Airship Surveillance Inc - starts assembly

Duncan from the Blimpship Blog has been first to market with this but we were caught up in our birthday celebrations and in answering one of his questions he asked in the forum ;-) But we don't want our readers to miss out on the latest Press Release of Airship Surveillance Inc. which marks press release number 6 this month. ´Here is what it says:

Mar 25, 2008 06:15 ET

Airship Surveillance Starts Assembly of First Mission Equipped Airship

LAS VEGAS, NV--(Marketwire - March 25, 2008) - WENR Corp. (PINKSHEETS: WNRC) announced today Airship Surveillance, a Nevada-based high technology airship company and a strategic marketing partner of WENR, has been requested to supply components of its L2 airship to a customer for the compatibility development with their sensor equipment. The request will be fulfilled in early April. Final completion of the L2 airship is anticipated to occur during the second quarter of this year.

Airship Surveillance has begun assembly of the L2 payload support section which, when completed, will be shipped to an instrumentation developer for initial integration and compatibility testing. The client and details of the program are to remain confidential; however, the payload bay will be delivered to a firm which develops cutting edge sensors and other instrumentation for the Department of Defense and Homeland Security.

"The sensors are being optimized for use in the fight against Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and in support of US Customs and Border Protection. Once the sensors have been integrated and tested, Airship Surveillance anticipates the payload section will be mated to the airship to begin flight testing under Government supervision within Restricted Airspace," stated Sandy Mangold of Airship Surveillance.

Mr. Dan Green of WENR, a strategic partner of Airship Surveillance, commented, "This is another exciting development for our Company. This news follows the LOI supporting the use of the airships in the fight against narcotics & terrorism, which Airship Surveillance received last week. This latest development proves that there is a very real demand for the products and services the Airship offers in support of the persistent surveillance mission for a growing number of government organizations."

About Airship Surveillance

The company is developing a series of advanced unmanned airships designed to fulfill a wide range of roles ranging from surveillance to environmental monitoring. The company's airships are built to be robust, yet simple to operate with the twin goals of providing highly reliable airborne platforms at an affordable cost.

About WENR

WENR is a holding company, which seeks to acquire marketing rights in various growth stage companies. WENR provides senior management assistance, secures working capital for marketing development, and delivers tailor made campaigns.

The foregoing contains forward-looking information within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements involve certain risks and uncertainties. The actual results may differ materially from such forward-looking statements. The company does not undertake to publicly update or revise its forward-looking statements even if experience or future changes make it clear that any projected results (expressed or implied) will not be realized.

Contact:
WENR Corp.
Dan Green
310.410.4426

If you haven't checked out the Blimpship Website you should give it a look. Duncan joined Airshipworld in the quest of bringing you the reader great airship related news. Here are some of his latest Posts:

• Auction for Goodyear Blimp Ride
• Satellite Roles for Airships and UAS
• Goodyear Blimp Warming In Ohio
• Remote Controlled (RC) Blimp Article
• Walney Island Airship History
• Future of Russian Airship Aviation

Happy 1st Birthday to Airshipworld

© Adventure Balloons

Yes you are reading right. Airshipworld just got 1 year old. This day March 25th 2007 we started with this project. And now 1 year and 220 blog posts later we can celebrate our first anniversary. I want to thank everyone who helped us along the way, all the support and positive feedback we got from the community and members of the industry. I want to thank everyone who subcribed to the Blog via email or the RSS feed and get their daily dose of airship news delivered right to them every time we post something. I want to thank the more than 10 000 unique visitors that visited the blog more than 20 000 times and generated almost 45 000 pageviews. A special thanks goes out to those that supported us financially with donations and of course I want to thank my family, because they had to bear me spending hours writing blog posts and researching new articles on the web.
We are still a relatively new and small Blog but we want to continue to grow, so that we have an even more successful second year. Looking back at the first year of blogging three events stuck out of the statistics, unfortunately two of them were also the saddest moment. The first was the destruction of the Zeppelin NT Prototype in Botswana in September 2007. The second was the destruction of the Total Pole Airship January 2008. Those two events were also the most work intensive ones. A more positive spike followed the surfacing of the Lockheed Martin P-791 video. There were many more events that I enjoy remembering like the RC-Airship Regatta in Munich or the Airship Parade in Bad Homburg at both events we were able to shot some great exclusive video that has been featured on the Blog.
We have really been able to establish a world wide readership on all 6 continents in 119 countries and more than 3500 cities. Check out this map to see where the Airshipworld readers came from.

The darker the green the more visitors came from the country, so as you can see the USA with more than 40% of the visits is the darkest, followed by Germany and the UK with each more than 10% of the visitors. The remaining 40% of the visitors is scattered all over the world making Airshipworld a truly international Blog. Thanks again for your continued support and for reading the blog. Continue to spread the word.
Our next big project is the Airshipworld Conference and our quest for Speakers, feedback and ideas are always welcome. By the end of this week we will give you an update and a preliminary programme so if you want to present your project or hold a presentation hurry and let us know. To another great year of airship blogging.

A Question of Temperature - Warm air and Superheat

Duncan from the Blimpship website and blog asked an interesting question in the forum, he asks:

I've been reading more and more about the operations of airships recently and can't decide whether I'm missing something or there is some contradictory information out there.

