Russian Airship Videos

Stanislav from PBO.ru(Translated English Page) posted a great video from the MAKS 2007 that we would like to share. If you do not remember read our post about MAKS from September 2007.
Тележурнал "Воздух!" №3 (click here to view the video)

More videos can also be seen at http://video.mail.ru/mail/fuodoroff/58/
PBO.ru is if I am correct the Russian Aeronautical Society. They have a great page about all Russian Airships as we have mentioned in May of this year

Total Pole Airship - in pictures and media

We first reported about the Total Pole Airship Expedition way back in April 2007. Back then details were sparse and we promised to keep an eye on the project. Well the wait is over. Here are our updates. After many months the Russian AU-30 (54 m long, 13,5 m diameter, 5,000 m3) built by RosAeroSystems has been completed. Check out this Flickr slideshow by Dominique Pipet

If you can not see the slideshow please go directly to Flickr and visit Dominique Pipet's photos of the Airship. But that's not the only bit we have for you. A few updates to the Total Pole Airship Website where totally (no pun intended) missed by our radar. So check them out, the first article from August 20th 2007 is entitled "Construction speeds up" the second one posted September 21, 2007 titled "Our airship arrives" next one from September 28, 2007 has the title "The balloon is filled" and the last one from October 16, 2007 with the title "The official christening of the Total Pole Airship at Marseille airport"
Also on a side note Jim Smith from the Airship-list pointed to this article "Monaco Prince to Go to North Pole on Russian Airship" which states that Prince Albert II may join the expedition next year. Jim Smith also found another good article here "TOTAL POLE AIRSHIP : Mesurer la banquise" (click here for the English translation). Searching through the site there was also another article with great pictures of the filling of the Airship check it out here Naissance d'un dirigeable (click here for the English version). And at the very end of that article was a link to a Video showing the filling of the airship in moving pictures. Check it out here. That's it for now, there is more material about the Total Pole Airship Project out there and we will pick up the topic again for sure as things are progressing. Make sure to check out all those links they contain many many nice pictures most of them that I haven't seen before. If you have any more websites, articles, links, videos or pictures that you would like to share, post a link in the comments or send us an email.

Aerocrat brings news from MAKS 2007

Aerocrat a Russian Airship and LTA Blog that we have mentioned before (here and here) has a long article about the Russian Airshow MAKS 2007 the article called КУДА ДУЛИ ВЕТРЫ НА МАКС-2007 can be read in an autotranslated english version from Worldlingo here WHERE YELLOW PEARS ARE WINDS ON MAX -2007 and in a Google auto translated version WHERE TO DULI VETRY MAKS-2007 both are far from perfect translations of the original russian post. But you can kind of get an understanding of what has been going on and the pictures of the Airship and Aerostats are also interesting and worth a look. Near the End of the Post the article mentions the RosAeroSystems Au-30 Patrol Airship that was supposed to be used during the Total Pole Airship Project. We will soon be looking into what the status of this project is. Also the RosAeroSystems PUMA Tethered Aerostat was mentioned. Since RosAeroSystems is a well known company them presenting their products was nothing new. More interesting was the mentioning of a Company called DKBA who has supposedly developed three airships according to anther source (translated Version) these are :

• a semi-rigid dirigible DP-20, intended for the transport of loads with a mass of up to 20 tons, the accomplishment of mission of observation and reconnaissance in the assigned regions.
• a rigid dirigible DP-55, intended for the transport of loads with a mass of up to 55 tons with the ability for year-round operation in all climatic zones
• a lenticular dirigible DP-70[t], intended for the transport of loads with the ability of year-round operation in all climatic zones (on the design basis of this dirigible they are studied the versions of dirigible with the load capacity 200-400t).

It's interesting to see what comes out of Russia, and we will further investigate this. If you know anything about this Company DBKA or the mentioned airships please contact us, since we do not know much about them or of any website of theirs yet.

Links:

• Russian Airshow MAKS 2007
• Russian Airship Blog
• Follow up to Lockheed and Livejournal airship websites
• Original post about the MAKS 2007 Airship by Aerocrat
• RosAeroSystems Au-30 Patrol Airship

Russian Air Force testing airships and the Navy MZ3A

According to an Interfax AVN Article posted by Jim Smith onto the Airship-list:

The Russian Air Force is exploring the ways of using airships for military purposes.

Unfortunately we do not have access to the Interfax source, so we refere to an article available on the Russia Info Center which is publicly available. According to the article the Aeronautial testing center hosts and operates the airships "Aerostatika-01" and "Aerostatika-02" and has trained over 10 pilots already. So it looks like Russia is actually investing in airships where as the Navy just took the MZ3A almost out of service. It could be seen at the Fleet Week at the end of May but that was already one of the last scheduled flights. Currently the MZ3A is still stationed in Lakehurst. It was supposed to go out of the official service by June 1st 2007 and remain under "pressure watch". Mid July the Airship still awaited it's deflation, until rumours surfaced that flight activities will be resumed in the late summer and early fall. So the hope remains that this is not the end of the Navy Airship programm. These informations come from Rick Zitarosa who continues to write great articles as emails to the Colorado Airship-list unfortunately he did not give us any permission to publish his articles, since there is no archive available those emails are lost in the Email Boxes of the subscribers, never found by Google or anyone researching airships. If you want to catch some of Ricks amazing articles, please sign up to the Colorado Airship-list one of the longest running Mailing lists, about and around Airships and LTA Technology. In parallel we try to contact John Dziadecki, and try to get an archive for the list up and running, so that we can link to the great articles and content available on the list, which should be preserved and not lost.

Links:

• Russian Air Force Never Forgot About Airships
• Interfax AVN (search for Airship) [password required to read articles

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.

List of all Russian airships

Stanislaw from pbo.ru today announced a new Website that lists all airships in Russia since 1991 the site is all russian but Google does a pretty good job in translating it. So if you can read russian check out the original site. If you can not read russian, which will probably be the majority of us, check out the translated page via Google. If you know of anymore Russian airships that might not be mentioned on the site, tell us and Stanislav so that they can be added. The email can be found in the contacts section on the pbo.ru Website

Total Pole Airship

I just discovered a new Project Website that I would like to share with you. It is the "Total Pole Airship" a project flying with an airship to the northpole.

In the context of the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2008, the Total Pole Airship expedition aims to measure the thickness of the pack ice layer covering the Arctic Ocean.

They will be using a russian AU-30 (54 m long, 13,5 m diameter, 5,000 m3) built by RosAeroSystems which will be prepared specially for this expedition.

Airship and Dirigibles history pages - Part 1

Today we take a look at a russian Website, since my Russian skills are not existant since I have never learnt that language I can only say, nice pictures of historc Airships in the early 1900s the first Page is in english but there are about 19 Pages of pictures none of them are in english. Whoever speaks russian and would be so nice, should get us those texts under the pictures translated. And while we are at it, and already pointed to some russian website, let's bring in the Navy Lakehurst Historical Society which also has some nice picture of the historic navy airships. Continuing our travels in the US there is also another Site dedicated to Historic Aiships and that is The Naval Air Station Tillamook Website, also containing many images and stories about Airhsips of the US Military.