Since 2002
Skyacht Aircraft, Inc. has been developing a new type
of aircraft called the Personal Blimp. The goal of this work has been to create
an aircraft capable of quiet, steerable, sustained, and affordable flight.
When the first Personal Blimp, named the Airship Alberto,
made its first flight on October 27, 2006,
it became the first and only aircraft to meet this
seemingly straightforward goal.
The Personal Blimp uses hot air (rather than Helium)
for lift and virtually silent electric motors for propulsion.
To put it another way: the Personal Blimp is a hot air balloon
that can be maneuvered about in nearly perfect quiet.
Passengers in a Personal Blimp have a serene experience of
flight unavailable in any other type of aircraft.
(Note: Initial flight tests are using a conventional gas-powered motor.
Electric motors will be added once these
initial tests are complete. Similarly, the initial flight tests are
being made with conventional -- i.e. loud -- hot air balloon burners.
Quiet burners will be added later.)
The
Personal Blimp can fly in ways that no other aircraft can match.
For instance, no other aircraft can accomplish the seemingly straightforward task of picking off the top-most
leaf from a particular tree (Helicopter downblast tosses the leaves wildly; Helium airships can't hover; Previously built hot air airship and hot air balloons are essentially
impossible to steer precisely at hovering airspeeds.) In contrast, the Personal Blimp flies "low, slow, and smooth." This enables one to accomplish tasks
as simple as the above-mentioned tree-top leaf-picking
or as complex as
carrying airborne gravimetric measurement equipment
(used in diamond prospecting)
with far greater sensitivity and spatial resolution.
Other areas of application for the Personal Blimp's unique abilities include forest canopy research, wetlands survey/management, eco-tourism, and aerial photography and film-making.
When not in use, the
Personal Blimp can be deflated and folded for storage
(much like a hot air balloon.)
The combination of ready buoyancy control and rapid deflation eliminates
not only costly hangars but also the large ground crews typically required for
helium airships.
While some hot air airships exist today, these craft are extremely
limited in their abilities. These limits arise because
the envelopes (a.k.a. "gas bags") of these ships consist only of fabric with no
rigid structural members (i.e. They are "non-rigids".) These designs rely solely upon internal
air pressurization (the way a toy balloon does) to retain their shape.
This lack of structural rigidity leads to both low airspeed and limited steering.
In contrast to completely non-rigid envelope designs,
the Personal Blimp has a rigid, but folding,
skeleton (much like an umbrella) to allow the envelope to
retain its shape without requiring
internal air pressurization. We received a patent (USPTO #6,793,180)
for this unique structural design in September of 2004.
The Personal Blimp's rigid but foldable structure also
provides hardpoints at strategic locations
(e.g. on the tail) for mounting systems such as the engine and propeller.
With the engine/propeller mounted on the tail,
the Personal Blimp can use vectored thrust for steering.
This provides far greater maneuverability, particularly for hovering,
than any previous hot air airship.
Since its first flight in 2006, the Alberto has completed more than 50 hours of flight testing. Our work now focuses on both
refining its systems and further expanding its capabilities.
We have also started construction of our second airship to be named
Hugo.
