Zeppelin Pictures from Japan

© Sky and Airship Blog

Yuu Mihara a photographer from Japan has a really nice Blog called "Sky and Airship" where he regularly features pictures of the Zeppelin NT JA101Z which is flying in Japan. His Blog is as far as I know the only source about the Zeppelin NT from Japan besides the Website of the Nippon Airship Corporation itself. Yuu has some great shots of the Zeppelin and just recently also featured a gallery of the "nissen," "Happy Smile" airship.

So check out his Blog at http://sky-airship.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/ it is split into four categoires. Since the Blog is written in Japanese follow the "(translated)" links behind each of the categories listed here to get the translated version.

• Today's sky (translated)
• Today's airship (translated)
• Airship topics (translated)
• Airship story (translated)

He posts new pictures almost every day and recently featured two great galleries. The first on is a gallery of great zeppelin pictures titled Journey "Zeppelin NT the airship" and the other gallery features the previously mentioned nissen, airship and is called "Happy Smile!".
Yuu Miharas Blog is really a great source for everyone who wants to know how the Zeppelin is doing in Japan.

BYOB - Build Your Own Blimp

Dominique Viard is building his very own ultralight blimp in the French "ULM Class 5" category. And is documenting it on his Blog http://construiresondirigeable.blogspot.com/, since the Blog is in French here the auto translated Version.
According to ULM-Reunion.com does the Ultralight Class 5 Category have the following specifics:

An ultralight balloon complies to the following technical conditions:

• The maximum continuous power is lesser or equal than 60 kW for single seaters and 80 kW for two seaters;
• the volume of helium gas must be lower or equal to 900 m3
• the volume of hot air must be lower or equal to 2000 m3.

He has already posted two videos on his blog that we also would like to share with you. The first one shows him cutting the first pieces of the Envelope:

Je construis mon dirigeable - La découpe des laizes

The second one shows him again gluing the first to slices of the envelope together.

Je construis mon dirigeable - L'encollage des laizes

Do you know of someone who builds a blimp like Dominique does? Which other airship/blimp categories are there in other countries? Do you know more, please share it with us in the comments. Also pay a visit to Dominiques Blog(in English here) and write a comment to his posts, I am sure he enjoys getting feedback.

2007 - The Airship Year in Review

Welcome everybody to 2008 the year 2007 is now officially over. Since we are starting into a new year, let's look back at the last year of the Airshipworld Blog.

April 2007
The first complete month of the Airshipworld Blog. We didn't know what we were getting in to and nobody knew us. But still we tried everything to get the Blog of the ground with 36 Articles in just 30 days. The most read article from April was the one about Skywork Media "World`s Largest Advertising RC Airship" (60ft/18m) now for Sale or Hire" we haven't heard a lot of news from the guys over in Turkey but I am sure that 2008 will also bring news about Skywork Media back on to the Airshipworld Blog.

May 2007
After a month with a lot of work we were slowly getting to know people. We slowed down with the posts mainly because I went on vacation an wasn't able to write during that time, still our visitor numbers were increasing. And the most read post was one that started out relatively harmless as a collection of links to interesting articles. But it turned into one of the articles that are still read a lot today. The article was called "Random airship stuff (ends up in court)" featuring Lockheed Matrin and Skycat. It was the beginning of a continuous coverage about the Fate and Progress of Skycat and the remainders of Advanced Technologies Group. I am sure we will hear also quite a bit about the Project ion the new year, we have already a few articles in the pipeline.

June 2007
In June main stream media suddenly realized that there is something like airships still around but they identified one as an UFO first. "Hyperblimp an UFO over Salt Lake City" was our take on Daniel Geerys Hyperblimp that got lost over downtown Salt Lake City due to empty batteries. The article quickly received quite a lot of attention but it has gotten a bit quieter around David and his Hyperblimp lately. I am sure we will have lot's to talk about in the new year. We will serve you with updates and new stories about this fascinating remote controlled blimp. Also in June we were able to do our first small event Coverage of the RC Airship Regatta with videos and pictures.

July 2007
The summer heat still rising we were picking up speed and readers as we proceeded into our 4th month. Which started out with a bang. The "Skycat group in adminsitration" was the first post of July and went on strong that month picking up the events from May. Followed by another article around Skycat and Lockheed "New Hybrid Airship Research Project - Memories of the Skykitten and the P-791".

