[balloon-makers] a new hot air quasi-rigid airship takes flight

[Dan Nachbar]

At 13:40Z on Friday Oct 27 in Amherst, MA, the Airship Alberto,
a new type of hot air airship, lifted off on its first free flight.
Your humble correspondent was at the controls.  I have been
developing this aircraft on a full-time basis for the past 5 years.
It was a great pleasure to be aloft at last.

After making a few short hops, I turned the ship over to
my co-builder Mike Kuehlmuss. Mike also made a series
of short hops and then executed a nice 360 turn.  In all,
we flew for 20 minutes before the increasing wind made
further testing that morning too risky.

Some pictures and a short video of the first flight
are available on the project website at --

http://www.personalblimp.com/images.html

The ship handled wonderfully, if I do say so myself.  Its design
is a significant departure from previous hot air airships which
have been nearly impossible to steer at low airspeeds.

The envelope of our design is a tension membrane structure with
aluminum ribs that run along sleeves in the fabric. This creates
a structure that can be opened for use and closed for storage in
much the same way that an umbrella is opened/closed.

An important advantage of this structure is that it readily
supports a swiveling engine/prop mounted on the tail of the ship.
The ship can then be steered in much the same manner as a
small motor boat. (The video on the website shows just such a turn.)
And while this configuration is hardly new, others have had steerable
tail-props before, ours is the first hot air airship to do so.
It is this new combination that is the key feature.

The ship is deflated and stored under a tent between flights.
When Winter moves in, we'll pack it up (and maybe head South.)
Flight testing will continue here in Massachusetts until the
snow gets too deep.

Clearly, challenges remain.  In particular, although we are pleased
with its behavior at low airspeeds, higher airspeeds will be very
desirable for many applications of interest.  We also need to get
the "nuisance level" down (Currently it takes a fair bit of
set-up/cleanup for each flight.)  But our approach has been to
take baby-steps along the development path.  Last Friday was
an important one.

I would like to thank David Tanzer for flying down and working his
tail off on the ground crew for the first flight.  I'd also like to
thank Don Piccard and Paul Stumpf for the support and counsel at
various points in the project.

Dan Nachbar

PS - We've been keeping this project low profile until we were flying.
Too many airship projects have squandered their credibility on premature
publicity and press coverage.  I'd like to thank those of you where
were aware of what we were up to and helped keep the same thing from
happening to us. As they say in the news business, "the lid is now off",
and you should feel free to use and share your knowledge of this
project as you see fit.  I expect that there will be a fair bit of
press "buzz" in the near future. Thank you for your discretion to date.

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