team, but also a new beginning; the
start of a new way of working, with
a new regulator and with a renewed
sense of purpose - to return
Airlander to flight.
The company has also built a stateof-the-art Flight Simulator that is
now up and running, and the first
“flight” under the guidance of Test
Pilot, Dave Burns.
Over the last few months work has
focused on the physical tasks of
reassembling and preparing the
aircraft for flight.
The envelope has been inspected
and repairs made by a team of ten
technicians from the manufacturer,
ILC Dover, who spent six months at
Cardington undertaking the work.
Whenever an airship envelope is
folded for storage or transport, there
is inevitably some damage to the
fabric due to folds and creasing. HAV
also wanted the envelope to have a
complete inspection just in case any
additional damage was done during
deflation. Very little was found and
the envelop has been given a clean
bill of health and can be expected to
provide years of service.
Inflation of the envelope with helium
got underway towards the end of
October 2015. Because the envelope
was bare and not fitted with any of
the hard structure such as fins,
engines and gondola, it was first
inflated with full ballonets, and a
‘dirty’ fill of helium which is helium
mixed with air. This would reduce the
amount of lift generated and in turn
the strain on the tie-down patches and
ropes. A bare envelope, carrying no
additional weight, could easily put
enough force on ties down patches to
result in damage to the envelope.
With the first fill of helium
complete, the AIRLANDER
envelope became ‘airborne’ at
22:00 on 31st October 2015.
The opportunity was then taken to
move the envelope to the front of
the hangar where a new concrete
floor had been laid as part of the
renovation of the shed. This was
achieved by securing the envelope
to four forklift trucks, one at each
‘corner’, and slowly moving it
forwards.
Once in its new location by the
front doors, additional helium
would be added and to the
envelope, and then purified to
remove the air, in order to generate
more lift as components were
added.