"jon" wrote in message
...
John,

I hardly fly at night and when I did I didn't look at the lights. My wife
is
not much of a flyer could I use this to convince her to go up ? Are the
lights visible from the air, is it as good as ground viewing ?
Thanks.

Jon

Frankly I think most would find the Christmas lights better from the
"automobile view".

It's certainly a interesting and novel perspective from the air. You could
use the aerial view to quickly locate what neighborhoods had the best
concentration of lights. But I think there are a lot of the lights that are
visible at street level which are not from above (e.g. on the fronts of
houses), and there is a much more 3d, "immersive" effect from the street.
From the air its a lot more 2d.

Also, this was from 1000 ft AGL and 100 knots. This kind of sightseeing is
the one thing that makes me kinda miss our old 172. (Flying a C210 now).

Cheers,
John