Hello Jim,
The flight depicted in the Video is, as stated at the beginning, the very first flight of our development airship. As with all such first flights, we were extremely conservative with both the control inputs and speed. We never advanced past 1/4 quarter of the available throttle. The main goal of this flight was to check the straight and level flight of the airship with the trim settings for the gimballing system set to neutral and once happy with that, apply some limited control inputs. This will provide a control baseline from which to expand the operational envelope.
The airship was tethered at all times, this is a legal requirement set by the FAA. We are currently working on permission to operate in restricted airspace, which will allow us to undertake free flight.
The flight testing of the airship will continue shortly using both the stern engine and auxiliary thrusters.
You might also like to know that a much larger airship is already in the advanced stages of construction, we will feature updates on our web site accordingly
jimcognito wrote:
It's always good to see any LTA effort flying but with all due respect Dan Geery has demonstrated superior manuverabilty & speed compared to ASI's R&D1. Considering that in the first half of the video the R&D 1 appears to be tethered I have to say that in the second half they seem to be doing better than Sanswire ever did. Since these guys are from Las Vegas I wonder if they know Mike Walden ?
