How does a blimp work?

Answer 1

The blimp derives its lift from Helium in the main envelope ( equivalent to the hull) and aklso in trim tanks or balloonets, akin to the ballast tanks of a submarine, a times, the Blimp pilots will crank up a very steep angle of attack- this is done by both manipulating the elevators up (Like subs the older Navy blimps had separate wheels for steering and up-and-down control) and shifting the ballast aft to crank up a steep angle of attack for a good (Getaway). The propeller pitches are controllable and revrsible and by dint of this Blimps can hover ( I have seen this done, at a height of about 300 feet over a local shopping center in about l987) and fly backwards by shifting into reverse. The more modern Japanese Blimps (FUJI< for example) have a DeHavilland yoke like a regular plane and one man can pilot the craft ( for safety reasons they usually carry two rated Blimp Pilots) pulling the yoke in and out for up and down, and left and right for steering. Not all blimps are this advanced, the idea may have been retraining pilots familiar with the conventional Yoke controls of say, a Cessna aircraft. These would still have a complex ballast-control panel again similat to a submarine in part, but miniaturized these days. The discussion of the moving lights display and TV-rdio brodcasting is outside the scope of this article. I met Admiral Rosenthal of Palisades Park and Blimp fame a number of times in l970-7l He used to joke- Half the battle (Problem area) was walking the things out of the Car Barns as he used to refer to Blimp Hangars- a labor-intensive task!