Don,

Your Akron turn out fantastic! I like how you created the base with the shot from Google Earth! Great idea! What did you use to paint the silver?

I can only wish.

Don, that turned out fantastic!  I absolutely love the base - neat idea!

That is really neat, clean work Don. What scale is it, and how big is the finished model?

Very cool. Nice work on a unique build. The display really sends it home.

BK

Ah, Akron has been finished for a long time!!! LOL. Great work. I have a friend whose wife wanted to ride in a diridgable/Zepher/blimp. He was selected for a ride in the Goodyear blimp and gave it to her for her 50th birthday. Now she wants to try a baloon ride. Anyway that super work of yours is a reminder of an age in aviation that is still alive and well, e.g. the Goodyear and Fuji blimps. I think I read that there is talk of U.S. Government operating several of these aircraft as border patrol vehicles.  

I've never seen a blimp kit before, that's a very nice build.  I love the diversity.

Toshi

That is marvelous work and presentation, Don!  Makes me want one. 

Gary

Super, Don.

OH, very cool, Don!

That is wonderful, Don.

The Macon rests off California in an undisclosed location, with her Sparrowhawks.

From time to time we get restoration work at the former Moffett Naval Air Station, makes me think of the silver twins.

I'll answer the questions with one post.  Paint was Krylon Aluminum over Krylon Primer.  Model is about 1:500 or thereabouts- forget the last two digits.  It is just shy of eighteen inches long (the base is eighteen).  BTW, the Akron is not a blimp, it is a rigid airship.  Lots of blimps around today but no rigids left.  Don't know if there ever will be another.  I debated whether to grab a picture of Lakehurst or Moffett, but I think Lakehurst looks more like it did in days of rigid airships.  The hanger is still at Moffett, but the NASA facility seems to take up quite a bit of what was the old airfield, I believe.

  That is a great build!  Now you could build a dio of the runaway weather ballon with mayhem as a companion piece

Don, I stand corrected. I have never had the desire to delve into the airship/blimp/zepher/zeppelin area of aviation. I appreciate the correction. I learned something and that makes it a good day. IIRC Revell did a model of the Goodyear Blimp and Airfix did an airship. I think it was one of the German airships, but I'm not sure.  

There was a ride for fee operation running out of Moffett for a couple of years named "Airship Ventures". Their aircraft was a semi-rigid Zeppelin NT "Neue Technologie" .

This has a carbon fiber truss internally to which the gas cells are mounted. They went out of business in 2012. It used to fly over our house on Saturday afternoons.

Moffett really changed over the years. The parade ground core with the original architecture sort of exists, but because it was an active Naval Air Station into the 90's before it became a Federal Airfield, it continually got revamped, not in good ways.

Wow..GM !!!!!...that's beautiful. .love how you did it ..

Me, no thats Don's model.

That's beautiful Don! Great job on her and very cool to see something different. Plus the base looks great too!

I think the correct term here is dirigible though zeppelin certainly works too.

Both blimps and rigids are dirigible (able to be steered and controlled) and both are airships.  Blimps are like balloons, the inflation pressure gives them their form.  Some people call rigid airships Zeppelins, but that is that figure of speech-forget what it is called- that turns a brand name into a general description, like aspirin.  I think the best name for rigids is rigid airship.  Be nice if there was a general term for them, but I don't think there is.  BTW, one of the big ongoing arguments in lighter-than-air is the origin of the term "blimp."

Another interesting thing- Atlas missiles and launchers, at least the earlier ones, relied on fuel and oxidizer pressure to keep their shape.  The skin was so thin the weight of the payload would collapse the structure if the pressure failed.  So can we call an Atlas a blimp?