Got a Ride in the Goodyear Blimp

[Dgc333]

My son and I got an opportunity to take a ride in the Goodyear Blimp. It was a pretty cool experience.

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[Colo_Ranger]

that's cool! The blimp holds way less people than I would have thought.

 

[Muscleford]

Kool. My former boss's wife was head of Goodyear Airship Operations, don't know if she still is, they are divorced now.

 

[paval3]

Flew over our house a few times back in the mid-90's. Haven't seen it since.

 

[Dgc333]

that's cool! The blimp holds way less people than I would have thought.

Besides the two pilot seats there are two rear facing seats behind the pilot and six forward facing seats. There was also a wrap around bench seat at the back for loading/off loading. We all had to be weighed and the number of folks for each ride was based on weight. There were five on my ride. This is how they avoided having to keep adjusting the amount of helium in the envelope. The loading/unloading was interesting. The front two people would move to the bench seat at the back, then two would get on and the two at the back would get off. This was repeated until they had a new group onboard.

There is an internal bladder in the envelope that they can pump air in or let out to adjust the bouancy in flight.

Normally when you see a Goodyear Blimp at a ball game they have a blue band down the sides trimmed with gold with Goodyear in gold. This one was wrapped to look like the very first blimp to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Goodyear blimps.

The blimp travels around with quite a support team. There was an 18 wheeler with helium, two other 18 wheelers with rigging on the trailers (presumably to tie the blimp down when not flying), a box truck and two passenger vans. There were about 8 people involved with loading/unloading, transporting folks out to the landing site and checking folks in.

 

[Dgc333]

Flew over our house a few times back in the mid-90's. Haven't seen it since.

When I was a kid we would see blimps coming and going from the Weymouth Navel Airstation. That based is closed now and has become an industrial park.

 

[Mighty Little Blue]

My son and I got an opportunity to take a ride in the Goodyear Blimp. It was a pretty cool experience.

I am jealous, seems like once in a lifetime adventure.

 

[Grumpaw]

When I was a deputy in Dade Co, Fla, part of my area in the north end was the Opa Locka airport, a small port for many private planes. It was a left over from WW ll when it was used for training and as a blimp base for the Navy blimps used for submarine patrol along the Fla coast and the Gulf of Mexico.
In the 70's the port still had blimp hangers and the Goodyear Blimp was stored there. Used many times back then to fly over the Orange Bowl when the Dolphins and U of M were playing.
No pics, but I got to ride once while I was in uniform as security for a Fla senator at the time. Also was at the airfield many times watching it land/take off.

 

[subquark]

When I was a deputy in Dade Co, Fla, part of my area in the north end was the Opa Locka airport, a small port for many private planes. It was a left over from WW ll when it was used for training and as a blimp base for the Navy blimps used for submarine patrol along the Fla coast and the Gulf of Mexico.
In the 70's the port still had 2 blimp hangers and the Goodyear Blimp was stored there. Used many times back then to fly over the Orange Bowl when the Dolphins and U of M were playing.
No pics, but I got to ride once while I was in uniform as security for a Fla senator at the time. Also was at the airfield many times watching it land/take off.

That's awesome! And something I'd love to do.

Kate got a ride in it from that airfield in the '60s! Her dad was the orthopedic surgeon for the Dolphins way back in the day.

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