Still, pretty cool though. Makes me wish I had followed my dream in HS and got my commercial license.
Still, pretty cool though. Makes me wish I had followed my dream in HS and got my commercial license.
Taylor Deen is the current pilot. I'd fly her, er with her.
Flying the blimp is more dangerous than you think. Not only is it subject to weather in ways that planes never are, but people shoot at it! I can only assume they think that it will sputter all over the sky like a deflating balloon, but it gets a few holes a year from bullets.
914Driver said:Taylor Deen is the current pilot. I'd fly her, er with her.
There is a team of pilots - a couple dozen. Three blimps each flown by at least two pilots at a time.
Cool thing. I once was driving on the same level as the blimp.
Driving on I-90/NYS Thruway along the Mohawk river valley. I crested a rise and looked over.
There was the blimp at eye level. It was flying low and following the river.
Blimps are loud.
the newest blimps are not even blimps, They are semi-rigid airships made by Zeppelin.
This is not about the Goodyear Inflatoplane.
I have a couple hours of stick time on the Fuji blimp, thanks to being pals with one of the pilots. Very, very cool occasion, that was. When the Zeppelin NT came out and someone started doing sightseeing flights around SF bay, I called em to find out what would be needed to get my airship rating and the answer was something like 130k in lessons and flight time flowed by a trip to Germany to have their lead pilot sign you off. Oh, well.
mad_machine said:Flying the blimp is more dangerous than you think. Not only is it subject to weather in ways that planes never are...
True story: the Goodyear blimp almost crashed into my 3-story high dorm when I was in college around 1983-4.
About 8:00 one Sunday morning I got woken up by this weird roaring that kept getting louder and then fading away. I went to the window and there was the GY blimp, low enough over the roof that I could see the pilot, sliding sideways down the mountain. Maybe 150’ up, tops, and possibly lower. They were trying to get over the ridge my dorm sat near the crest of. They would get as much headway going as they could, and ‘zoom’ up the slope fairly low off the ground. Every time they got near the top, the wind would shove the nose one way or the other, and they’d slip off sideways down the hill again. It took them about 5 tries to finally make it.
I was on one of the new "semi rigid airships" last week, and it was quiet enough to have a conversation on. You could hear the hum of the propellers, but it was much quieter than the old blimps by all accounts.
The wind will blow it around, the feeling is boat like. Flying under a cloud will cool the helium enough to affect its buoyancy. Rain or dew can add several hundred pounds to the weight of the thing, as the surface area of the balloon is so big. The pilots said it was truly unlike flying anything else.
In reply to Duke :
Was "Black Sunday" playing on TBS?
You'll need to log in to post.