August 2007
In August we delivered a lot of video posts, since we discovered how to do it. Most prominently was our exclusive Coverage about the 5th Airship Parade in Bad-Homburg . (Video 1, Video 2, Video 3, Video 4). We also had to report about the sad loss of the pedal powered blimp White Dwarf. But the we saved the best for last with our Post Airships are just like fish in the sky, which was an overview of some airship projects that use fish a blueprint for their development, check out this great article.

September 2007
September was one of the darkest months for the airship industry but also one of our most successful. We had to report about the sad loss of the Zeppelin NT Prototype that was stationed in Africa. Fortunately nobody was severely injured since the Airship was on the ground when the incident happened. But it also seemed to be time again for Skycat to resurface with a headline we titled "The Skycat puzzle continues" since this Cat really seems to have nine lives.

October 2007
October, or let's say the vacation month. Due to a long vacation I wrote only embarrassingly few posts, seven to be precise. But we were still able write a few but meaning full posts like Lockheed announcing the P-791 offically ? which got additional quality through the commenter on this posts, which makes it even more worth a read.

November 2007
As if someone out there read our continuing coverage about Lockheed and Skycat we where blessed by a video of the P-791 landing. The Video footage of the Lockheed Martin / Skunkworks P-791 and the Skycat Skykitten can be seen as the grande finale of 2007 in the Skycat story. But the story continues there is still life in that old dog.

December 2007
The last month was a slow one, because the X-Mas preparations and other celebrations took up a lot of my time. Of course since December is just over the Article from December 1st called "Blimp Pictures" got most of the visitors. But we would also like to add our article about the Massaud - Manned Cloud Hotel which we wrote December 29th. In contrary to many other articles out there we tried to dig down to the root and tracked this concept back to late 2006 which was surprising since it had just appeared to become popular almost a year after being on the Internet first.

That was our 2007 thank you once again without you our readers, this would not have become what it is today. Tell us about your favourite posts and airship stories of 2007 in the comments, what would you like us to do better in 2008? And if you have not yet subscribed to the Blog please do so by either subscribing to our RSS Feed with a feed reader like Bloglines or subscribe to our Email Feed and get an Email every time we write a new post. But also check at the Blog to get the full experience with embedded media, like video, audio and slide shows. We will leave you with a little slide show, of the pictures we used this last year. Enjoy and have a great and successful 2008.

Blimpin' Ain't Easy

Yes becoming a Blimp pilot is not easy, on the one hand because there aren't so many blimps out there and on the other hand because flying an airship is not as easy as driving a car. But Keith has made it, he got into the MetLife Blimp Programm. He will be flying the MetLife Snoopy 2 soon and he takes us along on this journey. Keith writes a Blog called "Blimpin' Ain't Easy" where he writes about his experiences and keeps a log of where he is with the blimp and also has a calendar telling the readers where he is going to be in the next few days. His posts are always entertaining to read and provide an amazing insight in to the life of an advertising blimp crew that travels all over the US. Currently he has a post about his watch training featuring a picture of the Horizon Blimp. Coincidentally there were two new pictures posted in the Flickr Airship Pool on of the Horizon Blimp and the other one of the MetLife Snoopy. If you are as fascinated as I am with airships you have to subscribe to his blog and read it regularly. We will of course also keep an eye on the blog and give a shout out to Keith every once in a while updating you on what has been going on. I found his blog since he was so kind to link to us. (Keith if you read this, thank you very much for the link, email me)
If you want to learn more about MetLife and the Blimp Programm check out our previous posts about the Metlife Blimps:

• About "Airship Advertising"
• Airship pictures roundup
• YouTube airship video for the break
• Met Life blimp Snoopy 2 in Fredericksburg, VA
• More from the Metlife Blimp Snoopy 2

If you always want to stay up to date with what is going on in the Airship Industry, subscribe to our Blog either to our RSS feed or via Email. And you will never miss an update. If you need help subscribing have questions or comments send an email to airshipworld@gmail.com or post it in the comments section of each entry.

Ecogeek gives airships a chance

Ecogeek.org just released a nice article about "9 Steps to Cheaper Greener Flight" also including Airships at Number 8. here is what they wrote:

I know, now you KNOW I'm crazy. But, seriously, I think airships deserve a second chance. They do not require any energy to keep them aloft, and while they travel at a fraction of the speed of airplanes, they can move significantly faster than cars, up to 150 mph, without having to follow roads. Depending on their size, a modern airship could be significantly more energy efficient than even a Greyhound bus (currently the most efficient way to travel long distances.) They do have some problems, for example, they have a hard time flying over the Rocky Mountains, or the Alps, but they more than make up for it with amenities. One planned airship has enough space for 1,000 people to sit comfortably on a lower deck, while an upper deck would sport tennis courts and a movie theater for first-class passengers.

