Talk:Airship Industries Skyship 600

Volume of the ship
If you use 4/3 Pi R1 R2 R3 to calculate the volume of the airship you will get 16,726 m3. This is more than twice the 7,600m3 given. Now I know the thing is not a perfect elipsoid, but I would expect something closer than this. Therefore I have added a fact template to the article.Mike Young (talk) 12:45, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps the ballonetts are not counted? Mike Young (talk) 12:47, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

You had used the height (ground to top of fin) as R2 and R3 instead of the diameter, which was not listed in the spec section, and you incorrectly assumed an ellipsoid. The volume of the Skyship 600 is 6,666 m3 (235,400 ft3) (7,600m3 for the Skyship 600B). The diameter of the envelope is 15.2 m (49.9 ft). I have tried to add it to the spec section, but it will not allow me to do so. John Taylor (talk) 16:40, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Turboshaft?
The article states that the ship was initially powered by " Porsche 930 turboshafts," I've never heard of this engine, and suspect it's actually referring to the 6-cylinder turbocharged engine from the Porsche 930, which was developed into the Porsche PFM 3200. Does anyone have further information on this engine? Maury (talk) 18:29, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

This page states the 500's engines had 200 hp each used avgas, which suggests it was not a turbine. Maury (talk) 18:30, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

The engines were / are standard Porsche 'flat six' air-cooled piston engines. They were emphatically NOT "turboshafts". A turboshaft engine is a gas turbine engine outputting its power via a shaft and (usually) a reduction gearbox, such as is used in helicopters and some marine applications. The Skyship 600 (which I flew for two years, and for which I still have the pilot's manuals) used standard car piston engines, and not even the Porsche PFM aero engine, developed at about the same time. The engines in the Skyship 500 were normally aspirated and those in the Skyship 600 were turbo-charged (which is where the error probably originates). The engines had their normal 12V electrical system modified to a 24V system to be compatible with aircraft systems, but were otherwise pretty standard, retaining the single Bosch Jetronic ignition/injection system. They had a single-lever control, with no aeroplane-style manual mixture and prop RPM control. We ran them on Avgas, as the UK CAA would not permit the use of Mogas on Public Transport Certificated aircraft (all the ships were, at that time, UK-registered). The engines were mounted in a separate compartment at the rear of the gondola, with the crankshafts perpendicular to the aircraft centreline and angled down about 20 degrees. At the end of the outrigger, in the centre of the prop duct was a 90-degree gearbox (a Lynx helicopter tail rotor gearbox) to turn the thrust line fore-and-aft. The prop was a Hoffman composite fan of (as I recall) 13 blades, contained within a duct. The entire gearbox/prop/duct assembly could be tilted about 80 degrees up and 110 degrees down to provide vectored thrust. The props were not constant speed items, such as you'd find in a fixed-wing aeroplane, but had four discrete pitch settings, controlled by an electric screw-jack actuator (idle, reverse, forward fine and forward cruise). Our rules of thumb were: 3000RPM = 30 knots = 30kg fuel burn per hour, 5000RPM = 50kt = 50kg/hr.Hotrod767 (talk) 15:48, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Article title
Shouldn't the title be "Airship Industries Skyship 600" per Naming_conventions_(aircraft)? (I'm open to reasons why it shouldn't). Grover Snodd (talk) 18:24, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

I've now posted a formal move notice to that effect.Grover Snodd (talk) 14:55, 11 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I've moved it - bold but I epxect no problems. GraemeLeggett (talk) 15:57, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

New company
According to the website, the company is now Skyship Services Inc. By the way, do they build new Skyship 600s anymore? --ilaiho (talk) 21:29, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Successor and other info
Under Airship Industries its says:

"Although ATG received two orders for the Skyship 600B, a higher-performance version of the 600, in its early years, it sold the type certificate for the 600 to Julian Benscher of Global Skyship."

Also in the article it says that 10 were built. I take it that they don't make 600's any more. This article doesn't make it very clear that this is a model, not a one-off. Nor does it say anything about the seperate specimen's histories and whereabouts etc. - I know one could BE BOLD but I know nothing about this.

Actually, I going to be the WikiDragon I am and stick the above in anyway!

