Local Boy Makes Good

Our own Dustin Kimmel appeared in the Pontiac Daily Leader this weekend. You can take the boy out of Pontiac (IL), but you can't take Pontiac out of the boy.

Our crew, waiting at Tustin!

We better NOT need a crash crew!

Airship Art

Portion of a frieze at the airport...

I see you

Headed to San Diego on United, I saw the airship below!

(Click the picture for a hi-res version, where you can see the airship over the green, a bit to the left of the center of the picture)

Long Day -- Back at LGB

San Diego Transit Map

I'm keeping track of the ship's progress from the office via our Tracking page, but we also regularly compile that data into a mapping file. So, for all the Google Earth enthusiasts out there, here's our transit from Moffett Field, CA, Long Beach, CA, to San Diego, CA as a KML file (right-click and "Save File As" to download)!

(And Download Google Earth here for free, if you don't already have the program.)

Enroute to Torrey Pines

The ship departed Long Beach about 9am. We expect to be at Torrey Pines about 11am. Woot!

No more light

Gorgeous sunset

Santa Maria

The setting sun is turning the Farmers Airship golden as we cross
Santa Maria.

Morro Rock

Heading inland to San luis obispo and Santa maria to show off the
Farmers Airship. It is a beautiful afternoon.

San Simeon

We were asked to stay offshore for awhile. Now bringing the Farmers
Airship over towards Hearst Castle.

Route 1

The end of the clouds

Passing Monterey

Half Moon Bay

Sunshine! The fog filled Bay left behind! Half Moon Bay gets a look at
the Farmers Airship!

City by the Bay

To escape the bay we've had to fly north first, so the Farmers Airship
will be the first to actually do SF to LA!!

Breaking through

A blue patch of sky shows us a way and we spiral up to clear skies
with fog below. Can't really do this scene justice. One of the
passengers jokes that we're growing adventures aboard the Farmers
Airship!

Foggy morning

Farmers Airship is on it's way to LA after finding a hole in the fog!

And they're off!

Luftschiff Lös

The command is given to come off the mast...

Farmers Airship - Out of the Hangar

The Vinyl Countdown Part 3 - The Deliverance

Our 8am special delivery has arrived...

(Thanks Dustin!)

Vinyl Destination

Thanks to the miracle workers at Signs America / Sign*O*Rama, Marty & Mike, we chopped up our precious vinyl in no time and had it ready to adhere to the ship. Here's what it looked like:

Cutting Vinyl

Dustin has been over at the sign shop, getting the vinyl cut.

Here is a small clip (below) of the process from early this morning.

Only several dozen more panels to go!

Thinking Outside the Box

Jeremy and the crew have had to think outside the box in the past week to get the job done.

-- Matthew K.

The Vinyl Countdown Part 2 - The Arrival

The Vinyl Countdown

Ever try to find a roll of several hundred feet of tomato red vinyl? That you need same day. Probably not.

But Dustin was on it and managed to locate 4 rolls, 160 feet each, of the precious material Friday afternoon.

One roll was located locally, the other 3 down in LA.

Saturday afternoon, Michael C. picked them up in LA and they made their way up to base.

We'd embarked on The Vinyl Countdown

Next up... Sunday begins the manufacture process!

Naked After the Storm

We were out flying today (sold out!) for the first time this week after a series of big storms had hit the California coast.

Alot was going on today...

- A birthday party for a lucky 10 year old boy and his friends and family
- We had our eyes open for the site of a plane crash in the hills above Stanford.

Sharp eyes will notice the ship was flying naked (unbranded) for the first time in quite a while.

Hmm... What next?

Testing the storage bags

From Jeremy comes this photo of one of our helium storage bags being test inflated with air in preparation for our annual maintenance starting next month (scheduled for Feb 21 thru March 21).

During the annual we will be removing over 7000 cubic meters of helium from the ship to these bags, supporting the ship with a bracing system, performing an airframe inspection from inside the envelope (filled with air at that time) and then returning the helium back to the ship.

Sightseeing for Four - Doll Style!

Otis wasn't the only kid aboard Eureka today...

Lauren and Grace Dundee brought their dolls along. Lauren brought Samantha, and Grace brought Julia. Both the dolls have traveled all over the world with the Dundee family, and Samantha got to fly the airship today!

Samantha and Julia loved their flight with the Dundees.

What is your dream, and when will you fly with us to make it come true?

(Photos and text for the blog thanks to Herr Cierpka and Mr. Metzler)

The Otis Blimp

We had a lot of fun on our 30 minute Taste of Zeppelin flight today in Long Beach. Young Otis Birnbaum came to fly with his blimp costume on and he had a great time. The whole crew enjoyed his costume and his enthusiasm for airships.

Otis fell in love with airships when he saw the Goodyear Blimp flying over the Oscars in Hollywood at the age of one and a half. Otis had a blimp cake for his second birthday, and then when he needed to decide what to be for Halloween, what else would a two year old want to be than a blimp?

Otis' dream came true today when he got to fly aboard the magical Eureka, a machine of dreams for kids of all ages.

About.com: Zeppelin Tour Over Hollywood

On one of our recent trips to LA, Kayte Deioma of About.com flew with us. She had previously covered our Long Beach tour.

The result is the engaging story and photo gallery of her experience on our Sunset Studio Tour flight, which you can check out over at About.com.

Highlights of the tour included Universal Studios Hollywood, Downtown LA, Dodger Stadium, the Hollywood Sign, Jay Leno Racetrack, UCLA, Beverly Hills Hotel, Playboy Mansion, and to cap it off, a picture perfect sunset over Santa Monica, and the lights of LA coming on as her cruise came to a conclusion.

We regularly offer this tour on our visits to Los Angeles, with bookings available for our next visit to LA in February.

(Photos copyright Kayte Deioma)

Avalon

Island Airport

Two Harbors

Catalina, here we come!

Today is our first test run to experiment with a Catalina Island tour.
Based on this trip, we'll decide the best way to present it
commercially on a future visit of Eureka to Long Beach.