My brother and law and I would do the same kind of thing in Amarillo. We used large helium ballons and colored lights. Take the whole rig outside of town, launch it, and let the wind carry the whole shebang back over town. There would be hundreds of UFO calls from all over town. They would probably arrest us if we did something like that now....red
I pulled a prank in Abilene Texas back in 1972. I attached a small battery to the center of a kite and ran a wire to a light bulb at the end of the tail. I launched the kite from a dark field next to a busy road and got it up several hundred feet. As the kite danced on the breeze, all you could see was the light itself. Dozens of cars pulled over to the side of the road as people watched the UFO. No one ever caught on.