Fantastic flying machines! I was a controller at Long Beach, Ca. years ago. N3A, Goodyear Columbia was based nearby just off the San Diego freeway. She would even call and get ILSs to LGB from us. That takes a looong time to vector her around the pattern for one. She would then do a low go down the runway, super pretty at night when all the neon lights would be on. The Captain once asked me if I’d like to see her do a “bag over”. (You gotta think about that one.)
Those were kind words about Deakin-san, Paul. Well said. Our BDL trip with John was to see the An225, the truly Big One. He loved it! And, somehow, he tolerated being in an Archer with the likes of us. I think he was the highest time 747 captain in the world for a while, having become a JAL captain in his 20s…quite the run.
I suppose blimps truly are as close to a boat for the air as you can get. I would love to get a chance to ride in one; even better if I got a chance to try piloting one. I look forward to that video.
That’s sad to hear about Deakin. I never met him (or Braly for that matter), but I know quite a bit about them from their engine management course that I took virtually a few years back.
It is sad about Deakin-san. He was a pilot who could truly inspire others with his tales and history. I was happy to have listened to some of those stories in person, as well as years of AVSIG. To John, i wish you blue skies and happy flights up there.
John Deakin – Super Aviator, Inspiring Avweb Columnist, Rest In Peace
“John Deakin started in aviation as a hangar-rat and line boy, worked his way up the aviation food chain via charter, corporate, and cargo flying, then spent five years in Southeast Asia with Air America. He joined Japan Airlines becoming a very senior 747 captain with over 32,000 hours. He also flew his own immaculate V-tail Bonanza (N1BE) and was very active in the war bird and vintage aircraft scene, serving as an instructor in several aircraft and as an FAA Examiner on the Curtiss-Wright C46, his all-time favorite .”
1 reply
The blimps are truly amazing to watch. Kind of like teaching an elephant to fly. During the last Super Bowl held in Houston, one of the blimps was tethered at my home airport for a few days, when it was not up taking videos for the TV crowd. It was fun to watch it gyrate gently around the mooring pole as the breeze steered it under the watchful eyes of the ground crew. A ride would be a definite experience of a lifetime.
Sad to hear about John Deakin. I never got the chance to meet him in person, but I never heard anyone say an unkind word about the man. I thoroughly enjoy reading his articles on Pelican’s Perch. One that is particularly timely now is his views on finding a drop-in replacement fuel for 100LL. He will be missed.
Flew the Goodyear Blimp out of Carson CA along the coast in 1967. A memorable ride.
In 2005 I had the pleasure to fly in the Fuji Blimp, which at the time was the biggest and fastest blimp with Porsche ducted fan engines, on-board bathroom & nice big leather chairs. It was truly a first class experience. I was granted some time at the yoke where my only instruction from the Captain was, “just follow the rope”. It was also on that ride I think I asked the stupidest aviation question I’ve ever uttered. After gazing at all the fancy avionics I said, “So you guys can fly IFR?”, to which the co-pilot said, “Um…we can, but it kind of defeats the purpose and our sponsor would be very unhappy if we flew in clouds”.
20 years ago I had the chance to be a passenger on the WDL-1b blimp in Germany. It was built in 1988 and was 60m long, a traditional blimp with two gondola mounted 200hp Contis , reversible propellers and 7 passenger seats.
As it was a very hot summer day we took off with only the pilot, my friend who had won this trip and me.
It was a very strange experience as it had nothing to do with flying as I was used to in my gliders or other aircraft. It was really a ship!
Every thermal we entered lifted the nose while the pilot was running the elevator wheel to keep it low, then we drove through the rising air, exited and the tail was lifted while the pilot ran the elevator wheel backwards. One of the most prominent instruments was an inclinometer that regularly showed angles of plus or minus 30° while we were on board! It was like being in the navy again on a destroyer in heavy weather, only that the ship rolled while we pitched … .
The windows could be rolled down like in a car and we had a cool breeze in the gondola going less than 50kph. But as the engines and propellers were directly to the side of the cabin it was enormously noisy, I feared for my hearing.
Once in a while we would graze a thermal and the blimp started to oscillate on the roll axis. Really a ship!
For landing the pilot sort of drove the blimp into the ground applying nose down elevator after touch down, then the ground crew catched the ropes while running, fanned out, held the nose down and full reverse was applied to stop the blimp. During the whole time the pilot was applying very large control inputs on the elevator wheel and on the rudder. The rudder had pedals large enough to be stomped on with both feet on each side and the pilot did so several times during landing. No boosted controls. I have never seen another pilot having to work that much physically in a cockpit.
