Sky Diving from the Goodyear Blimp

©1965 William Chandler

Today we turn the wheel of time backwards with a guest post by William Chandler a retired US Army Colonel about his skydiving experience from the Goodyear Blimp Columbia N2A.

In September 1965 I was on the faculty at West Point, and OIC of the Cadet Parachute Team. The Blimp Columbia was at the NY Worlds Fair and Goodyear was kind enough to send the blimp up to Wallkill, NY, to the USMA Drop Zone. They could carry only two jumpers at a time, and ascend to only 3,000 feet, in order to fly without venting helium. Here are a few pictures.

©1965 William Chandler

The USMA Superintendent was not anxious to approve the jumps, but finally did, but only with the proviso that an officer jumped first, in case there was any difficulty. I'm the one climbing into the cabin. The blimp made a total of 12 lifts, for a total of 24 jumpers, before they had to go back to New York City.

All images ©1965 William Chandler

You can click on any of the images to see a larger version of it. If you have a story, pictures, videos, a question or anything that you would like to share please send it to us at airshipworld at gmail dot com

The Goodyear Blimp in pictures, stories, videos and more

© Michael Harley / Weblogs Inc.

Following our last non Zeppelin we continue to resist the urge of writing yet another Zeppelin post. But we won't be able to hold off for to much longer. Great news about the Zeppelin NT simply have to be reported so stay tuned.
Today after looking at the Metlife Blimps last we look at the good old Goodyear Blimps and see what they have been up to. Back in April we last looked at them. Starting of today's post is a great article on Autoblog called "Above the Autoblog Garage: The Goodyear Blimp". The article is well written and talks about the Blimp how it is controlled and the overall ride experience. But this is not everything that the article has to offer. Along with the article Autoblog posted a picture gallery of 53 high resolution photos from outside and inside the blimp. Some really nice shots in that gallery. Also hot of the press and a big thanks to Ken DeLacy for finding this bit. At the 2:00 minutes mark of the Aero-TV's Daily Update from EAA AirVenture Oshkosh for Friday August 1st the Goodyear Blimp is featured as it made it's appearance to this years AirVenture Oshkosh.

Aero-TV:OSHCast 2008 Aero-TV Daily Update: Day Five!
But this is of course not the only video that we were able to find, check out all these great videos of the Goodyear Blimp that we found on YouTube


But not only videos were made of the Goodyear blimp the Goodyear Blimp Blog is also always a great place to read more about the ongoing missions of the Blimp. Here are the latest articles:

• 4th of July Blimp Style
• 35 Years!
• Home for a bit
• Detour
• Nasty weather
• Blimps and dolphins
• Sweet home Alabama
• Back in the saddle
• A new pilot
• Pilot in Charge
• Marine invasion
• Winds and Mohawk haircuts

Goodyear also updated their website adding a couple videos from the Archives to it. Unfortunately the Videos are encoded with a Codec called Indeo Video 3.2 which is not distributed with newer versions of Microsoft Windows (eg. Vista). To be able to watch the Videos if you don't have the codec on your system. You will notice by having sound but no picture when playing the Video you can download the free VLC Media Player which still supports Indeo Video 3.2. So nothing that can keep you from diving into histroy and seeing the christening of the Akron and many other gems from Goodyears archives.
Do you have any more pieces about the Goodyear Blimps, then let us know. If you have just recently found us, check out our Forum where you can ask questions and share your thoughts. You can also subscribe to the Blog. Either subscribe to the RSS Feed or via Email and get the posts delivered right to your mailbox, for free.

A quadrotor heavy lift airship? Not a new idea!

© NASA

After drawing direct parallels between the Boeing /Skyhook JHL-40 and Piasecki PA-97 Helistat in the last post I did a little bit of research and dug out some papers from way back when.
First two papers from the NASA outlining "Vehicle Concepts and Technology
Requirements for Buoyant Heavy-Lift Systems" as well as "Missions and Vehicle Concepts for Modern, Propelled, Lighter-Than-Air Vehicles" both documents are from the early 1980s and contain airship concept like the one in the picture of this blog post. A quad rotor heavy lift airship by Goodyear Aerospace. We also found another two documents in the AIAA Archives that you can download from them. One is called "Effects of atmospheric turbulence on a quadrotor heavy lift airship" the other one "Dynamic stability of a buoyant quad-rotor aircraft" both documents are from 1983. If you like airships and have not yet subscribed to Airshipworld please do so by clicking here it's free and you will get the new posts delivered directly to you. Also if you know of any other documents or projects with heavy lift airships let us know post a comment or send us an email.

