Airship on sale !

Ron K miller posted this in our forum I just wanted to bring it to the front page to bring it to eveyones attention:

Greetings fellow airship enthusiasts. I have a 1987 Thunder & Colt AS-56 Pressurized Thermal Airship for sale in pristine condition for $55,000. G-BNKF (British Registration) It has 44 hours total time - and that is not a misprint! It has been stored in Tucson, which is of course a dry, desert climate. Standard Airworthiness Certificate. Pilot only. Training is included in Tucson this winter, however I will only train the person that is purchasing. This ship would make a great entry level platform for anyone wanting to learn to fly an airship, or can be used for commercial advertising. Please send me an E-mail at RonKMiller (AT) cs.com if you are interested and we can discuss details off line.

You can check out the post in the Forum by following this link. Contact him if you are interested and let me know how the story continues. If you want some more information about the Airship have a look at the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) entry for the registration G-BNKF

William Thomas about Airship on Coast to Coast AM

© William Thomas

William Thomas a Canadian investigative journalist was on Coast to Coast AM the beginning of this month and spoke about airships. Coast to Coast AM is a syndicated radio talk show in the United States. Read the Wikipedia article for more background information on Coast to Coast AM. The radio show can be listened to again via these two youtube playlists:

• Coast to Coast AM from June 16th 2008
• Coast to Coast AM from June 16th 2008 (alternative)

Informations given in the show are nothing really new, a few false claims for example that the Zeppelin NT can carry 21 People instead of 12 but that might have been just a number mixup. The most interesting part is when Robert Rist from Dynalifter gets a chance to talk about the project, stating the the project is alive and that they are working on the prototype. So it seems the project is not dead yet eventhough their first prototype got so serverely damaged.

William Thomas also wrote a number of articles that are available from his website, I have just skimmed them but they might be worth a read as he covers a broad spectrum of general Airship Information, overviews about the companies currently in business and looks at the future possibilities of airships for passenger travel and their impact on climate change. He covers the Zeppelin NT from Zeppelin Luftschiff Technik (ZLT), Airship Ventures, the Voyager Airship of 21st Century Airships, the Dynalifter of Ohio Airships and Worldwide Aeros with their Aeroscraft. Here are his articles:

• THE AIRSHIPS RETURN - A Modest Proposal
• UP SHIP! - AIRSHIP INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES
• AIRLINES GIVING WAY TO AIRSHIPS?
• JETS, AIRSHIPS AND CLIMATE CHANGE

Let us know what you think about them, share your thoughts in the Airshipworld Forum and on our Mailing List. And if you haven't yet subscribed to the Blog please do so by clicking on subscribe, it's free and allows us to have a better overview of how many people read the Blog.

Airship Surveillance Inc. - new airship company

When I looked back at last year this January I felt that 2008 was going to become the year of the Airships and right now all signs seem to point into the right direction.
Today we want to present you a new company that joined the airship industry. Airship Surveillance Inc. based in Las Vegas, USA. Their name states already the goal of the company to build surveillance Airships, on their product page they already list three planned types that they are planning to build. They also put a video of their first test flight up on YouTube, you can watch it here:

Airship Surveillance Inc R&D 1 Airship First Flight

While I was watching this Video I could not help but think about the Hyperblimp which is a development by Daniel Geery from which it seems Airship Surveillance has taken a few clues. Check out our posts about the Hyperblimp here. Do you know anything more about Airship Surveillance Inc ? Thoughts about the Hyperblimp similarities ? Share you thoughts in the Forum&Mailinglist

Video from the Airships to the Arctic Symposium

It was October 2007 that the Airships to the Arctic Symposium was held once again in Winnipeg Manitoba. We have reported about it here and here. Since we have not yet given a report about the event we will provide you with some insights this week. To start the week of, we would like to present a great Video produced by CBC Canada. This is the original link to the Real Video which we copied to YouTube to make it accessible to a wider audience. We would like to thank Paul Boldt who sent us the link to this video.

Original Video available at: http://www.cbc.ca/MRL/clips/rm-hi/north-selleck-airship071217.rm

Please check back tomorrow for our commentary coverage of the Event, written by our own Charles Luffman. Of course if you want to learn more about the Airships to the Artic Symposium follow this link.

The Voyager Airship by 21st Century Airships

21st Century Airships a Canadian Airship Development Company, is currently working on a new airship. Up until now 21st Century Airships has been famous for their spherical Airships. They also successfully licenced their technology to the US company Cyber Defense Systems. To see pictures and even a video of their original airship you can also check out a post on the Blog crashworks.
Now 21st Century Airships is working on a new Airship for tourism and sightseeing activities. On their website you can see some great pictures of the gondola which will accommodate up to 19 passengers. Of course such a new development needs a prototype. So 21st Century Airships has build a small scale 2 person prototype of the Voyager Airship which has already complete it's first test flights. Here are the recent announcement released by 21st Century Airships:

September 24, 2007
We have just completed the test flights for the scale version of the Voyager Airship. The Voyager Airship is a 19-passenger craft, purpose designed for sightseeing rides. As expected, the airship was extremely maneuverable and is able to perform VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landings). Steering and altitude controls are activated with a joystick, making the pilot's workload very light.

August 1,2007
Our latest airship is now ready to take flight. This distinctive looking airship is a two-seater, scaled-down version of our 19-passenger, sightseeing airship. It will act as a test platform for the many systems, with new and advanced standards, that we are incorporating into our airships.

Although this elongated-shaped airship has stabilizing fins, there are no moving surfaces such as rudders and elevators. Steering and altitude controls are affected by directed thrust from the engines, a system developed and patented by 21st Century Airships Inc. The main advantage of this new system is that it allows the airship to be highly manoeuverable at any speed from 0 to full. This airship has no elevator wheel or rudder pedals. Instead it is simply controlled with a joy-stick.

Test flights are scheduled to begin mid August 2007 near Newmarket, Ontario, Canada. After the initial test flights are completed, the airship will be used for demonstrations, as well as for collecting data for the ongoing Type Certification of our 19-passenger, sightseeing airship.

We quoted the two announcements here since we do not know how long they will stay up on the Website of 21st Century Airships. But make sure to check out the original website for more pictures of the prototype.
The Winnipeg Free Press article we talked about yesterday also mentions that 21st Century Airships is planning on flying the prototype to Winnipeg this coming fall. You can be sure we will be reporting about it when it happens.