Sky Writing in an RV-8?

Hello VAF!

Disclaimer: I'm a first time poster here on the forums, but have been perusing the website daily for several months now so I don't recall seeing this subject appear before (apologies if my search missed a previous thread).

I'm currently a graduate student working away on a masters degree and am dead set on building my own dream machine RV-8 as soon as I get that real job here in another year or so. I'm convinced that the 8 is the total package for my aviation needs, but after reading the how-to sky writing article in the new February issue of Sport Aviation, I've decided that I want to add that lost art to my mission.

Question: I've seen several examples of RV-8's with smoke systems, but how effective is sky writing in them? My fear is that they may be a little too quick for the task.

Many thanks to all the RVators on this forum who provide daily motivation for me to graduate so that I can drive my first rivet!

I'd be interested to hear more on this, too. Saw the article this month in the EAA SportAviation magazine.

My thought, too, was the -8 might be a little too quick, but maybe not?

I would suspect that sky writing requires a massive amount of smoke oil to make much more than a single circle that lasts for more than 2 minutes.

The best sky writing planes are high drag high power.
The amount of oil is directly proportional to the amount of heat you can produce. To write effectively you need tight turning radius'.

Yes you can slow down the rv for tight turn radius', but you are producing very little heat when flying slow.

Want a perfect sky writer? Think Pawnee. Slow as molasses, big tanks to hold oil, making lots of power but not going very fast. There are other good examples like stearmans ect. You get the point.

I have a 13 gal wet wing smoke tank making 260hp and the tank would not be big enough and Im going way to darn fast.

Skytyping?

I guess it's much more expensive to implement, but wouldn't dot-matrix skytyping technique be more appropriate for fast aircrafts like your RV-8?

FlyingArcher said:

I guess it's much more expensive to implement, but wouldn't dot-matrix skytyping technique be more appropriate for fast aircrafts like your RV-8?

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Daniel I believe your missing the point.
You request suggest you are trying to make your oil last longer in your tank. There are lots of methods for this, all go against what a sky writer is trying to do.

Laying down the most amount of oil in a short period of time over a small area is the goal. Translated you want:
1. An engine making lots of HP = heat
2. Tight turning radius = slower speeds
3. Lots of drag so your HP doesnt turn into speed.
4. Lots of oil in your plane to last long time.

Kahuna said:

Daniel I believe your missing the point...

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I believe Daniel was referring to the technique where several airplanes fly parallel paths simultaneously while shooting out puffs off smoke controlled by a computer so as to write a message with one pass. I don't know if that saves oil or not (it is certainly much more complicated and probably more expensive) as it takes several airplanes, but it is kind of away from the intent of the original post.

example