that this was an area the NTSB would look into.

Several board members wondered whether special medical certificates should be required for the more physically demanding flying done by racers and show pilots, and that’s a good point. Others questioned FAA Flight Standards officer John McGraw about how much oversight the FAA had delegated to airshow professionals in certifying pilots and aircraft. A reasonable concern, although one would think that airshow professionals are precisely the right people to certify pilots and aircraft. Their survival as a profession depends on it. Plus they know their stuff—probably better than FAA officials, who are responsible for overseeing many different types of operations.

Even though International Council of Air Shows president John Cudahy emphasized that airshows hadn’t had a spectator fatality in more than 50 years, the NTSB was searching for a change to recommend. Increased setbacks? More regulations? More thorough inspections of aircraft modifications? Increased standards for pilots? Air boss George Cline may have given them one answer. As an air boss, Cline has overseen safety standards and operations at airshows for 20 years, but he is not certified—because there is no certification program for an air boss. Create the standards for certification, Cline suggested. Not a bad idea, but I have a feeling it won’t stop there.

The USS Shaw explodes during the attack on Pearl Habor. (Photo: National Archives)

To honor the courage and coolheadedness of a civilian flight instructor who was in the middle of giving a lesson when Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor, airshow pilot Kent Pietsch (pronounced PEACH) and brother Warren, of the Texas Flying Legends Museum, are re-enacting her flight in Las Vegas on the 70th anniversary of the attack. Pietsch, a gifted pilot who flies some of the most entertaining routines on the airshow circuit today, will have no problem executing the evasive maneuver used by instructor Cornelia Fort to escape Japanese warplanes and save herself and her student that December 7. If you’ve seen the 1970 movie Tora! Tora! Tora! you’ve seen the maneuver—only you saw it flown by a Boeing Stearman Kaydet, which was not the type of trainer that Cornelia Fort was flying that day. Pietsch owns and will fly the correct airplane type, an Interstate Cadet. As a matter of fact, he’ll fly a Cadet that was there in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, and owned by the flight school where Fort worked.

Let’s hope TV cameras are on hand in Las Vegas so that people across the country can see the drama. There’s something about Fort’s story that most Americans can identify with. After the 9/11 attacks, we know what it’s like to feel confusion turn into horror, as the second plane hit. “I looked again,” Fort later wrote about her experience. She saw smoke in the harbor but couldn’t make herself understand until she saw a bomb explode. “I knew the air was not the place for my little baby airplane,” she wrote, “and I set about landing as quickly as ever I could.”

Fort was a wealthy glamour girl who fought convention to get her pilot’s license. Because she was an instructor in the type of airplane Pietsch performs in, he felt a connection to her and says he began to feel an obligation to publicize her story: She was killed while ferrying military airplanes in World War II. In the current issue, we published the story of Cornelia Fort and Kent Pietsch’s search for her airplane.

The brothers will fly the re-enactment at precisely the same time Fort saved her airplane from the Japanese attack. While Kent Pietsch plays Cornelia’s role, Warren Pietsch will fly an A6M2 Zero fighter owned by the Texas Flying Legends Museum. (It’s the only A6M2 flying today.) And there’s one more character needed to make the re-enactment complete: Fort’s flight student. That role will be played by Fort’s nephew, Dudley Fort Jr., a retired surgeon in Sewanee, Tennessee.

Gene Breiner got a little choked up when he handed over his 1929 Fleet Model 2 to the National Air and Space Museum at “Become a Pilot” Day on Saturday. He dedicated it to “all the people who learned to fly in her, and all the people I took for their first and last airplane rides in her.” In the first category, that would be hundreds.

Chet Machamer in the Fleet Model 2 leaves little doubt that flying is fun.

The Fleet was the first aircraft designed to be a civilian trainer. That’s why Breiner’s Fleet, one of six Model 2’s remaining, earned a place at the Museum. This particular airplane was used in the Civilian Pilot Training Program, a U.S. Government effort begun in 1938 with the stated purpose of boosting general aviation. (An unstated purpose was to boost the number of U.S. pilots as war brewed in Europe.)

One of the students who learned to fly in Breiner’s Fleet was on hand for Saturday’s ceremony. In fact, 16-year-old Chet Machamer soloed the airplane that very morning. With his airline-pilot dad along, he flew it from Bermudian Valley Airpark in East Berlin, Pennsylvania, to Frederick, Maryland, where Breiner took over and flew, also with John Machamer, the last leg to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles Airport in Virginia.

Machamer had already flown the long solo trip required for his pilot’s license in a J-2 Cub, but he preferred flying the Fleet. “The J2 is only 36 horsepower,” his dad explained. “He always complains that he can’t keep up with the big trucks on the highway.”

What did it feel like to solo in the Fleet? Chet, whose dad is also his flight instructor, said, “It was definitely different with a lot less weight.” His dad, the weight, replied, “That’s my son.”

We’ll have more about the Fleet in our September issue—including the story of how Breiner found and restored it. Pretty nice that on its last day of flying, the airplane did what it was invented to do: Help a novice rack up flying time on the way to becoming a pilot.