IceDragon64 (talk) 23:06, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Corrections
1. The Zeppelin NT-07 is now the largest airship in commercial service. The Aeoscraft rigid airship, now in flight test, is the largest currently flying. Other larger ones have flown in recent years.

2. The envelope is not kevlar. It is as now described in the article. The gondola (car) is kevlar-reinforced, and the suspension cables are kevlar.

3. The description of the thrust vectoring system and its purpose has been made more precise.

4. No Skyship 600 ever flew with a fly-by-light control system. The Sentinel 1000, built and flown by Westinghouse Airship Industries as a flight test model for the US Naval Airship Program (zero-funded by the US Congress in 1993), comprised a Skyship 600 gondola and an envelope that was a 1/2 linear (1/8 volume) aerodynamic model of the proposed YEZ-2A airship envelope. It was equipped with a Marconi fly-by-light (FBL) flight control system with electrical actuators. In order to protect from lightning strike and electrical interference, power for the actuators at the tail surfaces was provided pneumatically through plastic tubing to pneumatically-powered electrical generators at each actuator.

5. The Specifications given were for the Skyship 600B. I have replaced them with Skyship 600 specs.

- My credentials: retired lighter-than-air flight test engineer & consultant. Worked on the Naval Airship Program, and flew the Skyship 600 a number of times.John Taylor 20:50, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Correction to new entry in Design section which appeared in response to my correction #4 above: I removed "through ducts" from "cables running through ducts to the two rudders and two elevators". The cables run on pulleys through the car, then in the open under the envelope to the tail. Also removed incomplete sentence "Airship Industries saw it as useful for". John Taylor (talk) 16:41, 20 August 2014 (UTC) Correction to "Spirit of Dubai": A user just changed "like the Spirit of Dubai" to "like 600-05 currently known as Spirit of Dubai". I have corrected it to "which flew in 2006-7 as Spirit of Dubai". By May 2007, it was back in Friedrickshafen being repainted for another assignmnent. The only Skyship currently in service is SN10, which flew recently for the BBC TV Sky Lab show. John Taylor (talk) 19:03, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

merge Spirit of Dubai to this article
One Skyship 600 was used for promotional purposes under the name "Spirit of Dubai" for only part of its career, and the promotion was some time ago now. There seems to have been no particular lasting notability for it under this name. Accordingly, it doesn't really warrant a standalone article and what encylopaedic content is in the Spirit of Dubai article should be merged here. GraemeLeggett (talk) 19:13, 20 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree Graeme, but Spirit of Dubai was such a short contract compared to most of the other advertising customers, that it does not warrant more than a sentence or two. I may be able to get a complete listing of the customers of all the Skyships from a contact in the UK. I'll see what I can do. John Taylor (talk) 19:40, 20 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Merge - As already noted this airship only spent a small period of time with that name and does not represent a variant, or even sub-variant, of the original airship.--Petebutt (talk) 14:00, 27 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Done!--Petebutt (talk) 17:19, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

The section should be entirely in the past tense. Airship Management Services was closed following the death of founder/CEO George Spyrou. His family sold the assets to Julian Benscher's Global Skyship Services, now operating as Skyship Services, Inc. Additionally, the Spirit of Dubai venture was 8 years ago.

I was not able to obtain a complete list of Skyship 600 clients (advertisers), but I may be able to create a fairly comprehensive list by scouring the past issues of Airship, the journal of the Airship Association. This will take some time. John Taylor (talk) 17:04, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Citations and References
I'm new to wikipedia editing, and I can't figure how to enter the citation for the specs that I had updated. http://www.skyshipservices.com/images/Skyship%20Magazine.pdf can be used. This is the same document as reference [7], but since Airship Management Services is no longer in business (following the death of owner George Spyrou, the family sold the assets to Julian Benscher's Global Skyship, now trading as Skyship Services), ref [7] should be changed to this link too. John Taylor (talk) 16:28, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * WP:Cite will lead you to the information you need. The way referencing works, is that there should be enough information so that the reference could be checked, even if the source is no longer available. That there is a link helps. I will make the edit - though it will look a bit esoteric until you get the hang of templates and the like. GraemeLeggett (talk) 18:17, 21 August 2014 (UTC)