Semi-rigid RC airship

Outdoor video has been available for some time now at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5jKVoAL8LY

A rough (very rough, sorry 'bout that) video of the first flights of my new 5-foot long semi-rigid hybrid RC dirigible.

As I was controlling it, somebody else had to use the camera, and I realized too late that it was set to the lower resolution :/ bugger... I hope to get better videos shot and uploaded soon.

A word about the aircraft itself: The envelope length is about 5 feet (~1.5m), and the volume is about 6 cu ft (170 liters). The envelope (balloon) is composed of aluminum laminated polyamide film (aka. balloon foil).

All the other stuff (RC gear and the like) are attached to a balsa-carbon fiber keel girder, which in turn is tied to the balloon itself. This gives the craft great stability even if the gas filling was incomplete. The power system offers vectorable thrust to aid in take-offs and landings.

The airship is completely scratch built. I built the envelope, the keel and the other structural components myself, and number of electronics are also homebuilt. I estimate it took some 500-1000 hours total to build it. hard to say, I started the project two years ago, but built it only now and then...

The craft will receive some updates in the following days. I will probably also take some new videos, and a bit better & sharper this time :)

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Airship
• dirigible
• balloon
• blimp
• RC
• Aviation
• RC-blimp

[flinxsl]

i'm interested in your control scheme, i see you have only 1 fan, do you have 2 servos to control which way it is pointing? and do you have control over your rudder?

[Cernwrech]

Well, that is an old video, taken by the time the blimp still had no tail propeller. In this video it only has rudder, elevator (ineffective since it was mounted so close to the balloon) and vectorable main motor (vertical&horizontal thrust)

[wkbassett]

thats faster than I thought

[Cernwrech]

HAH! you should see the outdoor flying vid... um, that's right, I haven't uploaded it yet :P

According to my calculations, the airship has enough power (thrust) to achieve 10mph. In reality however, the hull structure was too flimsy to enable steady flight at those power levels. I'm currently refitting the craft with stronger hull. Perhaps even faster flights can be expected...

[wkbassett]

I want.

[Cernwrech]

To see the outdoor video? Yeah, working on it... Just beginning to understand how hard it is to find a good baseline video editing software that would be free and easy to use...

[leithkills]

nice:D

[Kazbahn1]

excuse me , when you say it's fake, what exactly do you mean? this 'small robe' you talk about? i presume you mean a small rope. in which case you mean string. The only string i can see is coming from the front of the airship. the only reason that's there is for ballast. Get a life and quit claiming things are fake. It's perhaps the lowest form of trolling ever invented.

[1233211236]

fake, you can see a small robe

[carltonrowlands]

awsome!!!

[Cernwrech]

???