Then the blimp was pulled to the mast by the ground crew and we could exit. Slowly and while exiting some ballast was added immediately. An unforgettable 2h flight.
Unfortunately this blimp was destroyed in an enormous thunderstorm in 2014. But a new one was built using salvaged parts and a spare gondola.
Wingfoot 3 is not a blimp. It is an Airship of the Zeppelin type as it has a rigid framework with three longitudinal backbones, where the gondola, the engines, trim bags and the three tail surfaces are mounted to. This framework is inside the envelope which is filled with helium and is kept inflated by pressurized air in the ballonets. And it was in fact built by the Zeppelin Airship company in Friedrichshafen in Germany. It has three engines with propellers that can be rotated to provide vertical thrust, two on the sides and one in the back that runs an additional tail propeller for yawing like a helicopter. The Zeppelin NT type, as it is called, is fly-by-wire controlled and can hover and maneuver like a helicopter (a really slow one). Due to the possible vertical thrust it is usually operated in a heavier than air mode with a few dozen kg of weight. And therefore it is flying and not driving. It will have some angle of attack to generate some lift while cruising.
Goodyear’s airships are about as far from being a “blimp” as Falcon 9 is from a bottle rocket.
Carbon fiber airframe, articulated props, internal engines, glass cockpit, fly-by-wire.
If Goodyear has a image problem with flying a Zeppelin they need to get out of the flying business.
I was fortunate to have met John Deakin at OSH circa 1999.
Someone set up an area for Avsig types to congregate, Doctor Brent Blue hoisted a plucked chicken but no bbq as plastic is tough to chew.
Walter from Louisiana was there with his Beech 18, still with roundies and tailwheel but IIRC single-pieced windshield, I forget if tail was original or single
Probably Braly too but he’d have been busy at a booth much of the time.
Braley, Deakin, and Walter were running pilot training seminars our of GAMI at one time. ‘Lean of peak’ operation no doubt included.
John wrote at least one book. https://www.advancedpilot.com/apsstore.html, IIRC a second was less formal.
1 reply
Veering off on Beech 18s, BC politician Flying Phil Gagliardi had what may have been the most modified Beech 18, IIRC:
And he did use it, all over the province as Minister of Transport.
Interesting thanks.
Doesn’t sound viable for a passenger service, but perhaps in remote areas as it does not require much of a paved runway.
There have been proposals for using airships in remote areas such as northern Canada. Lockheed-Martin has been pitching a double-bubble (sideways) design.
Sounds to me as though variation in weight with cargo is a key challenge, perhaps compressing and expanding helium would be feasible. (Well, I better think that through from basics - the stuff would still be on board so lifted.) Do not want to waste helium at today’s prices (there are people working on producing much more helium, some natural gas wells have an amount worth extracting).
Winds we know are a challenge, some places are windy (like the south Peace River block of NE BC, wind funnels through a pass, wind turbines are viable there).
2 replies
There was a plan to use Lockheed-Martin airships to carry ‘heavy rare earth’ ore from a mine on the Quebec-Labrador border to a railhead to the southwest.
I presume northbound payload would be supplies like fuels to operate the mine. With crew rotation both ways.
However the Quest mine company was filing for bankruptcy in 2018. I suspect volatility of metal prices and cost of access and development discouraged potential investors.
The plan is on Lockheed-Martin’s airship website.
That mine may have been the one that earlier planned to concentrate or near the mine then transport the result by ship, trucking it a significant distance to an ocean dock.
(‘Heavy’ rare earth elements are apparently more in demand or shorter in supply than ‘light’, I presume the weight label comes from position in the periodic table of elements.)
Whenever someone asks me, “Would you like to fly that [aircraft]?”
The answer is always “Yes!”
Is that the hybrid airship design where the envelope is also a lifting body?
Autocorrect, I suspect. Thanks
I know enough about LiPo batteries from using them in model airplanes to be very aware of their proper treatment and handling. I am always concerned that most passengers are oblivious to their potential to wreak havoc during a flight yet they are still are allowed to be carried aboard.
