"All right everyone, don't worry, I'm going to stand up now and let Ben fly this beast." The other five passengers in Goodyear Blimp N10A took a deep gasp as Captain Nathan Brooks left the sole pilot station of the blimp and let me take the controls. Nobody else aboard, except for my girlfriend, knew that I was a pilot (albeit with zero hours of blimp time). You should have seen the look in their eyes.
In the 30 seconds or so that it took for us to swap seats, the blimp, cruising along at less than 30 knots, didn't budge but 10 feet from its cruising altitude of 1,500 feet.
The pilot station looks more like a wheelchair than a flight deck seat. There is no yoke; only rudder pedals and a giant wood wheel on the right of the seat that controls the elevator. Rolling it a few revolutions might, if you're lucky, make the blimp change its pitch attitude a degree or so.
The pilot station looks more like a wheelchair than a flight deck seat. There is no yoke; only rudder pedals and a giant wood wheel on the right of the seat that controls the elevator. Rolling it a few revolutions might, if you're lucky, make the blimp change its pitch attitude a degree or so.
After making all of the other passengers sick, Nathan took over and brought us back to the base in Carson, California, near Los Angeles, for a beautiful landing. It was certainly one of those flying adventures that I'll never forget.
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