Just so everyone knows

We thought we'd make sure she was recognizable as the Airship Ventures ship. The concept is similar to the luggage labels or stamps of old. She's got quite a journey ahead of her, but she'll be Going Places. The stamps you see here, drawn by Rob Walker and designed by Matthew and Maria, are San Francisco, Hollywood, Treasure Island, Lake Tahoe, Napa Valley, Yosemite and Moffett Field. Better pictures of the branding later.

Hello Ship!

I can hear the engines of #4 in the background as I sit in a warm conference room and type this. It's very cold this morning and overcast, but before the wind got too high, the decision was made to take her out of the hangar. Watched by an assortment of engineers, Zeppelin personnel and ourselves who had all managed to get in before 7am, #4 slowly came out of the hangar.

While we're waiting..

A weather front has moved in and the full run up engine tests which were to be done outside this morning have not happened. We are all watching the weather with a close eye to see when we might get the window for the final checks and then a window to fly. Watch this space.

In the meantime, here is a great picture from last week of feet inside the ship. I was fortunate to be able to go inside the Zeppelin before the helium was put in and to see the whole structure, ballonets (air bags) etc. It was quite an experience. The Zeppelin engineers were doing final pinhole checks on the air bags with a fog machine, having already done it with light. When the time came to exit the ship, we went down through the front ballonet, which was rather like walking into a dense nightclub atmosphere!

Sneeky peak

Sigh, there was so much sunshine last week, but the ship wasn't ready. Now she's ready, it rains.

I was on the airfield a week ago and was able to take this shot as #3 was emerging from the hangar. Yes, that's #4 sitting there with the Zeppelin NT brand on her.

Faking it

The Zeppelin NT simulator.
I want one of these.

"Thumbs Up" or "Fancy Meeting You Here"

Noted airship historian and author John Provan just happened to be out at Zeppelin this week with a film crew for a documentary project. Can't wait to see the results of his new project!

Belly Buttons -- An Innie or an Outie?

This was the last little bit of the envelope to be "sewn up". For better or worse, I decided to call this the "belly button" of the ship.

Brmmm Brmmm

Oliver, one of Zeppelins pilots, sat in the pilot seat of #4 this morning. He was accompanied by a number of engineers crouched around the cockpit. Outside, a team of mechanics prepped and waited. They were going to fire up the engines for the first time.

A few coughs and each engine was turned over a few times to get the oil pressure up. Finally, with all the safety precautions in place, the fuel valves were opened and in turn, each engine was fired up and run for a while. Much shaking of hands and big smiles!

As I type this, the conference room is filled with a low throb as the airship is in the hangar on the other side of the wall and they are continuing to test the engines. She almost feels alive.

Breaking free

After her helium filling yesterday, the ship spent the night still suspended from the ceiling of the hangar. This morning, the mast truck arrived to take her on board so that she could be released. The engineering teams were still working on final tests when quite a crowd assembled inside the hangar to watch. Slowly the mast truck inched towards the ship until they were almost nose to mast head. Then the mast was lowered until it was in line with the nose. A ground crew man climbed the mast to check that there were no obstructions and the nose line was pulled taught by the winch line until the nose settled into the clutch in the cup.

Overhead, two maintenance technicians on a large cherry picker started the process of removing the straps securing the ship to the hangar ceiling, and she was set free to sit on her landing gear. Cool.

Fill 'er up

The Linde Helium trucks arrived early on the 15th. As we walked into the hangar we were greeted with this unearthly wooshing noise, the sound of helium under very high pressure going through the nozzle and expanding into the hull. The expansion is so rapid that a sonic effect is set up and it's quite loud!

The filling took most of the day and then overnight the airship was on the helium purifier, getting rid of moisture, particulates and heavier atoms and molecules to leave the helium about 98% pure.

She is now an airship that could fly and yesterday she went from having assembly insurance to proper hull insurance. The first of a number of big events done!

