VFR Over the Top

The ship left Moffett Field this morning for Long Beach.

At this time of year, we often battle coastal marine layer. Today was no exception.

The view from the summit towards Monterey Bay wasn't looking good.

View from the Ground - Elevation 1850 feet

However there was a clear path *over* the layer, through the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Course over the Santa Cruz Mountains

And the view from the airship was inspiring...

Sailing Monterey Bay over a cushion of clouds...

Captain Deyling

Look for the airship to arrive later today in Long Beach.

You can follow the journey via our "Track the Ship" page.

Unwired Planet Makes Debut Saturday

Today Unwired Planet announced their branding of the airship in support of their recent re-branding of themselves. They had been known as Unwired Planet in their early days, then renamed to Openwave Systems for roughly the last decade. Recently they spun off their products and services business and have re-positioned the company to focus on licensing their extensive portfolio of mobile related IP.

This marks the first B2B (business to business) technology branding client of Eureka, fitting for a ship home based in Silicon Valley.

You can learn more at http://www.unwiredplanet.com/

Weather permitting, the ship will come out of the hangar tomorrow and head for LA.

After the Memorial Day weekend trip to LA, look for the ship over Silicon Valley and San Francisco during late May and early June!

Video: Zeppelin Flight Experience from Long Beach

Just in time for our upcoming trip to Long Beach, we have posted this video of the experience on YouTube.

Join us this Memorial Day weekend for Los Angeles area flights from Long Beach.

We even have an opportunity to experience the "Ultimate Drive Down the Coast" flight as we transit the airship between Moffett Field (San Francisco) and Long Beach (Los Angeles).

You can book online, or speak to reservations at 650-969-8100.

Video: Masting the Zeppelin NT

Last year on the Covering Communities Tour, we took advantage of having a pair of GoPro cameras during our stay in Philadelphia to shoot video of a masting -- from the perspective of the mast!

We placed one camera near the funnel on the top of the mast head looking out, and a second camera at the base of the mast head looking up.




Thanks go to David Knight of Big Moving Pictures for taking the raw video and editing it into this draft form for sharing.

Air Quality Environmental Research via Zeppelin

D-LZFN, Mainz, Germany

Captain Oliver Jaeger sent us this picture of newly re-built ship #2, D-LZFN, during a transit stop in Mainz, Germany. The ship is on a mission conducting atmospheric science for the PEGASOS Project (Pan European Gas AeroSOls climate interaction Study)

If you look closely, you'll see the "top platform" mounted high on the ship. This platform contains some of the instruments being used in the mission. The platform itself weighs about 130kg, and loaded with all the instruments for this mission, just under 500kg. Additional equipment is mounted inside the gondola.

The equipment in the top platform is being used to measure:

• Hydroxyl radicals (OH radicals): the “detergent of the atmosphere”, which triggers the degradation of most pollutants.
• Aerosols
• Substances that play a role in forming and degrading the OH radical and are found in aerosol chemistry (NOx, ozone, volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide).

You can learn more at the PEGASOS blog.


This project first started back in 2006-2007, with the development and testing of the top-platform. Further air quality measurement flights were conducted in Germany in 2008-2009. In the current 2011-2013 campaign, the ship will head for the Netherlands (current trip), followed by a Southern trip to Italy (June/July) and then finally a Northern trip to Finland (April/June 2013).

For those that have interest in doing similar research with the Zeppelin NT in North America, please contact our Special Missions group.

Video: NASA Ames Helps Search For and Study Sutter's Mill Meteorites

Branding Resumes

Just as the branding works was about to be completed last week, we were interrupted by the Meteorite Mission. I think everyone agrees the delay was well worth it!

Branding work resumed over the weekend.

Almost done!

To Fly...

650-969-8100... Almost!