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!

November Already?!

The more hectic it gets, the less time we find to post on our blog. As they say, no news is good news, but, dear reader, you deserve more than silence from us, so here's some snippets.

Last week we were at the X Prize Executive Summit and then we hung out at the X Prize Cup. While our airships aren't directly space related, there are plenty of things being done with airship related technology in the NewSpace arena and many of the issues that we face in doing something unusual in aviation are also faced by the new private space start ups - financing, regulatory hurdles etc. So we have a lot of friends there.

We have the 'gang' here this week, with Scott, our pilot, visiting to work with us on all manner of fun items. Michael Schieschke from Zeppelin is popping down having been to Winnipeg to present at the Airships to the Arctic conference and we have all kinds of meetings scheduled!

On Tuesday you'll find us at the City of Mountain View Council meeting. We're keen to hear community points of view relating to our proposal to bring an airship back to the area, and presenting at the Council Meeting seems like a good way to get that feedback. Last week we also met with the Moffett Field Historical Society board, which was a real pleasure for us.

So plenty going on, and once we come up for air, we'll let you know the highlights.

AGE85 - Renewable Bio AvGas

Being in California, when speaking about the Zeppelin, it often comes up that airships are a relatively green form of transportation. The question then arises -- can we run on biodiesel? The short answer to that is "no" -- our Lycoming engines run on Aviation Gas (AvGas), not diesel. However that doesn't mean that there aren't other renewable sources of fuel that are potentially suitable.

One such solution I ran across while doing some research is AGE-85 -- short for Aviation Grade Ethanol. Ethanol as an internal combustion engine fuel has been around nearly as long as the engines themselves. In modern times it was studied in earnest in the 70s, and is enjoying interest -- and development -- once again.

The beauty of AGE85 is that rather than requiring a switch to diesel engines -- no small feat -- AGE-85 can be used as a replacement for traditional avgas.

According to AGE-85.org:

"AGE-85 (Aviation Grade Ethanol) is a high-performance fuel that may be used in any piston engine aircraft. It contains approximately 85% ethanol, along with light hydrocarbons and biodiesel fuel. AGE-85 is specifically blended for cold starting and good mixture balance. AGE is unleaded, burns cleaner, has lower exhaust emissions and is more environmentally friendly than traditional aviation fuels. The ethanol in AGE-85 prevents carburetor and fuel line icing, and provides excellent detonation margins."

Sounds promising, if not yet a reality.

Der Ostwind

A few months ago, I purchased an Apple TV. Apple TV is sort of a video iPod, optimized for use with your TV, preferably a nice HDTV. You can purchase music, videos and movies from the iTunes Music Store, or load it up with content that you already have on hand. We have used it many times when guests have visited to show slides and movies of trips to Zeppelin. Sort of like dragging out the old 8mm film or slide projector was when I was a child.

Of course the first thing I did when I got it out of the box, was to look for some content to purchase. I didn't want to spend alot of time downloading, so I searched for shorts. While browsing the Sundance Film Festival, I came across what looked like an obvious choice -- Der Ostwind.

Der Ostwind is done in the style of Sky Captain -- a wonderful mix of live acting set on computer generated backdrops. It is the tale of an German ace that finds his match -- and struggles with questions of honor and self -- in the skies of WWI.



You can purchase Der Ostwind for $1.99 at the iTunes store.

Der Ostwind, widescreen, run time 0:10:45, German with English sub-titles.

Why the British don't like Zeppelins

[Tongue in Cheek posting] Our eagle eyed correspondent, Peter, residing in the UK, sent me another piece from a British Newspaper, passing comment on a documentary about the Hindenburg with the statement that the disaster '..put paid to airship travel forever...". Not true of course. Peter, a known wit, followed it up with a jotting which I share for your amusement.

"There is undoubtedly a deep prejudice against (and fear of?) airships in the U.K., which underlay David Chater's relief at being able to write off airships with the expiry of the Hindenburg. Reasons?
1 They are slow (and quiet) (and, thereby, threatening).
2 They are big (and they 'loom') (and are, thereby, threatening).
3 They tend to explode (we don't understand the hydrogen/helium shift, yet).
4 They were used by the Germans in the War.
5 We don't like objects with names beginning with the letter Z.
6 We didn't invent them.
7 People can see your washing {laundry} in your back gardens, from them.*
8 We have weather. (Foreigners don't.) Airships can't work in our kind of weather.
9 We distrust all politicians (politicians...hot air...balloons...airships).
10 They are fun. We don't do fun. (Except when we go on holiday).

*British people mostly hang laundry outside to dry, except when it rains and then they will use racks inside the house, or possibly even a 'tumble drier'. Nosy people enjoy passing comment on the cleanliness and content of other peoples washing lines. In the USA there are places where you are not allowed to hang out your washing to dry - I used to live in such a place. Discriminates against my British culture I'd say... .

Happy 10th for D-LZFN (Heute ha-ha-habe ich Geburtstag)

Heute ha ha habe ich Geburtstag...

Today marks the 10th anniversay of the maiden flight of Zeppelin NT07 Werknummer 01, (our ship is number 4 in the series production of this model). This ship, christened the "Friedrichshafen" after her birthplace, was piloted on that day by our very own Scott Danneker before a crowd of thousands, including the media and honored veterans of the era of the silver Zeppelins.

It was a a defining moment in a project dating back to 1993, when Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik was founded with the goal of once again building airships in Friedrichshafen.

Since that time, over 65,000 passengers have been carried in comfort and safety, 2 additional ships were built, another is under construction, and Zeppelins now operate on 3 continents (soon to be 4!).

Happy Anniversary!

(It also happens to be my birthday, but I'm older than 10!)

Go fly the "Lindenberg"

Second Life, the online virtual community of more than 9 million people, gives users the opportunity to spend their Linden dollars on airships. While the Zeppelin NT isn't there (yet), an enterprising group called Second Skies have a wide range of airships for your perusal, all at a bargain 700 Linden dollars ($3 at average exchange rates between the Linden and USD).

If you're feeling wealthy, you can also acquire the "Lindenburg". The clever name, however, is about all it shares in common with its more famous namesake. It boasts multiple decks, 2 story condos and all modern amenities for a mere $64 USD. I suspect that the online version doesn't have to worry about payload and lift...

Net-combing

I tried to find a word that meant surfing the shores of the internet via Google and picking on interesting snippets that were washed up, but I failed. So net-combing (instead of beach combing) it is.

Anyway, while netcombing to see how far and wide the latest stories about us had propagated, I found an article in a travel ezine and the picture stopped me in my tracks. Just exactly what IS this? A toy (the red propeller blades would hint at that)? Someone's first play with a digital rendering program?

And where is it exactly? Mars in the future with water? The mind boggles. I can't understand why they don't use a proper picture of a Zeppelin. It's not like you can't easily get one.

Hangars in the News

I've previously blogged about the issues that many communities face in trying to figure out what to do with the large airship hangars in their midst. The Save Hangar One folks are out gathering for a new petition in advance of the new report on what to do with it. It will be interesting to hear the comments at the Restoration Advisory Board meeting on Thursday. The comments are normally well covered at the web page which is how we tend to keep up to date, but perhaps we will pop along this time.

Interest in Hangar One resulting in us becoming a story for the local rags again this weekend with speculation about where we might be based, despite us not issuing any press releases. But the fact that people want to know about us, and that there were positive comments made, is rather gratifying. Of course, it always comes with challenges, as you can't fact check what reporters do, so you're at the mercy of their research skills. But the stories resulted in some fun comments regarding the name of the ship. Something for another blog entry I think.