Road Trip part 1

As previously mentioned, our intrepid Chief Pilot, Scott and Zeppelins Ground Crew Chief, Chris, are on the road this week investigating the port(s) where we are hoping to bring the ship in with the Airship on board. Then they are checking out each airport and field that we might use on the way to San Francisco. Logistics also have to be figured out - where is the nearest Avgas, helium, hotel, etc.

One of the biggest issues is determining whether there is enough clear space for the Zeppelin. Scott has visited many of these airfields before with blimps, but they are all smaller than the Zeppelin so it is essential that a very careful measurement of the potential space and all obstructions is done. As you can see, the team are employing what Scott terms 'the wheel of fortune'. If it gets to the right marker point, then we have a potential landing site!

Making a mark

One of the benefits of buying an airship is that you get to name it (more on that later) and you get to decide what is on that huge hull for the maiden flight. We want to make sure people know that she's on her way to California so we hope you'll enjoy the branding when you see the final pictures.

Most of it has yet to be put on (she's not called AI), but this is a cool picture from Josef Hueber at Airbornegrafix showing the process. Thanks Josef!

Waiting for gas.

Thursday is a big day for #4. The helium arrives. Not quite as big a day as it is for a blimp which would be flat until being inflated. But once the helium is in, then the Zeppelin can be released from the chains holding her airframe up and she'll be moored to a mast in the Hangar. This is the first step in getting her ready to fly.
At more than 8000 cubic meters, we're expecting several large tankers to arrive and the helium fill will probably take 24 hours or so.
For those who prefer non metric measurements, that's about 290,000 cubic feet or, if you assume a party balloon has a volume of about half a cubic foot, close to 600,000 party balloons.
Anyway, I thought you'd enjoy this picture....

Coming up....

Please bookmark our blog and stay in touch via our mailing list. The next six months are going to be CRAZY! Coming up on the blog...

• #4 in all her glory. She's almost ready to fly.
• Our Zeppelin Pilots-in-training will let you know about their adventures
• Our Chief Pilot, Scott, is on a long Road Trip with Zeppelin's Ground Crew Chief, Chris. Together they are scoping out the airports and sites that the airship will travel through on her way to California. Expect some pictures and posts from them as they cross many States.
• News of The Route that the airship will take once in the USA
• At least one post about all the onerous regulations to do with 'selling travel'.
• Lots of stories we wrote in the past but couldn't post for confidentiality reasons will finally get posted.
  

We hope you enjoy the ride with us!

Pinch me, it's really happening...

This past year has been quite a journey for us, from my first blog post about how we wanted a Zeppelin badly enough to figure out how to get one, to all the numerous trips, discoveries and ups and downs. Some people have asked us why we don't have slick videos or lots of artists impressions, after all, surely you need all that to sell your ideas? Well, to be honest, we've just not had the time. Every waking hour that we've spent building this company has been on removing the risks and barriers to making it happen.

You see, if you don't remove all the barriers, then when you go to ask people for investment, the first thing they say is "do you have X?" or "Have you planned for Y?". And in most cases, they aren't going to invest until the risk reaches a level that they are comfortable with. So you end up in a sort of catch-22, needing to spend money to get the issues dealt with so that you can find investors, but needing investors to provide you the money to spend!!

Fortunately, not everyone has the same feelings about risk. The earliest investors who take the biggest risk are often called Angels because they believe in you and help you when it's not at all clear when or even if, this will really happen. Aside from founders who often put a great deal of their own investment in, Angels are the first external people that validate what you are doing. They provide much needed emotional support and also a network of people that they can introduce you to. They are your first cheerleaders. Our first Angels joined us at the end of last year after we'd been on the fund raising trail for a couple of months having at least established that most of the issues could be overcome.

Angel funding then allows you to keep moving forward while you remove further risks and eventually you get to the point where you can close the funding deals with the larger investors from a position of reasonable strength.

