Pat Flannery wrote:


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


Interesting how that site doesn't mention one major problem with
ZMC-2: air sickness. The crews complained of getting sick in rough air.
apparently the metal envelope couldn't flex enough to smooth the ride.

One thing I have never been able to find is diagrams or photographs
of the rivet machine designed for riveting the seams of the envelope.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired