New Website Discovered: Blimp-Operations.US

It's Tuesday and yes I have let you waiting for some reading material. But this is not the only post tonight, there is of course lot's in the pipes and so I try to do two if not even three posts tonight so that you have some stuff to read. So as the title says i found a new Website. Maybe the website is not new new but it's new to me and I haven't come across it yet. The site is called Blimp-Operations.us and focuses on what the name says: blimp operations in the US. It's a nice little site that i worth a browse it contains a few links to sites that I haven't known before. Two things I want to point out in particular. Number one is the discussion group of blimp operations on Yahoo. Just go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blimp_operations/ and send a request to join their group. It's a small group with just 26 people and not a lot of traffic usually less than a message per day but they are always pointing out nice links and bits about blimp operations in the United States. The other one is a Flickr pool of Blimp Operations that has some nice pictures of blimps in it. Most up to date are a few close up shots of the DirectTV Blimp.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

So that was the first post for tonight. Please consider subscribing to the Blog via Email or RSS and spread the word, get your friends hooked on airships.

Airship links for week number eight of 2008

I have been collecting quite a few links in the meanwhile on my del.icio.us account, but i have also saved a lot of them private and haven't shared them yet, hoping that I could write a blogpost about them one day. While i have shared already almost 200 links with you i also have almost 300 links that I haven't yet shared. So I thought before those links get all dusty and old, I am going to publish 10 links every week, for you to browse through and to empty out my queue. So let's get started, shall we.

1. Airshipworld.com
   Our inspiration and forefathers, the home of the Airshipworld Magazine which was formerly called Gasbag. The Magazine was produced up until 2003. Since then the website hasn't really been refreshed but it's a website that you should check out. If you know anyone from Airshipworld.com let em know that we want to help them revive the magazine.
2. Vertical Airships - airship.org
   Vertical Airships is a very interesting concept for an airship that is not traditionally cigar shaped instead it's very high leading to a smaller footprint on the ground compared to traditional airships. Check out this project by John Engstrom and give him some feedback on his project.
3. JP Aerospace
   Self titled as Americas OTHER space program the JP Aerospace program aims to reach space with lighter than air vehicles. The project dates back to January 2005 but recently it seems to gain traction, they also have a blog at http://www.jpaerospace.com/blog/
4. Wikipedia Entry: Airship
   Of course everybody knows about the Wikipedia enrty for "Airship" but i just want to remind everyone that everyone of us can go and improve this article, update it with new projects or add more historic references. Also the Wikipeadia references dmoz for edited links to Airships sites, currently there are only 10 in there but you can also become an editor and help filling this directory. We will also try to transfer some of our links to dmoz.
5. GOODYEAR BLIMP CONTEST: GlobalGiants.com
   This article about a Contest with the Goodyear Blimp, where students had to throw a basket ball out of the blimp into a hoop, was featured on GlobalGiants.com all the way back in March of last year, that was when we just started.
6. The Mooringmast
   This website has been around for quite a while and has always been a great point of reference for links to airship related websites, I wonder if the Airshipworld Blog is linked there.
7. Airship by John Dziadecki
   The godfather of all Airship websites, has been around for more than 10 years and is still one of the resources for reference when you want to get to know more about airships. John is also the owner of the often mentioned Colorado Airship-list the without a doubt longest running airship mailing list since November 1995.
8. Hybrid Aircraft Corporation
   Yes the resemblance of the airship displayed on the first page of their websites bares a striking resemblance to either the Skycat or the Lockheed Martin P-791. The never ending story has not yet been completely solved but HAC is another puzzle piece worth checking out.
9. American Blimp Corporation
   The American Blimp Corporation is owner of The Lightship Group and operates most of the Lightships all over the world. Their website seems a bit outdated but it's a good start if you want to get in contact with them.
10. Millenium Airship
    A cargo airship project that is looking for investors to build their Skyfreighter which is supposed to carry up to 500tons of cargo.

I hope you had some fun browsing through those websites, if you know of any sites that I should have mentioned today wirte us an email or post in the comments, and while we are posting links, if you have a website it would be great if you could link to Airshipworld.