It's great to see that not just the people inside the industry believe that airships can have a significant impact on the future of air transport, but also more mainstream media. Go to Ecogeek for the full article to discover the other 8 Steps, including, open turbine rotors, flying wings and more. Also check out the comments to the post, with some more positive opinions on airships like this one:

Airships rock

I know listed airships towards the end, as in they are on the more "crazy" side. But I think they have real potential. Anyone who has had to spend 12 hours cramped in a tiny seat on a long haul flight would jump at the chance to have more space even if the journey took longer - people pay massive amounts to go on cruise ships. There would be a market for these I reckon. I'd be prepared to take longer to get to my destination if it meant a bit more comfort and space. And don't forget all the freight that gets flown around the world as well.

If you find an article like this, tell us about it and send us your comments as to why you think airships are the future

Most successful month in the history of Airshipworld

Yes, our history is short, but this doesn't change the fact that June was a tremendous month for us. I would like to thank everyone who has come here in the last month, we had a total of 2029 page views, that is an 89% increase over May, the subscriber count of the RSS feed has gone from 5 to more than 20 on average by the end of this month. We are now read in more than 50 countries all over the world. Thank you for your readership, we will continue to dig out Airship and LTA news almost daily. I also want to thank the contributors. Thanks go out to everyone from the Airship-list, and the other Groups, Forums and Companies that come up with new bits every day, without them this could not be possible.
To gain even more traction in July I have two wishes:

1. Please link to us and spread the word, we need your referrals. Put a link to Airshipworld on your Homepage, in your email Signature or just about anywhere you can think of and of course tell us about it, we are extending our recommended links section this month, and are happy to link to every page that brings us visitors.
2. Send us your feedback, what do you want to read, do you want us to extend into other topics, like helium supply, envelope production and materials, propulsion systems you name it. Which posts did you like in the last month. Can't remember everything ? Check out the Archive of June 2007

To reach us you can either leave a comment right underneath the post, or send us an email at airshipworld@gmail.com

Back from holidays

I am back from my vacation and working through the many emails and news items, that accumulated in the last week. Check back tonight for the next news post. I'm probably gonna increase the frequency a bit in the next week to catch up with what was happening in the last one.

Going on vacation

Dear readers, yes you read right I'm taking a week of. No blog posts for a week. I know this is sad, and I will have to catch up on a lot once I get back next Saturday, but until then, why don't you check out our links that we posted throughout the last 2 1/2 months on here.
Go to del.icio.us an take a look at http://del.icio.us/gruni/airshipworld it's a constantly growing collection of links. Categorized via different tags, so for example if you go to http://del.icio.us/gruni/airshipworld+zeppelin you will get all the links from airshipworld that are about Zeppelin.

If you aren't just on a look out for links to go to and rather read some of our posts, check out the Archives.

• March
• April
• May

There are more than 50 posts to read through and I bet that there is something interesting in there for each and everyone.

Russian Airship Blog

A few days ago I discovered a new Blog, it is in Russian, but has some very interesting Entries, of course not everyone knows Russian, and I am one of those persons who doesn't but Google's Language Tools come to help.
The Blog is part of a Russian PR Agency called Aerocrat the Blog is called АЭРОКРАТ КОНЦЕПТ located at http://aerocrat.livejournal.com/. If you do not know Russian you can look at the auto-translated version. Here are some links to some of the posts, all of them contain many images so even if the translation isn't great it's worth a look:

• BLIMPY TECHNOLOGIES TO PIKE NARUZHNOY ADVERTISEMENT - looking at Airships as an advertising platform.
• AEROSTATY SEA (AND NOT ONLY) BAZIROVANIYA - Talking about the Navy aerostats build by TCOM
• MYAGKY DIRIZHABL AEROS 40D SKY DRAGON POKORYAET MIR - giving an overview about Worlwide Aeros and Igor Pasternak
• WHERE POLETYAT GIBRIDNYE DIRIZHABELNYE FREIGHT PLATFORM? - Giving a broad overview of many Cargo and Hybrid Airship Projects, like the Aeroscraft, Lockheed Martin P-791, SkyCat, Cargolifter, Millennium Airship Inc. and more.

