Forbes is reporting that lithium battery fires on airliners are happening at a rate greater than one per week. The magazine reviewed FAA data and found that at least 62 battery incidents happened in 2022, up from 54 the previous year and seven times the nine reports in 2014. The FAA says that's how many they know of and there could be more. So far, the results of fires in devices and the portable power packs that many people carry to recharge them have been relatively minor most of the time but not always.
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 .”
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.
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.
Veering off on Beech 18s, BC politician Flying Phil Gagliardi had what may have been the most modified Beech 18, IIRC:
one-piece windshield
tricycle landing gear
single tail
turboprop engines
I was up close to it once in 1966, but did not learn why he put so much into an old airplane. Granted, in those days some people had small bombers like B-25s as executive aircraft (awkward cabin with wing through fuselage).
And he did use it, all over the province as Minister of Transport.
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).
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.)