Airships

[Andy R]

Emma.J’s turn of the century balloon made me wonder, ¿has anyone done an airship? One that could actually fly, that is (meaning holding helium ballons).

[Emma.J]

  I'm currently working on an airship, but I admit i didnt think of filling it with helium. I think mine would be far too heavy!

[Martin Milner]

You would need quite a big balloon to lift even a klicky, let alone any airship structure.

A regular party balloon will lift about 14 grammes, and I think a single klicky weighs more than that.

[Ali Baba]

You could of course work with hydrogen. It's much lighter than helium. 

Would love to see an airship, though. Even if it doesn't really fly.

[Andy R]

You could of course work with hydrogen. It's much lighter than helium. 
Would love to see an airship, though. Even if it doesn't really fly.

And name her Hindenburg, ¿perhaps?
Seriously, though, ya, I wanna fill her with helium. And the bare minimum equipment to steer her (so she doesn’t crash into a telephone pole and black out 6 states)…
I’m thinking (stand back 200’) that the longer she is, the lighter in relative weight… Of course, I could be wrong (and I probably am), but anyways…

[Martin Milner]

I'd be very interested to see your experiments.

I think you can buy toy airship kits, with propulsion and steering, for $30-50, but unmodified they probably don't have the lift to carry a klicky as well as all the motors, battery, and so forth. You'd need to make your own balloon, or connect two or three together. Making your own can be done, but it's the devil to glue the seams and make it helium-tight.

[BlackPearl2006]

Emma.J’s turn of the century balloon made me wonder, ¿has anyone done an airship? One that could actually fly, that is (meaning holding helium ballons).

Other than this ship someone found on ebay....
[url]http://www.playmofriends.com/forum/index.php?topic=5176.0[/url

Has anyone else made an airship yet?  I just won a 3286 hull off ebay that I was going to restore to stock, but I've been toying with the idea of creating Steampunk style Victorian Airship instead....

But I wanna see some ideas.  (I don't think mine will fly though, unless I have a giant balloon, lol)

[Andy R]

The only idea I could give you is this:
If you are building her to fly, you ‘could’ use construction fencing to build the airbladder. It should be stiff enough that with only a couple pieces of reinforcing she’d hold still enough to cover with emergency blankets (you know, those silvery ones) and be really GOOD looking.
Without that pesky “blowing up” stuff to let you down.