So, blimps are pretty slow moving creatures, at least they look it when floating high above my city on football sundays. Now, the question is, how do they get the blimps from city to city. Do they actually have to fly it there, or is there some sort of special de-airing of the blimp, which is then shipped elsewhere to be used again on gameday?
Um…they fly them?
No, they really do. Most of the blimps you see are part of a fleet, so they are scattered around the country and don’t have to fly NY-SF in three days. 
The Goodyear fleet, for instance, is 3 blimps.
*In the United States it operates three well-recognized blimps: the Spirit of Goodyear, based in Akron, Ohio; the Spirit of America, based in Carson, California; and the Stars & Stripes, in Pompano Beach, Florida. *
From Goodyear’s faq:
Those blimps aren’t glorified hot-air balloons. They are descendents of the WWII US Navy blimps which were used for coastal patrol and ship escort. Some had top speeds of 90 mph.
American Blimp Corporation, which makes a lot of them, lists their Spector airships as having a maximum airspeed of about 50 mph, and capable of carrying 15 hours worth of fuel at 45 mph:
http://www.americanblimp.com/abc.htm
That seems feasible to simply fly them between cities in a fairly large region, if needed. As noted, they are generally leased out by companies which have fleets of them, and they probably stay in the same city or metro area, for the most part. The Lightship Group is an American Blimp affiliate that leases a lot of them.
When it’s lunchtime on a cross country jaunt, I wonder how they maneuver through the drive-thru?
What is the signifigance of Akron to airships? One of the Navy’s aircraft carrying airships was named Akron.
http://content.scu.edu/cgi-bin/viewer.exe?CISOROOT=/svhocdm&CISOPTR=234
Probably just that that happens to be where Goodyear has their headquarters.
And when did we have carrier airships? That’s cool.
“Rubber capital of the world” (or at least it used to be).
And if you buy one from ABC (a couple million), they don’t fly it to you, or have you come and pick it up in Oregon. Final assembly and test flight takes place at the customer’s site.
(ABC has been a success because they realized there was a market for blimps if they could make them cheap enough - an ABC blimp costs less to operate than the Goodyear blimps, and requires a smaller ground crew.)
The Akron was launched in 1931.
Pictures in this link don’t work with Opera, I used IE.
http://www.ciderpresspottery.com/ZLA/greatzeps/american/Akron_Macon.html
Some of these blimps can really book! I always assumed, from watching them on the ground, that they must plod along at 20 knots or so, max.
Akron was the manufacturing site for airships of all sorts, owing to Goodyear being headquartered there. (Rubberized fabric is necessary to contain helium.) The Akron was named after the city. The rest of the U.S. Navy rigid-airship fleet comprised the Shenandoah, the ZR-2 (which didn’t survive long enough to be delivered and named), the Los Angeles,** and the Macon – three named for cities, one named for a river and valley, and one never named.
A blimp is short for a Type-B* “limp” (nonrigid) dirigible airship – it flies. Blimps can and do hover, just like helicopters, but with the added advantage that the motors need only hold it motionless in a 2-D framework; the helium holds it up. But they’re quite capable of making headway in a controlled flight from anywhere to anywhere, presuming they’re not bucking headwinds higher than their maximum steady flight speed in doing so.
- I have no clue what a Type-A limp dirigible airship may have been; the term dates from the early 20th century British development of airships.
** The Los Angeles was a remarkably long-lived ship; it was built in the early 1920s by Luftshiffbau Zeppelin, the German manufacturers of LTA craft which later built the Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg, and survived well into WWII, when it was finally scrapped, flying nearly 20 years without serious incident (save for one occasion when a strong lifting wind stood it on end at its mooring mast, with no structural damage and very little internal problems).
What I want to know is: if they run out of fuel, how to we get them out? I mean, it’s linda like being stuck on an escalator, you know? 
But like without the steps, and stuff.
There are more photos of the USS Akron here:
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/ac-usn22/z-types/zrs4.htm
Including photos of the Akron Air Group (airplanes carried aboard the Akron).
By the way, I thought the “Blimp = Type B Limp” etymology was apocryphal? There are other stories floating around, e.g. “blimp” is the sound it makes when you tap on the envelope.
Dang, I was hoping for a “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”-type thing.
I once landed a plane at Boston are Hansom AFB and there was a blimp coming in at the same time. Good Lord! They had at least fifty people on land to tie down and secure that thing.
Yes, they fly them wherever they need to go.
When you grow up in Akron you see the blimp a lot. I’ve flown in two of the Goodyear blimps (stragely enough, not the one based in my hometown) and piloted one of them. Once in Akron a friend’s daughter summoned her to the front yard because the blimp was flying very low over their house and the girl’s two brothers were trying to grab the ropes. Fortunately they didn’t succeed.
–Cliffy
Previously, Goodyear had a blimp in Akron named Spirit of Akron, which was retired in 1999. Note the different tail configuration.
It’s rarely necessary to dismantle an airship for long-distance travel, since they generally have a pretty respectable range. As early as 1919, the British rigid airship R-34 made the transatlantic flight (in both directions) between the U.K. and U.S., thought it did almost run out of fuel on the westbound leg, flying against the prevailing winds.
But it’s not unheard of to dismantle an airship for transport. In 1921, The Italian-made semi-rigid airship Roma was bought by the U.S. Army, disassembled, transported across the Atlantic by surface ship, and reassembled. The next year, it flew into electric lines and exploded in Virginia, killing all but 11 of the 44 or 45 men aboard.