Message posted by Griffon_314 on February 07, 2006 at 7:15:15 PST:

Further to the AVpress article on "P791" (the airship prototype observed at Palmdale), Aviation Week has a short article and an additional photo.

It looks as though LM sent Mr's Hansen and Blunck to hovercraft school for a good reason - the Avweek article makes clear that P791 is intended to explore low-altitude cargo/troop transport concepts, not high-altitude surveillance. Very hovercraft-like maneuvers were observed during taxiing.

So this isn't their HAA prototype, which is speculated to be much larger and of a more traditional blimp shape.

If anyone can grab some more photos of P791, I'd love to see them...LM told AVPress they would be testing it primarily in the early morning. The Jan 31 flight began at 5am.

Avweek Story & Photo: http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=awst&id=news/020606p2.xml

Avpress Story:
http://www.avpress.com/n/02/0202_s1.hts

Photo of LM Test Pilot, Flight Engineer graduating hovercraft training:
http://www.hovercrafttraining.com/mediacenter/photo.php?img_id=851&gallery=training§ion=completed
(The Avweek story confirms Eric P. Hansen as the test pilot for the Jan 31 flight at Palmdale)

Replies:

• Re: More info on P791 (and another photo) - it's not HAA lone wolf 02/07/2006, 8:03:25 PST (3)
  • Different balloon, I think Griffon_314 02/07/2006, 8:22:44 PST (2)
    • Re: Different balloon, I think Peter Merlin 02/07/2006, 8:40:06 PST (1)
      • Re: Different balloon, I think lone wolf 02/07/2006, 19:01:46 PST (0)
• Re: More info on P791 (and another photo) - it's not HAA Joerg (Webmaster) 02/07/2006, 7:51:23 PST (0)