Random airship stuff (ends up in court ) [updated]

Today I was just scanning the web a little finding some interesting articles and websites that I would like to share.
First of an article about the Dynalifter by Ohio Airships which was published in Popular Mechanics check it out here. The great thing about the article are the pictures showing details of the prototype. The article is from October 2006 but still i found it very interesting. It also mentions the Lockheed Martin P-791 produced by their Skunk Works Company here is a link to a very good picture of it. Also there is an Article at Aviation Week talking about the P-791 airship. If you dig a bit deeper and read the articles then one name pops up, TCOM a manufacturer of airship envelopes, they must have built the envelope for the P-791 but they also must have built the envelope for the Spirit of Dubai at least it's pictured in on their Website. It's interesting how fast you can get around jumping from one article to the other, and finding the interconnections between all the different projects. I hope you liked my little dig through the web and found something interesting for yourself. Please share your favourite links, websites and projects with us. We need your help to bring airship news to everyone.
[Update] So as if the interconnections aren't enough the Aviation Week had also spoken about and everybody interested knows already about it. The P-791 looks an awful lot like the SkyCat designed by Roger Munk and now Lockheed Martin Corporation is trying to sue him for patent infringement. Dan Nachbar from PersonalBlimp posted this on the Airship-list. Here is the link to the Courtfiling Lockheed Martin Corporation v. Jeffery Munk et al. The Courtfiling lists as Defendant Jeffery Roger Munk, Advanced Technologies Group Ltd and Skycat (UK) Ltd, so this is against the old ATG and Roger Munk. We do not know what is going on but we will keep an eye on this, and make it as public as we can, since the Sky Kitten flew way before the P-791 I would call it prior art. But I am not a lawyer and we do not know the whole picture. If anyone has more information about this case please let us know.
Also as a reminder there is the XLTA organised by Dan Nachbar from June 1-3rd 2007 read about it in one of our previous Posts.

The Friedrich Files, WDL and la Compagnie des Dirigeables

So in lack of really great news on the April Sunday we are going to introduce you to some websites. Some of them might already be known to you, but maybe some are are new. First I would like to introduce The FriedrichFiles it's a site containing a pretty extensive list of airship manufactures and their crafts and some pictures of airships like the one on the right. Definitely worth checking out.
The next page I want to point to is the homepage of WDL LUFTSCHIFFGESELLSCHAFT their homepage is available in german and english. WDL is a Manufacturer of Airships and is the only manufacturer of full size advertising blimps with all necessary permissions and CofA for the US, Japan and Germany. Check them out they also have some nice pictures of their airships on the site.
Last but not least we take a look at the French website of La Compagnie des Dirigeables they have a personal blimp, that can carry one person, and a very innovative inflatable hangar. Check out their site, there are also some great videos available. It's not necessary that you are able to read French, cause discovering what you can find behind the different links is actually quite interesting and fun.

Airship, Blimp and LTA Organisations

Tonight we would like to present a small link list of Airship, Blimp, Ballooning and Lighter-Than-Air organisations. Thi sis by no means a complete list, but we like to start this list today and regularly update it. We are also interested which of those Organisations you might belong to, which you consider important, on which we should report or which of them seem more or less irrelevant. So here is tonights list:

• Experimental Balloon and Airship Association
• The Lighter Than Air Society
• Assn of Balloon & Airship Constructors
• Airship Association
• Naval Airship Association

This is our first try of creating a list of airship organisations, but I am sure we forgot quite a few, especially international ones, germany, france? It would be great to get some input or comments about the listed organisations and the ones we haven't mentioned yet.
Another little side note, you might have noticed a slight change in the colors on the website and a new Airshipworld Logo, it's a first try and we are looking forward to your comments, and opinons. Over the next couple of weeks we will completely redesign the layout, since we started out with a basic Blogger template and now are on the way to our very own design. So please leave your comments in the comments section of this post or send us an email, feedback and criticism is really welcome.

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.

Airshipworld Website and News Roundup

Well thing are progressing, so a new Website has been registered today which will be the Information hub about Airships and the upcoming First International Airship Investors Conference(IAIC) in Cape Town, South Africa, to be held from January 15th-17th 2008. The Website is not online yet so linking to it doesn't really make sense, but as soon as there is more information available I will post it here.
Since there isn't really an Airship News website out there I will try to collect some interesting Links and news about Airships, Blimps and LTA Research everyday. Today I have two interesting things, both more fiction than reality but still.

Extreme resorts: Airship hotel brings a touch of 1930s glamour to the skies
The first Item is from FX Magazine a british design Magazine, they released an article about a flying hotel which of course is going to be an airship. The article has some quite inspiring computer renderings in it, and maybe we hear about this airship called Clipper again, it's presumably designed by a guy called Seymour Powell.

The Captain Mors Page
The next newsitem for today is a small website dedicated to the German Dime-Novel series Der Luftpirat und sein Lenkbares Luftschiff. ["The Pirate of the Air and his Navigable Airship."], also known as Kapitän Mors der Luftpirat. The series was published from 1908-11 it's interesting to see the images and sketches of the airship in this novel, but it's sience-fiction even today almost 100 years later, quite unbelievable, we flew to the moon but having airships cruise the sky is still a dream.


So this is it for todays news Items any comments on the blog would be greatly appreciated. Also if you have news that hasn't been covered here, please leave a comment on the blog, in a few days I will have set up an email adress for the blog to contact me. See you again tomorrow same place, same time.