It's definitely a valuable resource and we will monitor it, for you, always trying to translate the stories. If you can speak Russian and could help translate those stories your help would be very appreciated.

The Future of Mass Transit (via Bravenewtraveler)

Today reaches us a very nicely written story from Bravenewtraveler.com it's called The Future of Mass transit - part 1 and describes a world in the not to distant future where airships could become an integral part of our daily commute, helping to ease the pain of mass transit in urban mega cities. Derek C Wallace draws a picture where airships who land on rooftops of the city's skyscrapers could help getting commuters from A to B. It's really worth a read and has some very nice pictures, too. Check it out at Bravenewtraveler.com the next installment will follow adressing the issues raised in the post and

what life would be like for tourists who could see a city from above as well as from ground-level, the effects on people who live in cities with airships and other unconventional methods of mass transit.

We will keep an eye out on this Blog for the next part of "The Future of Mass Transit"

One month of Airshipworld blogging

It's been exactly 1 month since our first post and today I would like to thank all the readers of the blog and all those people who helped me in finding good content to put on the blog. Seeing that there are actually some people who actually read this blog and check it out on a daily basis.
In this second month we will of course continue to provide you with informations and news from the industry. But we would also like to broaden our reach. So we would like to ask everyone to help spread the word about the blog. Link to the blog (our address is http://airshipworld.blogspot.com) from your website, tell your friends, make it your homepage, talk about it, in newsgroups, mailing-lists, investors meetings just about anywhere, where you could think about dropping our name. We ask this not so that we get more money from the blog, cause we don't get anything really. No, we ask you to spread the word so that we as a community have a platform that is independent from single companies, associations or groups. Here at Airshipworld, the world wide airship and LTA industry should come together, exchange thoughts, present new products and create a constant visible presence on the web, updated often and always current. So help strengthen the industry by promoting the blog. Please if you are skeptical tell us your concerns, if you don't want to promote us, then don't but if you could it would be greatly appreciated.
So I would like to present some facts and statistics from the last month, that might be of interest. There where 38 posts, which were read by more than 550 visitors on the site, resulting in more than 1100 pageviews from all over the world. The biggest part here where the United States with 51% of all visits, followed by Germany with 18%, the UK with 12,5%, other countries within the TOP10 have all contributed less then 5% of the hits, listed in descending order from most to least hits: Japan, France, Turkey, China, Canada, South Africa, Russian Federation. All together there where visitors from 27 Countries worldwide.
That should be enough for the statistics, our goal for the next month is going to be better then last month. How much better? Well, we will see. So tell us how you liked the first month of airship world, if you can not remember go back into the archive and check the posts again. We are really looking forward to your replies, opinions and maybe even criticism. If there is something that we can make better we will do everything we can to actually make it better. Thanks for your support and loyal readership.

Your resident blogger,

Andreas G.

Airshipworld Yahoo Group and new X Prize Challenge

Well I guess it has been a pretty quiet day on the Interweb when it comes to airship news. So I decided to tweak the Blog a bit to make it look a little bit more modern. Tell me if you like it or not. So I also added a Link list to the Sidebar which will contain Links that I recommend to check out. If I mention a Website of interest I will most likely put it into the Recommended links, also, when it has any long term value and is not just a news topic.
So the first link there is to the Airshipworld Yahoo Group this Yahoo Group is dedicated to the upcoming International Airship Investors' Conference in Cape Town which I blogged about before. It currently has 124 Members and is quite active. Right now this blog is not yet officially affiliated with this group but this might happen soon. I will blog about it as soon as there are news available.
There was a post in this Group today by a Guy called Grant Morgan he wrote about that the X-Prize people are looking for new prize goals and pointed out that Airships or the advantages of Airships could be made a challenge, speaking of like fuel efficient transport to remote locations. I think that this is a brilliant Idea. The Same post was made on a Blog called Current Airships which I assume is his blog, which is also available in the "Recommended Links" list on the Sidebar.
The quest for new challenges of the X-Prize is set up as a contest by Zannel.com you can read more about the idea behind the contenst in a Blogpost called "The X PRIZE's Participatory Video Contest" from the WorldChanging Website.
That's all for today, please leave feedback in the comments and if you haven't already, sign up for the Yahoo Group. An Email adres for the blog will be available shortly. All that's left to say is, till tomorrow.