![]() ![]() He said it was amazing but didn't say why. ![]() Yes, as they say it is a lot like herding an elephant.Ī Lightship pilot friend wrote me from Germany when he first flew next to the Zeppelin NT. You could count the seconds after a wind gust or a rudder pedal input that it took for the ship to head another direction - about three seconds or so at low speed cruise as I recall. The envelope was thrown around by the wind. The Lightship A60+ that I flew for 20 minutes was just as I expected - very unstable due to so much of the weight concentrated in the center. I see 10 or 11 ground crew, with more normally used to steady the car. Goodyear then went to internal suspension using catenary curtains, and their basic design which became the GZ20 is from 1934. The Lightship design with no internal suspension is based on the first Goodyear Blimp of 1925, the Pilgrim. These small innovative airships - IF WE CAN CONVINCE THE FAA TO ALLOW THEM - can be much more important to the advance of LTA than the rather crude MEGA projects being promoted with hundreds of unexperienced engineers and hundreds of millions of dollars being risked, which will - sadly - likely YET AGAIN give airships a bad name. This will allow us to SAFELY build and fly airships that can certainly test and advance the state of the art MUCH faster and, MUCH more economically than larger ships. IF YOU MIGHT BE WILLING TO HELP CONTACT ME. We NEED committee members to defend small airships. WHY?Īpparently that was made thinking of UNPOWERED BALLOONS and ignoring powered airships, which SHOULD have the same weight limit - or higher - as other aircraft. The weight limit for LTA appears to be now only 300 kilos, while other 2 seat aircraft are allowed 600 kilos. The present FAA Light Sport Aircraft rules appear to be VERY discriminatory against airships - unless that was corrected, which I haven't seen yet. These will later be reviewed and likely accepted all or in part by the FAA to govern small airships (at this point not over 2 seats). I recently joined standards-writing committees of the ASTM (American Society for the Testing of Materials) to write recommended standards for SMALL AIRSHIPS. ![]()
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