OXFORD — Ole Miss football fans have been seeing some unusual messages in the skies over Mississippi if they were watching FlightAware, thanks to a local pilot who has found a creative way to build excitement for the Rebels’ season.
Joshua Gregory has been using his Piper Cherokee PA-28-140 to create elaborate flight paths that spell out messages visible on flight-tracking maps.
The first came Sept. 8, when Gregory used his flight path to spell out “COME TO THE SIP,” inviting fans to Mississippi for the football season.
Then, Tuesday, Gregory took it a step further, creating a flight path spelling “LANE CLOSURE AHEAD,” as Ole Miss prepares to host LSU on Saturday.
Gregory said he had originally planned to save the latest video for game week but decided to release it early.
“I’ll just have to do another message for next week,” he wrote in a Facebook post.
The first flight took 4.9 hours, with another 2.5 hours spent flying to Baton Rouge and 2.5 hours returning. Gregory said he spent about three hours planning the flight and programming the route into his GPS — roughly 13 hours of work in all.
The flight quickly attracted attention online. Gregory said it appeared on several flight-tracking pages before he had even completed the flight, followed by a flood of responses from people across the United States and several other countries.
Gregory said the aerial messages began as a way to pass the time while building flight hours.
“I did the first couple of these because I was bored, building hours,” he wrote. “The feedback was so good I kept going.”
He said the views, likes, follows and comments have been “mind-blowing” and that he plans to create more messages as he continues logging the flight hours needed to pursue a career as a pilot.
Gregory also thanked New Orleans Approach and Baton Rouge Approach for helping keep him safe while flying through their airspace.
The attention comes with an aviation-sized expense. Gregory said AVGAS isn’t cheap and encouraged people who enjoy his videos to support his future flights through Venmo at @EightSixWhiskey.
The No. 9 Rebels are scheduled to host No. 8 LSU at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.
And if Gregory’s first two flights are any indication, Ole Miss fans may want to keep an eye on the skies for whatever message comes next.