On Monday (fortunately not Tuesday as that was the Hindenburg anniversary), we completed our funding. This final step involved a few weeks where Brian, myself and our legal teams all saw midnight, from our desks or on the phone, too many times. But that funding, plus some additional financing already secured, allows us now to be as confident as we can be that the Zeppelin is coming to the USA in the fall.

The team here is happy and a little exhausted, and we haven't even had time to issue press releases about all the great people we've been hiring, but when we see our ship leave the hangar for the first time in the not too distant future, I think we're all going to be a little emotional.

What a ride..... so far...... more to come!

What's long and sausage shaped and....

Found this on ebay and couldn't resist it. Dating from 1919, back in the days when toilet paper came in a wrapper. And as you might expect, there are folks who collect these things. I'm still trying to figure out what they were thinking of in terms of the brand match between toilet paper and an airship. Suggestions anyone?

Getting the word out

Scott and Brian became 'booth babes' for the evening at the California Travel and Tourism Commission media event in San Francisco. Here they were promoting our business to members of the travel and tourism press. I think they look rather good!

Zeppelin Pilots Wanted!

I've waited for some time to make a post with that title. It's true. Really. You can go here to find out more. Now we have to think about uniforms etc.

The cool pin picture is from this site.

The First Bay Area Zeppelin

A friend of ours sent us a copy of an artists drawing in a childrens book about bridges. It showed a design for the Golden Gate bridge that had been produced in 1923 but not built. The artist had added a Zeppelin going over the bridge. We of course approve of the sentiment! But it got me wondering about when Zeppelins had entered the consciousness of the American public enough that it would be considered perfectly normal to assume a Zeppelin flying over a landmark bridge.

The first Zeppelin flying in the USA was the US Built Shenandoah. She was commissioned in September 1923, so it was a little prophetic to have one in a 1923 picture! She did actually visit the Bay Area the following year, and this picture is from October 1924 with her flying outside the Golden Gate, sans bridge.

The Navy acquired a German built Zeppelin, renamed the Los Angeles, in 1924 and she occasionally made trips west. But it would be August 25, 1929, when the first commercial passenger airship, Graf Zeppelin entered the Bay through the Golden Gate.

Cute booties

Our Facilities project manager, Dwayne, is in Germany right now absorbing everything he can about Zeppelin operations. Dwayne is responsible for working with NASA and other agencies and entities to set up the leases and agreements for the necessary facilities for us to operate. So he has to be a repository of knowledge about how much space things take up, how often they need to be moved, whether they are hazardous, whether they need special climate conditions, who needs access, how often and so on. This impacts everything from how we manage our operations to minimize risk in a historic massive wooden hangar to the provisioning of portable toilets at remote sites. And all of it involves thick legal documents and lots of red tape!

Dwayne sent us this picture of him inside the hull of #4. Nice booties Dwayne!

Water - then and now

A visible feature on the Moffett Field skyline is the red and white water tower. I've been acquiring old ads and images featuring airships of late, with an eye to decorating our future bar/restaurant space.

One that really caught my eye was an advertisement by the Pittsburgh-Des Moines steel company about their new water tank serving 'Uncle Sams dirigibles'. On May 13, 1932, the Akron, sister ship to the Macon, visited the incomplete Sunnyvale Naval Air Station (to become Moffett Field). The PR folks at Pittsburgh-Des Moines captured an image of the Akron with the water tower for an advertisement.

They explain that a modern airbase demands "trained man power, strong mooring masts, ample stores of gases, oils, food - and water." And that "this well built tank will guarantee a constant and dependable water supply."

I've also found some great adverts for spark plugs, shock absorbers and the like, all using their connection with patriotic airships to sell their wares!

London Calling...

We've known for some time that there would be a period of time between the completion of NT #4 and us being able to bring her to San Francisco. So Zeppelin set out to find her some work for the summer, locate a sponsor etc. Today's Sunday Times carries a brief article about the Civil Aviation Authority approving her visiting London, something which we very much hope will happen. There are a couple of ticket agents accepting inquiries in the UK right now - LondonZeppelin and ZeppelinTours. But visiting London won't take all summer, so we'll keep you posted on where else #4 will be flying.

