Last week a number of my colleagues alerted me to an eerie looking blob floating above the horizon in the distance.
We have nice offices with floor-to-ceiling windows, and other than the grotty A40 running beneath me, the view out over North-West London is rather picturesque. Our view of the new Wembley Stadium and it’s over-sized arch is particularly spectacular.
Anyway, from our windows we could see this weird looking blob floating in the sky in the distance. It was changing size as it slowly moved westwards.
Within minutes quite a few people were checking it out, and no one could work out what it was. The best guess was a blimp or airship, but it was clearly not a rigid structure which discounted that theory.
We all went home that evening wondering what we had seen.
Then, over the weekend I saw it again, but this time much closer. I immediately recognised it and instantly realised what it was. I took this photo:
As you can see, a helicopter is towing a very large advertising banner. And I mean really large. Look at the size of the helicopter compared to the banner. If the helicopter is, say, 4m tall then that banner could be as big as 50m across diagonally!
I’m surprised that isn’t considered dangerous, especially with it’s effect on drag and yaw stability in a crosswind.