Some info speaks of the rise in outside (air) temperature and how it degrades the performance of an airship, whilst other reports tell of how sun warming the envelope (and I assume heating the helium inside) provides increased lift.

Can anyone clear this up for me? What effect does temperature have on the capability of an airship?

Since I don't want to leave Duncan in the dark and nobody else has responded yet. I will try to bring a little bit of clarity. If I make any mistakes, please correct me.
So there is one major thing that makes airships fly and that is static lift, generated through the helium in the envelope. If an airship is flown light it has positive buoyancy, if it is flown heavy one speaks of negative buoyancy. Usually airships are flown slightly heavy so that they always sink back down to earth in case of an engine failure, the last bit of lift is usually aerodynamic lift generated through the forward movement of the airship. Since the helium in the envelope has a specific density, the air surrounding the airship either has a slightly higher or lower density or exactly the same if the airship is in equilibrium.
Now coming back to Duncans question. So now we have to go back to our old physics classes and think about temperature and density. If we look at the density of air we see that the warmer the air the lower the density. This leads so far that you can heat up the air and start flying, for example in a hotair-airship. So hot air rises because it's less dense, that means for our airship if it is flying from cold into warm air it looses lift because the density difference smaller. That is the one side of the medal which says warm air is bad for airships.
On the other side we have a term called Superheat, this describes the process of an airship heating up and becoming lighter because in addition to it's usual lift through the helium we now have warm helium that just like air has a lower density and produces more lift. Superheat happens when the sun warms up the helium in the envelope, which happens faster than the warming of the surrounding air. And suddenly the airship becomes a lot lighter.
Those two effects have a strong impact on airships and their performance and have to be taken in account when constructing and flying an airship. While I was researching for this blog entry i found a few articles on the web that are worth a read.
Especially a 12 Page Article written by David Samuels called "The Light Stuff — Learning to fly the Goodyear blimp" which was published 2003 in the New Yorker. But also the most recent entry in the Goodyear Blog mentions superheat. And last but not least we found an article on the Website of 21st Century Airships that mentions superheat. I hope that this answeres the question of Temperature and maybe we can pick up the discussion in the Forum. I am sure there is more to talk about. What other environmental parameters have to be taken into account? Rain, Snow, Wind ? Let's discuss in the Forum. If you enjoyed reading the article please consider posting it to Digg, Stumble Upon and Del.icio.us

The home made Robotic Blimp

© Surveyor Corporation

The Surveyor Corporation is currently working on constructing a small robotic blimp called YARB 1.0 (Yet Another Robotic Blimp) in their weekly update on their Build Log they report their progress regularly. It's quite impressive what is possible with just a little bit of electronics. So if you are interested in remote controlled blimps, autonomous blimps, and UAVs head over to the YARB Buildlog. They also have a video of each development step on their Site and on YouTube.

Lockheed Martin P-791 article

I just stumbled over this article about the "P-791 hybrid airship project". The P-791 is Lockheed Martins "secret" hybrid airship project that we have reported on a lot also in conjunction with the Skycat a project which is a little bit to similar to the P-791 for some. Check out the article it goes a little bit into detail on the airship and the project and the history behind and of course our regular Hindenburg disaster reference is also in it.

• P-791 hybrid airship project

More on Airship Surveillance Inc.

© Airship Surveillance Inc.

We did a little bit of searching and dug out a couple press releases concerning Airship Surveillance Inc. Here are they in newest to oldest order, most interesting is probably the newest one released this Thursday regarding the Letter of Intent by Auxillia a company focusing on Unmanned System Technologies.

• Airship Surveillance Receives LOI From Auxilia
• Airship Surveillance Begins Construction of L2 Airship
• Airship Surveillance Announces Successful Airship Test
• Airship Surveillance Appoints New Board Member
• Airship Surveillance Sets First Flight Target Date
• Airship Surveillance Announces Testing Milestone
• First Airship to Be Launched in March
• WENR Negotiating Marketing Agreement for Airship

The configuration of the propulsion system used by Airship Surveillance is very similar to that of Daniel Geerys Hyperblimp and of course can also be seen in some of the airships flown during the RC Airship Regatta. Check out the videos of Hinkelstein, Homer and LarsPing. If you have more info about Airship Surveillance or want to discuss the role of UAVs and airships for security purposes head over to our Forum and start a new topic, it's now integrated into the Airshipworld site and looks mighty fine. Let us know what you think. Also please remember that we are still looking for speakers for the Airshipworld Conference the end of May 2008. If you have a topic that you would like to talk about please let us know by the end of the week.

AVICTA Complete Cotton Airship - Tour

Another high profile airship tour is making it's way through the Southern United States. The AVICTA Complete Cotton Airship is on a tour also partnering with the Believe In Tomorrow Childrens Foundation. Thanks to the Blimp operations Yahoo Group for pointing out the links to the websites.
Here is also a YouTube Video of the Avicta Blimp over the Mississippi River:

Check out the Avicta Blimp Page which contains slideshows and a map where the blimp was. The airship is currently somewhere around the Mississippi River. Also read on about the Believe In Tomorrow campaign.