Days after a heart-shaped flight over Nova Scotia caught the world’s attention, another pilot has used flight tracking to pay tribute to the 22 victims of Canada’s worst mass shooting that occurred in the province earlier this week. Derek Brown spelled out NSSTRONG in a flight over Cobequid Bay on Tuesday. The day before, Dimitri Neonakis had flown route in the shape of a heart over the province. “We all have to sort of try and show our support in our own way in this COVID climate,” Brown told the Halifax Chronicle Herald. “You just can’t get out and show it the conventional way. So I was inspired by what Dmitri did and kind of wanted to give back to the community somewhat.”
Brown used his SeaRey amphib to trace the route and mapped it out with an app on his iPad. “I kind of traced the outline on a piece of paper and overlaid it and kind of estimated the dimensions of what size it needed to be to fit in the Cobequid Bay, there,” Brown told the Chronicle Herald. He took a screen grab of the flight plan image and posted it on Facebook and it went viral he said.