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• Lightheaded
Page 58
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I know airships have little to do with our normal topics, firmly feet on ground, but when CM learned that Goodyear's airship Europa was "tendered" by a six-wheeled Mercedes-Benz, a DAF, a Scania 80, a Fiat coach/mobile office and VW Microbus the situation clearly needed investigation. (For British patriots: the airship was built at Cardington, Bedfordshire.) News editor Tim Hoare was persuaded (with little difficulty) to do the investigating, but once at the airfield where Europa is based when in the UK he conveniently forgot all about the commercial vehicles and went sailing off into the wide blue yonder. So the rest of this item comes to you from our airship correspondent: — "Europa carries six people plus the pilot (Arnaud Brizon, from France) who obviously knows his airway code because he was definitely seen to give a hand signal through the open window when coming in to land (try that in a Trident!). It was also comforting when air testing to see two bits of rope dangling from the front (or should it be sheets from the bow?) of the ship, which were grabbed with grim determination by the ground crew when a landing seemed likely.
"The helium gas is not lost during manoeuvring — instead of spilling gas to descend, a vessel like Europa scoops in air from behind the engine, achieving a slight compression effect in its air bags, sufficient to overcome the helium's buoyancy. (End of technical note.)
"The ship is used mainly as a giant illuminated advertisement hoarding (though not in this country, where aerial advertising is banned) from its permanent base in Italy. A total of 7560 lights can be controlled by an airborne mini-computer and magnetic tape, and these were recently used to display lap times and placings to spectators at the Le Mans 24-hour race."