Vehicle Concepts and Technology Requirements for Buoyant Heavy-Lift Systems - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: Vehicle Concepts and Technology Requirements for Buoyant Heavy-Lift Systems

Missions and Vehicle Concepts for Modern, Propelled, Lighter-Than-Air Vehicles - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: Missions and Vehicle Concepts for Modern, Propelled, Lighter-Than-Air Vehicles

Goodyear Blimp in pictures

© Paul Csizmadia

I came across these great photographs of the Goodyear Blimp on Flickr. They are taken by p.csizmadia which I think stands for Paul Ciszmadia. Besides the great collage that you see in this blog post he also made the individual pictures available. Here are the links:

1. Goodyear Airdock Hangar Fly-By!
2. The Approach!
3. Performance Climb!
4. Goodyear Airdock!
5. Goodyear Airdock Hangar!
6. "Spirit of Goodyear"
7. Upward Bound!
8. How About a Ride?
9. Blimp Attack!
10. Double-Take Off!
11. Airdock Roof!
12. Goodyear!
13. Hangar Doors!

Do you have some great airship pictures that you would like to share send them to us or give us the link we are more than happy to feature them on the blog.

Goodyear Blimp Accident ?

I just found this video of the Goodyear Blimp on YouTube.

Goodyear Blimp Accident

The info to the video states that the video is from 5/27/1995 in Carson,California so it's a few years ago but I couldn't find anything about a Goodyear Blimp Accident on the web at that time. But maybe I haven't searched enough.
Do you know anything about this incident ? Let us know and discuss it in our Forum or send us an Email or post a comment in the comments section of this post.

Also you might have seen these new links right below the post. Using these links you can share our articles with the rest of the world. Right now we provide links for del.icio.us, Digg, and StumbleUpon which are the most popular social bookmarking sites on the web that allow you to share those articles that you like. Do you want more or less options? Do you maybe want to be able to send an article as email to someone? Let us know we are happy to add anything that you ask us to and that makes sense.

The airship blogosphere

The Blogosphere is big there are probably more than 113 million blogs on the web and of course Airshipworld is not alone when it comes to airship focussed blogs. With the still dysfunctional Colorado Airship-List we at Airshipworld have to turn more to the web as a news source and of course that includes a lot of Airship related Blogs, so let's take a look at the latest headlines of other airship blogs.

Of course there is Blimpin' Ain't Easy where Keith keeps us updated on the live of the Metlife Blimp and his life as an airship pilot. These were some of the recent posts:

• Out of the Hanger
• Hanger Talk
• Blimp Wash
  

Another Blog that we just recently discovered is the Goodyear Blimp Blog. Since our last post February 26th they haven't been sleeping and posted three new articles on their blog here they are:

• Want to fly the blimp?
• ESPN The Weekend
• Visiting California pilot

Last but not least for today I want to mention one of the all time favorites the Airshipventures Blog UpShip! Alex and Brian Hall have been a part of our reporting since the very early days and we won't stop bringing you updates from them, just like their newest updates.

• Cover Up
• 6 inches

That's it for today, we will continue with a similar post on non English blogs and websites. Check the Mailinglist and discuss this entry there, do you know of any blog that we haven't mentioned yet but should mention in a future post? Please also give us feedback on our previous post about the Airshipworld Conference. What do you think?