It's been a year

Friday marks the blogs first anniversary. It's really interesting for us to go back and read some of the early posts when we were just starting on this road. We have actually got a lot more blog posts to put up in the future - I tended to write a post when something exciting was going on, even if, for confidentiality reasons, I couldn't post it! There will come a time when I can release a bunch of those and make the record even more complete.

These past couple of weeks have been crazy with us trying to hire people, and we look forward to telling you all about our new team members and having them join in blogging.

Contents....

We have an office to decorate, and eventually we'll need to have things to adorn our public spaces. So I've been hanging on ebay picking up airship related stuff. There seem to be a lot of Christmas ornaments around right now, but one that I had to have was a Department 56 piece of 'Kitchmas' with a rotating Goodyear blimp!

Aside from fits of laughter at how really dorky this ornament is, the instructions made us laugh the most. For those of you that can't quite see this, it says

Contents: Goodyear Blimp

Michael from Zeppelin who is with us at the moment looked very carefully at the model and from the ducted fans concluded it was based on a GZ22.

Regardless, it would have been a real steal at $16 plus shipping.

How many lawyers does it take to ...

get an airship off the ground?

Have a think about it for a moment. I'm sure most of you said 'someone to help with the FAA'. Good, that's one. But actually, it takes quite a few more than that. As we are fortunate to have a wonderful group of patient and easy to understand representatives of the legal profession working with us, I thought I'd take a moment to give you a little insight into how many legal plates are spinning!

First, there are indeed experts helping with the FAA and DOT. That's Jennifer, Jonathon and their colleagues in Washington DC at Pillsbury Law. San Francisco Pillsbury also provide us with Bob for copyrights, patents and trademarks and a colleague on federal lease documents, LA Pillsbury houses Deborah and Erin who are experts in gift certificates and other consumer issues, and Daveed is in Sacramento where he's helping us figure out what airline travel sales rules we need to abide by.

Our corporate stuff (incorporation etc) is handled by Rob and Teresa at Morrison and Foerster, and they also handle all our critical work with investors such as term sheets, convertible notes and the like.

There's a pile of tax issues to deal with. We have a great accountancy firm in Berger/Lewis and they, through principal Tom, coordinate with Steven from Reed and Roth to ferret out all the rules and issues related specifically to aviation sales and use tax, and business property tax.

You can imagine that we have quite a number of complex aircraft purchase related contracts to deal with and a veteran of aircraft contracts, Stuart, from Warren Sklar, casts his eyes over the material that comes from Zeppelin.

And finally, we have some visa related work as we expect a couple of the team from Zeppelin to be with us for the first few months of operation which Paul from Fragomen, Del Ray is coordinating.

And as to my question? The answer is at least Eleven. You can do the math on the fees yourself.

Yeah, I know, there's a punchline in there somewhere about hot air, but I'm grateful that it doesn't apply to any of our team.

Cover Up

Following the installation of the last piece of the airframe, the Zeppelin continues to get closer to completion. Here you can see the pressure tested envelope suspended from the hangar roof in preparation for pulling over the airframe - if it doesn't swallow #3 first!

Image courtesy of Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik.

6 inches

.....of resumes have piled into our offices in response to the three job postings we have open right now. So if you're one of those who have applied and you're reading this, we're doing our best to get through everything! (The USPS box is for sending to our CFO who is doing the initial reviews on the Controller position)

New & Improved! "Less Flammable" Helium

On a visit recently to the Pensacola Naval Aviation Museum, I came across yet another attempt to communicate to the public the relevant (to airships) difference between helium and hydrogen. It really cracked me up! While the sign is true, you have to wonder how many other statments could receive this treatment. I guess that makes dirt "less explosive" than dynamite?

All kidding aside, the museum was really fantastic. More photos/blog posts to come soon!

