vaughn wrote:
To me, the LTA displays are some of the more fascinating artifacts at the
National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola FL.


There's a good book on the history of the U.S. Navy's LTA program
entitled "Sky Ships" by William F. Althoff (Orion Books, 1990, ISBN
0-517-56904-3) which has a cutaway of the ZPG-3W in it showing the radar
antenna inside the gasbag. The scanning radar was actually mounted high
up in the gasbag, just slightly forward of the external top bump which
housed the height finding radar. You could climb up a tunnel from the
control car to a compartment just behind the radars... I assume to work
on there electronics while in flight.
You want to see a really odd airship, check out this thing I stumbled on
today, which I had never heard of befo
http://www.oldbeacon.com/beacon/airships/zmc-2.htm

"-- Historical footnote --
At the same time the ZMC-2 was being built, another concern was
exploring the concept of metalclad airships.
In Glendale, California Benton Slate was building the Slate All-Metal
Airship (MD-2) which featured a corrugated skin, an innovative steam
propulsion systems and a number of other innovations. The world's
largest form press was assembled at Grand Central Airport to build this
airship."

Here's photos and drawings of it:
http://www.earlyaviator.com/archive/...le.pat-dwg.jpg
http://www.earlyaviator.com/archive/...ble.inshed.jpg
http://www.earlyaviator.com/archive/....dirigible.jpg
http://www.earlyaviator.com/archive/...irigible.1.jpg
(those are from he http://www.earlyaviator.com/archive3.htm )

This was one weird airship, intended to pull itself through the air by
using the Coanda effect to suck air aft over its hull after it was
ejected from its bow, and run the airship through the skies in its own
bubble of air.
The patent for it is he http://tinyurl.com/ccwxel
(Patent number is 1,642,270)
Although large dirigibles do generate a pretty thick boundary layer
around themselves in flight (on big WW-I Zeppelins it could be as much
as four feet thick at full speed), there is no way in the world that
your are going to generate enough air volume with that small nose blower
to get this idea to work.
I had never heard of this thing before today, and I note none of the
photos actually show it airborne.

Pat