Here is an idea I want to run past you all as I think it might be cool to try. Along with being a model railroader, I also have some model rc airplanes I fly every now and again. Now I know an airplane would not work too well in such a confined envirooment such as basemnet or attic. In my aresenal,I do have a remote control blimp that you fill with helium and fly indoors. My idea is this.
Would it be plausible to scale this baby down to HO scale and put a blimp port on the layout, maybe put a stadium in eventually that it could fly over. Has anyone ever tried this out? I
would love to hear what you think about this as I love to marry my hobbies together.
I was thinking about making a crude version of the Marine Corps Air Station Santa Ana (better known modernly as the Marine Corps Air Station Tustin) with the famous twin blimp hangers.
I was going to do this mainly because I had an O scale hanger that used to be made by K-line. The building is a lot closer to HO scale. I just never could find three more to finish the base. I was going to splice two together to make a longer hanger and needed a total of four to have two blimp hangers.
I also thought about using this 1:350 scale blimp by Model Power, but figured 1:350 would be too small for HO:
So I ended up making a desert Army base instead, photos of its progress can be seen here (Desert Military Base).
I wonder if there are any blimp models in 1:100 scale? That might look better with HO.
Blimps are huge, compared tot he generally restricted spaces for our layout. For that same reason you rarely see airports modeled, and when they are, it’s usually with slightly underscale planes. Miniature Wonderland gets away with it because their airport alone is bigger than most peoples layouts.
Now, an actual flying blimp in say 1:100? I think you can get motors small enough, propellers you could make, and a small Li-Po battery could pwoer it. But I don’t think you’d find enough volume for helium to be able to actually lift it like the bigger RC blimps. Now, suspend from the ceiling an n scale loop of track, build outrigges across a flat car, and hang the blimb from that with black thread. If the track is well above the valance, no one will see the train that is actually moving the blimp.
Yes, the volume decreases as the cube of the diameter or length. A 4" cube is 64 cubic inches; a 2’ cube is only 8 cubic inches. That is a huge loss of volume, or in this case lifting capacity
Per the OP, the plan(?) is to fly this scale blimp over a sports stadium.
In HO, a typical sports stadium for anything that would warrant a blimp in attendance would be a bit larger than the classic 4 x 8. There’s also a minimum altitude set by the FAA - can’t recall if it’s 500 feet or 1000 feet.
Either way, the best way to model this in scale would be inside a full-scale general aviation hangar. All of which is predecated on the idea that an airship can be built in HO that will lift the necessary power, propulsion and control systems in a bulk less than that of a scale model of USS Macon*…
Chuck (ex-aircraft mechanic modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - without aircraft)
*EDIT - for those not in the know, USS Macon was a rigid airship with the approximate dimensions of an Iowa class battleship. She broke up in a storm, killing most of those on board.
For a time I seriously considered modeling NAS Lakehurst in the 30’s. We have a ton of family photos from the 70’s when Dad was stationed at Fort Monmouth and we used to go fishing up there.
The issue of course the airship hangers. They are of considerable size. The airship itself COULD be built at HO scales and could float. It would be marginally bouyent with He, if constructed with Al, nylon balloons, and undoped cloth and if 2/3 of the vertical internal bracing was removed. As long as the ship was tethered to the ground at a docking ring, I didn’t think it would be a problem, as the lifting surfaces of the airship wouldn’t be under the stress of actual motion, save room circulation. It would still be fragile as heck. Additionally it would have had to have a He bladder in the tail fins and rudders to compensate for the loss of lifting volume. Essentially any place we could stick a nylon bladder we stuck one. Gondalas, gas bag, rudders, fins, etc. any place that it was large enough to hold something we stuck it. We then calculated the estimated volume with H. You could actually get a fair amount of lift above neutral with H. Of course it’s HYDROGEN, so your insurance company may raise an objection or two and of course spouse, Homeland Security, ATF, etc. Yes it’s in a reasonably homogenous environment, but still.
Texts exist on how to build them, but the best plans are from the Navy Archieves.