The Last Piece

Work continues apace on #4. Last week while visiting Zeppelin, I was fortunate to be around as the last piece of the frame was being assembled - the nosecone!

With this last bit in place, the frame is now ready to accept the envelope. If you have been following other blogs, such as Airshipworld, you'll know that the envelope had recently been undergoing pressure testing and other final adjustments.

Feel a bit daring? Strap on, and stroll the catwalk -- present during assembly and inspection, it can be used to inspect or work on the frame from inside the envelope. As much as I had wanted to, it will have to wait for a future date!

Richtung Zürich

It was a beautiful day on the Bodensee when I took my trusty steed, the Audi TT, on a ferry -- to pay a visit to Skycruise Switzerland.

Skycruise flies the Skyship 600 on passenger and advertising missions in Europe and elsewhere.

First flown in 1984, the Skyship is probably best known to the general public as the craft flown by the character Max Zorin in the James Bond film A View to a Kill, or more recently as the Ron Paul Blimp.

Growing...

Shortly we'll be announcing some news and there will be some revamps to our website along with a number of job postings. So if you're a loyal blog reader, consider this your heads up to keep an eye out for an email from us (if you're signed up to the list).

In the meantime, to give you a flavor of progress, here are a few fun images. Every new office needs a guy in a server closet, but we'll have to pull down a few old signs so that we don't scare visitors away!

Hungary Day

We get stats delivered on our website and blog. Nothing record breaking right now as we aren't exactly in high gear and attracting lots of traffic. However when I casually glanced at the report today for our website, I was immediately attracted to the map of the world with a small dark green blob in the middle. Hmm, what country was it that seemed to be the home for the majority of the hits on the website that day? Very weird, it was Hungary!

What had caused that? Were the Hungarians in the market for a Zeppelin? Did we have a fan who had blogged about us? Subsequent investigation led us to this website (in Hungarian) and a story about one of our investors who happened to mention us in an interview.

Very Cool.

Getting a bit crowded

A few of our friends and supporters have been in Europe this past week and we were able, with the help of Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik, to have them take a peek at progress on NT 07 #4, under construction. As NT 07 #3 is undergoing annual maintenance, as previously reported, the hangar is already rather full with #3 and all her helium storage bags.

As you can see from this picture, the envelope for #4 is now undergoing pressure testing, and so with the entire frame for #4 also in the hangar, it's really getting a bit crowded in there!

Hangars and Terminals

While in the UK over the New Year, Brian asked to go over to Cardington to see the airship hangars. I grew up with them, and had visited only recently, so I took a lot of persuading to drive on a very cold, miserable and wet day to go and stare at the rotting hulk of number 1 and the movie stage that is number 2. However Brian had pinged the airship mailing list and a gracious invite by Ken Nippress of Hybrid Air Vehicles (thanks Ken!) led to a visit. And it was well worth it.

Skycruise Switzerlands Skyship 600 was in hangar 1, waiting for her next adventure. There were no lights on in the hangar, but the illumination flooding through the holes in the roof, even on a gray day, was enough to see by and take a long exposure. I think you can see why the roof has netting suspended underneath!

Also visiting the hangar were a British author who had written about Zeppelins in a fictional story and an architecture student. The latter had been given a project of designing an airship passenger terminal and was looking at the Cardington site for pointers. Apparently airship terminals are quite a hot topic at the moment. Modern Mechanix covered it yesterday with this very cool picture that assumes that the airships won't get caught by the wind and smash into the side of the building!

Pacman's ghosts

We've been spending the New Year in Europe and spent a little time checking on the progress of Zeppelin NT #4. Also in the hangar, is NT#3, undergoing her annual inspection. During this time, the helium is taken out of the hull and stored in vast storage bags that, to those of us who grew up in the 70's/early 80's, look exactly like the pacman ghosts!

Helping the illusion are the dots that are part of the T Mobile branding on #3. Munch. Munch.

