B2431 wrote in message
...
From: "patrick mitchel"

Okay, they're slow and yeah, they oughta see eachother, that doesn't stop
ship from hitting each other and some of them are only doing 15 kts or
so.
As an aside, I witnessed a slow race where the goodyear blimp and I think
it
was the fuji blimp (one of with the vectoring thrusts engines) were out
over
the water just off Long Beach, Cal. where they were trying to maintain
their
position. The goodyear blimp must have dumped some ballast in the process
as
it was pointing severly nose down while the other blimp with the
vectorable
thrust was sitting there level. Pat

Goodyear's blimp didn't dump ballast. I don't think their blimps even have
ballast. Their blimps are close to neutral buoyancy and they use the
engine
power to gain or lose altitude using the elevators.

Other people's blimps tend to use thrust vectoring by rotating the
engines.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired
They weighed us when we went for the flight in the 80's . When we flew the
approach pattern for landing was just like any other airplane
upwind,crosswind..... I still don't know how else the goodyear blimp ended
on its nose, unless from the distance I was looking , I mistook nose up with
nose down. Then again, with the fins on the tail, that would throw out the
perspective error. Pat