It's gonna be a GoodYear for Blimps

Excuse the little pun in the title but it's true the new year starts out good for airships and it seems Goodyear has caught the blogging virus.
So as always it's quiet for a while around Goodyear and their Blimps and then bang they throw themselves back in to our radar.
Quite an old story that I almost completely missed was pointed out by Michael Vinarcik on the Airship-list. An old Lady who worked for Goodyear for 29 years got a ride on the Blimp for her 100th Birthday. The story that Michael pointed out can be found is this one Her 100th Birthday Wish? A Ride on the Goodyear Blimp! but we researched a bit and found some more. First some pictures from Ohio.com that you can get here and a short video clip from Weathernet5.com available here.
And then of course was the 50th Daytona 500 the most important and prestigious race in the NASCAR series on February 17th 2008 that got quite a bit of media coverage and of course also including the Goodyear Blimp. Rick Zitarosa on the Airship-list pointed out that USA Today featured a great Interview with Chief pilot Larry Chambers of the Spirit of Innovation. It's worth a read and quite enjoyable to get an inside scoop from someone inside of the Blimp. Speaking of inside scoop that brings us back to the title of this blogpost. As you might already have seen from the image that is attached to this article Goodyear has now an official Blimp Blog. Of course we are going to keep an eye on it and inform you if there is something happening that's worth noting. The author of the Blog is Martin Chandler, Assistant Chief Pilot. Since the Blog just started the beginning of February there are only 4 posts as of yet. But I am sure it will be growing. Here are the links to the first entries:

• Cold fronts and Speed Weeks
• Speed Weeks media blitz
• 50 years of Daytona plus one day
• Picture perfect

This is the second airship pilots blog after Keiths Blimpin' Ain't Easy Blog. Go check out Keiths Blog, he recently passed his checkride and is now an airship pilot, flying with the Metlife Blimps. He also posted a nice slide show of the past 5 months in his latest blog entry.
Do you know of any other Airship Blogs that are written by someone working with one of the current operators? Maybe Zeppelin, Ros Aerosystems or Worldwide Aeros?

Blimp Pictures

I just found a nice website with lot's of Blimp pictures that I wanted to share with you. It's http://www.photovault.com in their Aerospace and Aviation section they have a nice collection of Blimp pictures featuring the Goodyear Blimps and some others. Check them out here. Regarding the Goodyear Blimps check out the Exhibition that's currently running in the Zeppelin Museum.

Goodyear meets Zeppelin

Today I would like to talk about Jens Schenkenberger a Zeppelin and Airship enthusiast from Germany. He has a nice website called Zeppelinfan.de that is worth a visit, he has a wealth of information about Airships available for the interested. His website is also available in English, even though the most content is available in German. Click here for the english version of his Website. He also has put together an Exhibition about the Goodyear Blimp operations out of Akron Ohio. The exhibit can bee seen in the "Grenz-Raum" of the Zeppelin-Museum Friedrichshafen (Lake Constance in Germany) from November 16th, 2007 to January 6th, 2008. The exhibit features models, authentic airship parts, photos, magazines, merchandise, and more. Unlike many other Companies in the Airship Business Goodyear has the longest running tradition with their blimp business. Check out the articles in German and English on his Website for more information about the exhibit. So if you happen to be in Germany make a trip to Lake Constance and visit the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen. Go to their Website for more details on how to get there and when they are open.
If you want to read more about the Goodyear Blimps check out these related stories:

• The Goodyear Blimp makes the news.
• YouTube Airship stuff - part 2 (featuring a Video of the Goodyear Blimp)
• Want to pilot the goodyear blimp ?
• Airship pictures roundup
• About "Airship Advertising"

YouTube Airship stuff - part 2

We are continuing our You Tube Airship roundup with another 5 videos that we found. The first one is again a historical Video from the 1930s. A report about the Akron, and how she was damaged by a gale

Sudden Gale Akron at Lakehurst NJ 1932/02/22 (1932)

The second video is a short amateur video of a flight in a hot-air blimp, showing start and landing, in flight inside and from the ground.

AIRSHIP JOURNEY ON EASTER 2007

In our third video we are going the historic route again with a short clip from Curly's Airships a Project about the British R101 airship.

Curly McCloud Lives

Number four takes us back to New York and the arrival of the Hindenburg, after the fastest Atlantic crossing ever made by a commercial passenger aircraft.

