Thursday, September 30, 2010

Litchfield: Why Has America No Rigid Airships?

"Why Has America No Rigid Airships?"

Why indeed!

A recent find on Amazon, which arrived earlier this week and I found myself devouring upon arrival...

The book was published towards the end of 1945, just after WW2 had ended, and P. W. Litchfield, Chairman of the Board of Goodyear Tire and Rubber felt firmly that rigid airships had a place in postwar passenger and freight transportation.

The book is out of print, but as of this posting, there are a handful each of the hardback and softcover versions available used on Amazon.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

AP Video: Tracking Whales from Above

AP has released their video essay by Ted Warren and Manuel Valdez of our whale research mission from earlier this month, which you can watch below.

Thanks again to Farmers for providing the flight time donation which made this all possible, and to the researchers from NOAA, Woods Hole and Center for Whale Research!

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Modern Marvels

Adriano, Joe and Rudy of Modern Marvels. Rudy couldn't wait to get Zepp head!

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Friday, September 10, 2010

It's a UFO!!

The whale researchers at NOAA were able to solve a UFO sighting reported on The Vike Factor, a Canadian UFO blog. It was of course, Eureka, busy with the whales, but I guess from a distance, hovering below a gray and gloomy sky, she exhibited many characteristics of UFO's. For example, she was 'cigar shaped', and 'moving too slowly to be a plane'. The observers decided that it might be about the size of a normal jet (747 I guess) and they would be right. As the airship rotated and hovered then it 'shrunk and vanished and then reappeared again'. The whole post is an interesting read.

This is not the first time Eureka has been tagged as otherworldly. We received a call about a year ago from someone who was investigating a sighting over the Monterey Bay. The airship was traveling back from Monterey at dusk and seen head on, she really did look like an upside down UFO with her fins helping to create the saucer effect and including a cabin with lights shining out of the windows!

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Bye Bye Washington State.

Eureka is just passing Portland and will be landing at Salem shortly on the first leg of our return journey. Weather permitting, Eureka will be back at her Moffett Field hangar sometime on Sunday. We'll post a more up to date schedule once we are closer. Everyone at HQ is very much looking forward to seeing the away team again and being all together for the Fall.

The entire team are advocating for us to go to Seattle more often. The scenery, the people and the hospitality were exceptional - the weather, less so. We unfortunately lost a few flights to weather and the locals told us it "usually isn't this bad", but we wondered if they were just telling us that so we'd come back!

Anyway, we will be back. Thanks for all the fun!

Eyeing the Border

On the science mission yesterday, we got pretty close to Canada. We'd love to take Eureka across the border and hope to visit some of the beautiful cities like Vancouver and Toronto at some point in our future!

Maize Maze