The message we are carrying to the world is symbolized by angels flying in the midst of heaven. I believe that, in a very literal sense, we can give wings to this message.
In the summer of 1939 in a tent meeting at Clanton, Alabama, C. F. Graves and I were not satisfied with the usual attendance of around three hundred on Sunday night. We decided to attach the public-address speakers to the wings of an airplane and fly over the city and surrounding towns, and let the people know of the services we were conducting in the tent.
As a direct result of this first experiment we jumped the attendance from about three hundred to more than one thousand. Weather per mitting, we used this method every Sunday afternoon thereafter, and always found that our Sunday night audience ran over 1,000 and as high as 1,475.
I have never fully given up the idea that we could more effectively use the airplane to announce our meetings in larger cities, with good results. At this writing we are conducting a city-wide effort in Charlotte, North Carolina, and successfully using this modern method every Sunday afternoon. We have greatly improved our technique and efficiency since our first experiment eleven years ago. At that time we flew with the pilot and made the announcements over our old battery public-address systern while the plane was in a glide. We now use sacred music and spot announcements after they have been recorded on a wire recorder. Wayne Foster and I sit in a quiet room and make a thirty-minute spool of sacred records and brief announcements. This wire recorder is taken into the plane and connected to an amplifier. Heavy storage batteries are connected to a converter that steps up the voltage to no. The baffle speakers are strapped to the struts of the plane. At this time I am using a Piper Cub, because it can maintain the desired altitude at a low rate of speed, thereby causing the music and announcements to float out over the air, covering many blocks in each direction. Best results can be had when the pilot learns to cut the throttle just as the spots are coming on.
In this city we found that there was an ordinance against making announcements from an airplane. A well-known businessman, member of my church, went with me to see the city manager, and secured a permit to broadcast sacred music and brief announcements on Sun day afternoons. We respect this courtesy by using the best sacred recordings obtainable and very brief announcements.
I have checked the audience each Sunday night to learn whether the music and spots were heard. I have also checked the man on the street, and always find that almost everyone has heard "the musical airplane." The first Sunday night after this experiment was used in the afternoon in this present campaign, we took a check of the audience, and found that more people had heard the plane than had seen the half-page advertisement in the only Sunday morning paper, which has a circulation of 142,000. The cost of the airplane was less than a third of the cost of the newspaper advertisement.
After carrying this modern method of advertising a city-wide campaign beyond the experimental stage, I am now ready to recommend its judicious use to my fellow evangelists. If one desires to take advantage of this medium of advertising, I would suggest the following pre cautions:
1. Check with your city officials to see whether there is an ordinance against this method of advertising. It is unlikely that you will find such an ordinance in cities of less than one hundred thousand.
2. Be sure that you have a licensed and reputable pilot, who will observe all regulations. (Residential elevation is one thousand feet, business sections fifteen hundred feet.)
3. Be sure that you have plenty of amplification to make the music and announcements heard distinctly at that regulated elevation. (It is hardly possible to have too much power.)
4. Intersperse spots at intervals of about twenty to thirty seconds. (With a plane traveling at the rate of sixty air miles and announcements coming every thirty seconds, you will have a spot every half mile.)
5. Use no more than from ten to fifteen words in each announcement.
Such simple announcements as the following have been used with telling effect: "Sing with Wayne Foster at the Bible Lyceum tent tonight at eight." "Satan's vacation will be the subject at the big tent tonight. Morehead at Thrift Road." "This is M. R. Garrett giving you my personal invitation to the great service tonight at the Bible Lyceum."
We must get the eyes and ears of the people before we can win their hearts to the Lord Jesus, and this is one way of catching eyes and ears. Having tried almost every known method of advertising an evangelistic campaign, I have come to the conclusion that the musical air plane is one of the quickest and most economical of the modern methods of advertising.