Giant Dirigible Sets Record, 1936/05/11 (1936)

Last but not least we come back to current times and come full circle with this last Video of the Goodyear blimp landing. Why full circle, you might think, well because it was Paul Boldt who started this by posting on the Airshiplist and he won, a flight in the Goodyear blimp, and has captured his experience in a Photo gallery. Check them out here, you have to register to see it, but it's painless and only takes a few seconds.

Goodyear Blimp Landing

That's it those are the videos we wanted to share with you tonight, are there videos you like to share? Send them to us or post them in the comments. Do you have your own videos on YouTube and we haven't found them yet, tell us write us an email. We love to see what you have, even if it's not videos if you have pictures of airships or a website that you would like us to mention, drop us a line and we can work something out. Oh and in case you have not read the previous post here is a link to it.
YouTube Airship stuff - part 1
Also remember to subscribe to the feed if you haven't already, and come to the Airship Parade in Bad Homburg if you are in the area, if you send us an email ahead of time we might be able to meet.
Links:

• Announcing the 5th Airship Parade Bad Homburg
• 9 Airships in one location and you don't know how to get there ?

The Goodyear Blimp makes the news.

The last few days have been quite packed with Goodyear Blimp news, this post tries to sum them up and give a short overview about what is going on with it.

June 25th

James from Googlesightseeing blogged about the Goodyear Blimp appearances on Google Maps and Google earth. Go to Googlesightseeing for the pictures and direct links to Google Maps.

July 22nd

Bob Collins, posted two very nice pictures of the Goodyear Blimp on his Blog Stirrings from the empty nest.

July 26th

Newswatch 50 reported about the Goodyear Blimps stop at the Watertown Airport which will be on Wednesday August 1st.

Flysouth Aviation News Africa had an Article about the Goodyear blimps stop at Airventure in Oshkosh last week also containing a picture of the blimp.

July 27th

"I'm a Cuckoo" posted on her MySpace page that she had seen the Goodyear Blimp over Arcata, California.

JR posted took picture of the Goodyear Blimp while it was flying over his golf course. Check it out at noded.com.

The Aero-News Network released an article about the Spirit Of Goodyear Blimp and it's return to Oshkosh.

July 28th

The Aero News network released a nice 4 minute video documentary about the Goodyear blimp. It includes and Interview with one of the pilots Matthew St. John.

July 30th

The Washington post just released a very nice article about the flight of a contest winner in the Goodyear Blimp.

The Goodyear blimp is also featured in the current advertising campaign with the slogan "Get There" which you can check out on the web. There are two video ads that feature the blimp. Having so much news coverage in such a short time, shows how impressive the public awareness is when an airship flies over their heads. There were even more blog posts and articles in the last few weeks. If you think we have missed a very important article or if you want us to report about your airship sighting, project or venture just email us or leave a comment.

Want to pilot the goodyear blimp ?

The website Jetemployment offers jobs in the global aviation industry, and this time in the LTA (Lighter Than Air) industry. Their current job offering is for a "Zeppelin Pilot", but to be more precise they do not look for a Zeppelin pilot but for a blimp pilot no just any blimp no they are looking for a pilot of the Goodyear Spirit of America the job offering reads the responsibilities in this job as follows:

• Operating the airship safely, effectively and efficiently to assure optimum utilization of the aircraft for favorable exposure of the Goodyear name.
• In concert with the Pilot-in-Charge, accomplishing public relations assignments by planning, organizing, directing, operating, maintaining and administering the airship operation, including airship, personnel, passenger safety and ground support equipment and obtaining maximum exposure of the company name.
• Commanding and assuming responsibility for the aircraft and functional operation during take-off, flight and landing when piloting alone.
• Assisting in forward planning of airship mission requirements with respect to travel accommodations (airports and motels) movement of the airship and ground support service vehicles and airship personnel.
• Assisting the Pilot-in-Charge in ensuring compliance with all company standard practice and policies, as well as FAA Regulations.

If you want to read the full job offering go to http://jetemployment.com/zeppelin-pilot/.
It sounds like a great job, and if you need more information go to www.goodyearblimp.com and check out the Goodyear Website. I just discovered it, via this job posting and have to say it's a really great site with lot's of background information and nice videos and images. It's worth a look even if you don't want to become an airship pilot.