It sounds like no one is keeping any type of record to pinpoint the problem. There should be a pattern. Battery Banks are becoming more common and could be the culprit. Batteries almost always charge properly because a wall charge is slow. Backup banks are a relatively faster method of charging. If the BMS inside fails to work properly, then the safety factor is gone. Fixing the problem could be as simple as requiring all passengers to have their stored devices and Banks off or discounted while onboard. Second, have more wall charging accessibility at the waiting area in the terminal so passenger won’t feel the need to recharge in the air.
I suspect the increasing number of airborne fires is mainly due to the increasing number of passengers carrying devices that use lithium-based batteries. Both the physical number of devices and the battery capacity of those devices is increasing. As recently as 2015, almost no one carried a rechargeable “brick” with them for portable recharging. Now they seem to be everywhere and I question the quality control of something made in a sweat shop in some third world country. What really scares me is that, sooner or later, someone will pack one in a suitcase that ends up in the baggage hold and cooks off down there. At least in the cabin the device can be put in a fireproof bag and contained.
1 reply
A newly built battery storage facility north of Monterey CA has been in service for about a year and already had three battery bank fires that took it off line for either charging or discharge.
If the lithium batteries in a 787 go into thermal runaway does it matter that they’re not the sole source of power? If the battery in a eVtol is built to the same standard as a 787 battery does it matter that it is the sole source of power? Does a fire in passenger consumer electronics tell us anything useful about eVtol power sources?
It’s probably a matter of time before a lithium battery brings down an airplane. I suspect it will be in a single engine piston though.
Thankfully, a small battery inside the cabin where a runaway can be dealt with will almost always end up as just an “incident”, albeit an exciting one for the passengers.
If or when we do start dealing with propulsion-level batteries in passenger carriers, it’s a different story, and virtually everything you can do to move the battery pack towards the dream goal of intrinsic safety will also decrease its energy density. How safe will be safe enough?
IANAE - Rhe thermal runaway of these batteries is a problem. Sounds like the containment bags would only hold a few. What is the Plan B if this fails to to contain them?
As for propulsion-level batteries, there will be many batteries in close proximity. This likely cause a cascade effect. Should the aircraft design include a way to eject these if necessary? Yes - there will be undesirable consequences of this as well. Is there a way to balance the risks from an aircraft vs one of its battery packs falling from the sky? Or do we not use these batteries for propulsion and wait for the next type or generation that doesn’t carry these risks?
Until these batteries bring down a plane with a huge loss of life, nothing will be done to correct the issue. The price of blood must be paid before any changes are instigated.
If you want to certify lithium ion batteries for aviation use, you need to prove that a thermal runaway of a single cell will not damage the aircraft or the surrounding cells in a battery pack. This has to be proven by intentionally damaging a full battery pack and then see what happens. The casing has to withstand the heat and a proper gas exhaust system has to be present and proven to work.
Also in modern battery packs the single cell will be isolated and the pack still functions and delivers energy.
For power banks, phones, laptops and whatever, it looks very different. It scares me when I see the treatment that most of these devices get and how many broken ones I see around, broken and heating wires and connectors, broken cases on many phones, power banks that are thrown around and have cracks and defect wiring, laptops that have a visible bulge at the bottom because the battery has started to degrade and swells up. We had a load of laptops where each one was affected after 4 years of use and my colleagues still ignored this and went on business trips with them.
1 reply
The swelling is the result of heat. It causes the solid O2 in the cell to turn to gas. If it gets hot enough, the oxygen ignites. Laptops have cooling fans. If the device is left on and wrapped up in a bag, the fan cannot do its job. Even when using a laptop - make sure the fan is not blocked. The biggest problem with Lithium is that people don’t take the time to learn how to care for them.
1 reply
I rather not think about that, but that’s exactly what’s being developed as we speak. Fire is one of the worst events a pilot can experience while aloft and these lithium-powered aircraft will be susceptible to fires ala Tesla.
What ‘solid’ O2 is that? Oxygen freezes at hundreds of degrees below freezing - not exactly typical laptop conditions. And oxygen doesn’t ignite, it facilitates the combustion of other materials.
O2 is oxygen. It is used in the solid form in lithium batteries. It is only ingredient in the cells that can burn.
1 reply
O2 is pure oxygen, which - as I mentioned - needs extreme cold to exist in its solid form (unless under extreme pressure).
What is used in most lithium ion cell cathodes is lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2), which is a solid, and which releases O2 - as a gas - when heated.
But oxygen doesn’t burn. It is the electrolyte that oxidizes (burns).