Arena Blimp Newbies

[Gene Bond]

Our club has recently taken over the responsibility for flying the local hockey team's blimp between periods, dropping pingpong balls for prizes.

We inherited a well-worn 12' blimp from Micro Aviation, who appears to be out of business. After a few false starts due to equipment failures, we have finally had a few successful events. With none of us ever having flown a blimp, it has been an interesting learning curve.

We are considering changing the direct drive 400 motors over to geared 300's, in an attempt to increase thrust, while reducing battery drain.

I'm just curious if anyone here has some experience with this type of blimp, and can give us any insight. Several of us peruse these forums. I, personally, seem to be docked here whenever I'm home, and often when I'm not...

Any help and advice would be appreciated.

[rob mueller]

Cool genebond. How about a couple Razor 300s in a GWS gearbox? Oh, and of course Lipoly.:) Good luck...I would love to fly a 12'blimp.

[Morphisnb]

Did you ask Steven from Stevensaero.com? His E-Zone Name is Arenablimp.

[Stevens AeroModel]

I have converted all of my direct drive 280 and 400 blimps over to Geared GWS 300 systems. The results have been fantastic - went a whole season on the same motors. You'll need to run un-shrouded to swing the larger slow fly props - so I'd suggest swtiching to an ESC with a hard braking function to immeadiately stop the blade before touching down in the stands... otherwise you'll need shrouds.... big ones.

I still run mine on RC-2400's it seems to run forever on the geared setups. At trade shows my times have increased from 45min of run time to just under 3 hours of puttering around. When motoring around at the hockey games I get about 30min of flight and tons of static thrust for t-shirt drops and the like.

Remember to avoid high pitched props - a blimp is not a speedster... think of it in terms of heli's... you need a large disk that is relatively "unloaded" as you need thrust to fight off wind currents in the arena - not speed....

-Bill

[Gene Bond]

Thanks Bill. You've confirmed our suspicions, and the calculations. I have asked around about the real sweet spot for 400 motors, and have yet to find a real answer. Every calculation I've run on 8 cells or less seems to favor a geared 300 in efficiency.

We've also been debating the reversing neccessity. Our current setup allows the linkage to be 'flipped over' so a pilot can back out of trouble, by flipping full up elevator and releasing, causing the linkage to flip 180 degrees, so the fans are facing the other direction. It's been argued that the linkage wasn't designed for this. Apparently there are some linkages that allow 360 degree rotation, using chain drives, so we are going to investigate this.

We also are wondering about the rudder thruster efficiency. Obviously a prop is more efficient in one direction. We were wondering if back-to-back props, maybe 90 degrees from each other might be better. Or, maybe there is an omni-directional prop.

[Stevens AeroModel]

Your best bet is a paddle type prop for the back that is omni-directional. The way my airships are setup is with a reversing esc controlling the rudder - the GWS drive is hotter in reverse direction due to the timing... the esc is hottest in forward with reverse only providing 70 power... what I have done is set the forward esc to run the motor in the reverse direction and spin the prop backward... this evens out the effectiveness to a point. IIt has never been a big enough issue to contend with... My fans pivot 270 degrees which seems to be enough for backing out of trouble.

-Bill

-Bill

[BullisOK]

Hi Gene

I've been flying a blimp at Hockey games here in Rochester NY for the past 2 yrs myself and a couple guys share the job.... Hockey and Laccrose and it's been a lot of fun... Keeps me going in the winter... Here we use 2 direct drive motors... never really paid much attention to what props it had on it... Someone else had set it up... We use 5 sell 3300 NMH batteries. 2 pacs and just rotate them. Really for me if it is balanced right it doesn't take much to move it around. On ours we use two motors for forward / reverse, with the prop fan area pivits 90% and we use tail prop with forward reverse to swing the tail each way. Works great... I just keep it right on the edge of floating. We balance it with a small bag on the front and back with money / washers LOL we even have a hockey puck in the front for balace... Add and take some out to get it right... Done pretty cheaply. When you get everything down and it starts going well it will be very enjoyable... Love to tease people and watch the kids reactions.... Good luck. Wish I could help with your questions but more just chimed in to say how fun it is.

[Gene Bond]

Thanks for the comment. It soumds real similar to the setup we've been using. Our Hockey team has new owners, now, so we are hoping to fit a rbuild into the budget this year. The biggest problem is getting time to get over to the arena to test something, if we want to try a change. Game days are no time to experiment :)

Hopefully this summer we will have the opportunity to build a new gondola, and try out some of our ideas.