Comments | beamjockey: Recent Adventures, Part 1: Beneath the Eyes of Goodyear

beamjockey

Recent Adventures, Part 1: Beneath the Eyes of Goodyear

Jul 29, 2009 17:59

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aviation, airship, never pass a fiberglass mascot

Comments 10

archiver_tim July 29 2009, 23:35:13 UTC

I see your blimp and raise you a blimp.

( ... )

beamjockey July 30 2009, 04:16:42 UTC

I am topped!

erikvolson July 30 2009, 09:36:26 UTC

They're breeding?

Oh, sh....

archiver_tim July 30 2009, 12:48:15 UTC

I recall more this morning. One was hosted at Ann Arbor Airport (ARB) and the other at Willow Run Airport (YIP), Ypsilanti. One to cover major car race out in Jackson that weekend, the other to cover the Woodard Dream Cruise (major car event), officially Saturday, but participants and sponsors have plenty to do in the days before the cruise (best traffic jam I was in, ever!). They were giving rides to invited guests of Goodyear dealerships on this Thursday or Friday. I went to the terminal and tried. "I'm here for my ride". "Your name, please?" (host checks list). Me: "Oh, drat! Can I be on standby?". "No, sorry. Were you watching the landing?". Had a good chat with the terminal crew/hosts, though. I did get some good video of landing and take-off at the fence just off the road. Others were joining me, some from deliberately looking for it, some from just pulling off the road.

kaffy_r July 30 2009, 01:11:59 UTC

Gosh, I love blimps! They're so cheerfully surreal these days ... and I'd love to fly on a real true zeppelin.

brotherguy July 30 2009, 03:50:52 UTC

I assume you know about http://www.airshipventures.com/

kaffy_r July 30 2009, 04:11:02 UTC

That's cool. When they motor/float over the Midwest, I'll be looking!

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Re: The Blimp Nest beamjockey July 30 2009, 14:13:43 UTC

Yes. It means Fermilab is a good place for blimp-spotting (though I spend most of my time here indoors or even underground).

Re: The Blimp Nest johnridley July 30 2009, 14:36:30 UTC

They're floating over Ann Arbor quite a lot, for football games.

Our house is a pretty good place for looking up for different reasons; there is the Yankee Air Museum at Willow Run airport, and they fly vintage WWII aircraft sometimes and they often go over our house. When the Air Force runs flyovers at the Michigan Speedway over by Jackson, often the fighters will go over our house at not too high of an altitude; I even saw a stealth bomber once. There are also both an ultralight and a glider airfield within a few miles and there's a spot right behind our house that has significant thermals that hawks and vultures like, and the gliders often come and circle a bit too, and we've had ultralights flying occasionally as low as 50 feet up over our house (powered parafoils). Also, Cameron Balloons is in Dexter and sometimes the breezes bring their launches within sight.

All in all, it's usually worth looking up occasionally around here.

gomeza July 30 2009, 14:31:27 UTC

This is just a really terrific shot!