Update -Airship lndustrie’s Skyship 500

One of the stars of the 1982 Farnborough Air Show flying display was by coincidence the slowest. Each day the relatively large Airship Industries Skyship 500 would glide in to prove again that old ideas aren’t necessarily always ‘old hat”.

The concept of a large, by modern standards, airship was promoted by Cardington-based Airship Industries back in the late seventies. Thousands of man-hours and a sizeable monetary investment has resulted in the first working example of the company, the Model 500.

The Skyship 500 is 50 m (164 ft) in length and has a dry weight of 3. 18 tonnes for a payload of 2 tonnes. The spacious cabin can accommodate up to 14 persons. Power is supplied by two Porsche flat-six car engines each producing 240 bhp at 5900 rpm for takeoff and maximum power manoeuvring and 150 bhp at 4400 rpm for normal cruise operations. The Porsche car engines drive via Westland Lynx helicopter gearboxes to Hoffman five-blade propellers operating in a ducted propulsor shroud. The ducts are able to tilt 100 degrees downwards and 110 degrees upwards permitting the use of Harrier-style thrust-vectoring to be employed which assists greatly in getting in and out of tight operating sites.

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