Seasonal Slowdown

People say that things slow down around this time of year. I'm still waiting for that to happen.....

I think I'm going to create a chart that shows current workload vs blog posting frequency. With the exception of making a very serious effort while we were in Germany ( and even then, most of the posts happened while I was taking a short break afterwards!), it seems that the more there is to do, the further down the to-do list the blog slides!

We owe our regular readers more than that (do I hear a New Years Resolution coming on?), and we'll give some thought to how we can do better. I can tell you that the pace is going to pick up considerably in the New Year, so hopefully that will mean lots of new information and musings.

But in the meantime, in case you hadn't spotted it on our website, here's our festive Zeppelin and best wishes from the Airship Ventures team to airship fans everywhere.

The 1000ft High Club

I got a phonecall late last week from Hiller Aviation Museum where I’m a board member. There was an opportunity to go for a ride in Hiller’s beautifully restored 1945 DC3 on Saturday afternoon, an hour or so cruising around the Bay. Did we want to go? Next dumb question?!

We set off in the middle of the afternoon after warming up the engines and flew out of Hayward Airport into a blue sky with broken clouds. We headed across the Bay and went over the first range of hills into the valley where freeway 280 snakes past some wonderful scenery and reservoirs. The long line of Stanford Linear Accelerator provided a cool landmark, as did the radio dishes.
The coastline was clear of fog, providing wonderful views in the late afternoon sun. After exploring the miles of open space on the penninsula, dotted with houses the size of hotels, we came back in over Palo Alto and headed towards San Francisco, catching the sun on the skyscrapers and on the Golden Gate bridge.
A flight over the bridge (yay!) and Alcatraz, past Berkeley and down the East Bay, watching all the traffic backed up at the Toll Plaza, headed for an evening in San Francisco, soon bought the sightseeing to a close.
But it had been the closest views we have had yet to what the experience on the Zeppelin will be like. The altitude was about the same. We moved from small airplane window to window to find the best views - the Zeppelin has windows all around and there were times when people missed things due to the speed of flight. At about 30mph, we won't have that challenge with the airship. We can't wait!

Thank you to Steve and Barb Hiller for being such gracious hosts.

Bay Area blimpin'

Extreme airship fans probably know about Keith's blog, 'Blimpin' ain't easy', on being a new airship pilot for Snoopy 2, one of the MetLife blimps. It's an interesting peek into the life of a traveling airship. I spotted that in a recent trip to the Bay Area, Keith had taken a lot of photos of the scenery and I think it gives some idea of what we're likely to see with the Zeppelin.

Snoopy 2 is a small and nimble blimp. The gondola is secured to the pressurized envelope by means of lots of wires, and it also has ropes for the ground crew to grab when it lands. So you have to be clever with where you point the camera not to have ropes and wires in your money shot!

If Only..

I often wonder how many people are coming across us because they're looking for the band...

If you don't think it's a good idea...

As mentioned in the last post, we went to present at the City of Mountain View council meeting last Tuesday. While we were scheduled to present at 6.30pm, a controversial planning issue delayed the start of the meeting until 9pm, which gave us a chance to check out the yummy Shivas restaurant in Downtown Mountain View.

Our presentation was short, and as expected, picked up by the local press. This is great. The point of us reaching out to the community was to see what issues there could be, if any, with us proposing to NASA that we take space in Hangar 2, and to be able then to address those questions and concerns.

NASA have a lot to of issues to balance when making a decision like this. We know that it costs a great deal to maintain the airfield, but that because of noise and related concerns from the local community, they have many restrictions on what can and can't be done there. In addition, they have their own internal restrictions on what types of activities and partnerships are acceptable. And finally, the historic structures only have certain uses. So our approach was to make sure that we'd covered as many of the issues as possible to make it as easy as possible for them to say yes. Because we think it would be awesome to have an airship back at Moffett Field. And now that we've presented at a public meeting, we can also talk about our plans here on the blog. Let us know your thoughts!