Blimp: Best Seat in The House is 1500 Feet Up

Look,  Up in the sky!  It's billboard, it's a TV camera position, it's the Goodyear Blimp!

It's hard to miss the huge blue, silver and gold airship that's one of the most iconic corporate symbols in the world. The Spirit of Goodyear airship is one of three Goodyear Blimps in the United States (a fourth is based in China) and it's flying over Southeastern Pennsylvania this weekend for the U.S. Open at Merion Golf Club.

• Catch the blimp on camera near where you live, work or just drive? Upload your photos and video and tell us where you spotted The Spirit of Goodyear.

Spirit of Goodyear P.R. Manager Ed Ogden says the airship, which is 192 feet long, 55 feet in diameter, and 59.5 feet high, with 202,700 cubic feet of helium and a gross weight of 12,840 lbs, is flying out of Northeast Philadelphia airport this week as it covers the U.S. Open. That means it can be seen, and heard, over a huge area as it flies from the airport to Merion Golf Club and back.

During the U.S. Open the blimp serves as a platform for a gyro-stablizied HD television camera with a 33:1 lens that can zoom in on a golf ball on the course from its vantage point 1,500 feet above the greens, fairways and traffic jams below.

On board along with a pilot is a Goodyear camera operator. This week, they're feeding the video to NBC. The camera is Goodyear's and it comes with a Goodyear camera operator who operates the camera with a joystick from a high-tech control panel aboard the airship. The camera is lowered from the gondola as illustrated in an animation on the blimp's website.

What's it Like to Fly in the Blimp?

Flying in the blimp is smooth, gentle, a little noisy and incredibly fun. One of the first things you notice when you climb up a short ladder to get into the gondola is how small it is.  The gondola can hold six passengers and a pilot. This week, it's configured for the camera and Ogden says it can comfortably hold three people along with all the camera and related equipment. 

The seats are low-back seats that look more like a small car with folding front seats than a typical airliner seat.

Take off is slow compared to a fixed wing airplane and steady. You literally float into the air carried aloft by what is ultimately much more like huge helium balloon than a plane.  Ogden says the airships don't need runways, they need fields with enough space and enough clearance to allow the huge airships to land without hitting power lines or other obstructions. The blimp takes off into the wind and will "weather vane"  or spin around with the wind when it's moored to a portable mast. The biggest concern is not a long enough runway but rather a big enough field to give the blimp space to rotate in the wind.

Where do they keep the blimp when there's no hangar?

The airship is moored to a portable mast that is anchored to the ground. It travels with the blimp from city to city in a truck.  The Goodyear website describes how the mast system works.

At the very tip of the blimp's nose is a steel ball much like an automobile trailer hitch. This ball locks onto a cup at the top of the portable mooring mast, which is taken along and set up wherever the ship is operating. The blimp is anchored to the earth only at this one point, so it is always free to rotate 360 degrees around the mast as the wind changes. This arrangement has held the blimp in hurricane-force winds on more than one occasion. The blimp will always point itself into the wind, like a weather vane.

Where's the blimp going after the U.S. Open?

Ogden says The Spirit of Goodyear will return to its homebase in Suffield, Ohio near Akron (the other two blimps call Los Angeles and Florida home) after the U.S. Open ends (they'll stick around if play continues through Monday).  After a brief home stay the blimp and its travelling crew of 21 (4 pilots, 16 ground/specialty crew and 1 P.R. person) will head to the LPGA event on Long Island from June 27-30 and the Macy's Fourth of July Fireworks special on NBC July 4.

Read more about the history and FAQ blimp questions on the Goodyear website.