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Originally Posted by hc0fitted
Sorry if I offended you about the banner towing. Please if there is more to it than flying a tailwheel around under basic VFR in a circle, please enlighten me.
Of course I agree you cant teach experience.
Here is what a few others experienced in banner towing had to say about it:
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There is nothing quite as fun as towing banners with an O-360 SuperCub. I did some banner towing in Atlanta one summer, but I do not remember having the FAA observation. Maybe they skipped it I am not sure. It was great learning experience. I recommend it highly for fresh commercial pilots, particularly beach towing ops. But be very careful since there are a lot of gotchas in it. You need to be good at tailwheel airplanes, good at stick and rudder especially in winds, and be good at staying up with the airplane while towing for hours at a time. All that plus being responsible for laying out the banner and packing it up, doing cross countries, and dodging other rag draggers at events makes it pretty challenging. The pay isn't any good as you know. Flight training is a much better proposition for time building in terms of risk exposure, pay, seasonality, and physical demand. I wouldn't want to do banner towing more than a summer or two.
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I got to have some fun flying banners while working for a skydiving outfit. The plane was unusual in that it was a 182. My training consisted of the chief pilot telling me to take off, get a little altitude and throw the hook out. He also reminded me not to snag the nosewheel picking it up. He stayed on the ground. Yeah, I thought it a bit different also but it was kinda like my Navajo checkout but that's a story for another day.Picking up the banner was the most fun part. I'd trim the nose for 70, pick a glide angle and reduce power. As soon as I'd pass the poles the power went to full and Vx was held. Got lucky and never missed a pick up. Flying around Chicago was fun with the banner.
I never did banner towing, but it seems that the intricacies of tailwheel flying and flying low and slow would seem to teach / strengthen some basics of flying. If there was x/c time involved in repositioning of the aircraft up and down the coasts for example then I would think that this would be valuable time too.
USMCFLYR