Airship Ventures: July 2011

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Flag Received

Left to right, Zach Gable, Rod Hightower, Troy Garber, Dave Fritz, heading back to the announcers stand.

Delivering the Flag

Miltary veterans who are members of our team receive the flag for delivery to EAA President Rod Hightower.

Firefly Electric Helicopter

The cockpit of the Sikorski "Firefly" all electric helicopter.

For airships, I believe diesel-electric would be the way to go.

Friday, July 29, 2011

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Propeller from the Macon

Made by Hartzell, this propeller was used on the rigid airship Macon in the 1930s.

Gathering of Eagles Auction

Someone tonight will win this charter for 10 while supporting tge Young Eagles program.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Happy Face

Smiles all over Oshkosh - earlier today we caught the airship at the same time as a skywriter.

Jim Dexter Receives NAA Award

Jim Receives award on the Ground

And in the air!

First OSH Flight

Here is a nice view of OSH caught by Matthew Kilkerr.

Matthew was aboard our first flight this morning, a short test flight after changing a gasket.

Nice to be in the air over AirVenture!

Monday, July 25, 2011

Field Bug

EAA has 60-80 of these for use during the show as runabouts.

Lycoming Pays a Visit

Michael Kraft and other executives from Lycoming stop by for a ground tour of the ship. Our Zeppelin makes use of 3 Lycoming IO360s

Sunday, July 24, 2011

An early start and a long day tomorrow, so here, a few hours early, the promised "spotters card" for the poster art...

We managed to squeeze in a few of my all-time favorites, the Horten IX (Ho229) flying wing jet fighter (1945), Wolfgang Späte's red Me163 "Komet" rocket powered interceptor (1944), and Manfred Freiherr von Richtofen's Albatros of Jasta 11 (1917).

If only we could get Northrop-Grumman to send the Ho229 replica -- currently housed at the San Diego Air and Space Museum -- to the show some day!

Also featured are some fantastic planes you'll see at the show -- from an example of the fine design work of Burt Rutan, to the legendary P-51 and B-17.

Enjoy!

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Flight Ops Training

Dave and Ginny conduct a recurrency course for our passenger operations team in preperation for the busy week ahead.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Oshkosh 2011 Poster Art

Robert, Matthew and Maria have done it again, and produced a fantastic poster, t-shirt, and note-card to commemorate our visit to Oshkosh. We will have them available for sale at the Farmers Airship booth on the flight line, as well as at our passenger operations center at the EAA Museum.

There are 41 aircraft depicted in the poster. Some of which will be at the show, some of which we took some artistic license with.

Can you name them all?

I'll post our "spotters card" with a legend for all 41 on Monday.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Masted

On mast 5:56pm local time.

Preparing to Land

International mast truck just arrived to the field.

Cheese Curds

Clearly we are in Wisconsin.

Cheese curds are a local snack favorite.

Pulling in to OSH

We're starting to gather in Oshkosh - airship is on the way, some of the support folks are already here and the rest will be here soon.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Flying Cloud Expo and Air Show

Ginny caught this awesome picture of our shadow gracing a warbird at the Flying Cloud Airport Expo and Air Show.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Found that Part

Karsten Kube of Germany ended up the winner of our "Name that Part" blog post.

He had seen the part on display at the Zeppelin hangar in Friedrichshafen.

I must say, we were not expecting that!

We've sent Karsten a set of Airship Ventures poster-art note cards.

Congratulations to the winner!

Eureka Best Seat in the House for Fireworks in Chicago

Fireworks flights are something special indeed.

Our last "Fireworks Flight" was in Long Beach, California, with the backdrop of Long Beach Harbor and the Queen Mary.

This year in conjunction with Farmers, we offered a Fireworks Flight over historic Navy Pier in Chicago. The flight was auctioned as a private charter, with the proceeds going to support the March of Dimes.

It just so happened that the local FOX camera team caught Eureka right in the midst of the show.

You can read more, and watch the video at myFOXchicago.com

Eureka can be seen very well from about 35 seconds in to 1:10.

Friday, July 8, 2011

Zeppelin on a Dome

A few weeks back while we were in Orlando, we happened to be there at the same time as a production company filming a documentary on the space shuttle. Our good fortune, as they were able to bring their equipment out to the field to catch Eureka in a special "dome" format intended to be shown at Full Dome Theaters commonly found at science centers.

More later, but here is one of the sample images (flattened out), which shown on a dome would place you right on the field with the airship surrounding you!

Thanks to Carolyn over at Loch Ness Productions.