I witnessed a "low pass" at Santa Monica about a month ago.

I was driving in for a flying club meeting when I saw the blimp in the
vicinity from the freeway. To my surprise, it was coming really close to
the airport when I got out of my car, though I had no idea is was "coming in
for a landing" until it was almost right on top of me. It was surreal how
slowly it moved, and how it pitched down very steeply on "final" - plus, its
size seemed to dwarf the airport, and anything else I've ever seen in that
position before!

As soon as I started to wonder how and to where it would "taxi" off of the
runway, it pitched back up and started to leave just as slowly and
gracefully as it came in. The side banner was displaying a tribute to the
soldiers in Iraq...

What an interesting "visit" that was!

"Randy Wentzel" wrote in message
...
I was bumming around STS (Sonoma County Airport) yesterday evening
visiting
a friend at his hanger when we noticed that the Goodyear Blimp was
"docked"
across the field in a rural part of the airport. We decided to hike on
over
after the airport closed (and becomes uncontrolled) and take a closer
look.
We half expected to get chased off as the sun had already set and the
blimp
wasn't docked in public accessible area. We were wrong though...

We were greeted by the blimp's crew chief, Tony, who immediately handed us
brochures and welcomed us to take a closer look. What we ended up getting
was a 45-minute personal tour of just about every aspect of the blimp and
it's operation. We sat in the gondola for a good 1/2 hour and just shot
the
breeze as the blimp rotated back and forth a bit on it's mooring like a
big
windsock.

The controls are nearly identical to a modern twin, with the exception of
no
yolks and the addition of a big "elevator wheel." and a few other mystery
controls. :-) See:
http://www.sonic.net/randyw/goodyear.../DSC01047.html

Tony couldn't have been more accommodating. At no time did we feel rushed
and he insisted on giving us a tour of the support truck too. I never
thought much of blimps (Zeps are another story) before last night, but now
I'm a little awe-struck.

Here are all the photos if you are interested:

http://www.sonic.net/randyw/goodyear_blimp (ignore the mixed-in Fiat and
Porsche photos)

Best,

Randy Wentzel
Sonoma County CA.