{"id":195389,"date":"2008-07-12T05:58:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-12T10:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/07\/12\/heavy-lift-helo-blimp-hybrid\/"},"modified":"2008-07-12T05:58:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-12T10:58:00","slug":"heavy-lift-helo-blimp-hybrid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/07\/12\/heavy-lift-helo-blimp-hybrid\/","title":{"rendered":"Heavy Lift Helo\/Blimp Hybrid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The idea of using balloons to make a helicopter arrangement lift more, because the rotors carry only the load, the airframe is neutrally buoyant, was tried before in the late 1986s, with the Piasecki PA-97, but it was a shoestring job with a seat of the pants attitude towards engineering, and on its maiden flight, a helo broke lose, and destroyed the aircraft, killing one of the 4 pilots.<\/p>\n<p>This <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flightglobal.com\/articles\/2008\/07\/08\/225160\/boeing-to-build-heavylift-hybrid-with-new-canadian-partner.html\">Boeing \/Skyhook joint venture appears to be more thought out<\/a>, and it offers good performance, with an estimated 200 mile range with a 40t payload.<\/p>\n<p>That being said, I have always said that the first problem with lighter than air craft is that landing, even in a mild wind, becomes problematic.<\/p>\n<p>When you consider that this is designed for operations in the, &#8220;niche market of commercial oil and mining companies operating in Canada\u2019s far north,&#8221; I would also add the problem of operations in inclement weather.<\/p>\n<p>I would also note that the cost of helium is going through the roof (been to a party supply store lately?), which will further crimp the project.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/pic60.picturetrail.com\/VOL1689\/10590113\/19957526\/324780694.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The idea of using balloons to make a helicopter arrangement lift more, because the rotors carry only the load, the airframe is neutrally buoyant, was tried before in the late 1986s, with the Piasecki PA-97, but it was a shoestring job with a seat of the pants attitude towards engineering, and on its maiden flight, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1007,1226,1025],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-helicopters","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195389"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195389\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}