The Goodyear Blimp back in the UK

cw318is

cw318is

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Caleb
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Had a "doth my eyes deceive me" moment this afternoon when I saw her doing general handling manouveres over the A505 just outside Bedford. Quick bit of googling and there is one over here for a while on a tour;

http://www.goodyearblimp.co.uk/uk/

So she's staying at Cardington (how fitting!) whose going to be first to get some shots?
 
Saw it tonight just taking off from cardington at around 4 ish, didn't have the camera with me unfortunately. :(
 
It is currently based at Cardiff airport, and will be in the Cardiff area until Monday evening,
 
Is there only one? I saw one in Upminster, Essex for a couple of days in a row last week getting itself at some quite interesting angles....

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There's two Goodyear blimps floating about at the moment. G-HLEL and G-TLEL. Both been based up here at Halfpenny Green on and off for the last couple of weeks.
 
When I lived in Cople, just outside Bedford, in the early 80's we used to have the blimps fly over from RAF Cardington (home and departure point for the ill-fated R101) nigh-on every day; you knew they were coming towards you as all the dogs in the area would go beserk!
 
There were two of these, sadly one went on fire in Germany and killed the pilot after he managed to get his passengers out :-(

The other G-HLEL is overwintering in Cardington since the beginning of November and I managed to get some pics while she was being put away.

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Those airship sheds are darn big. They used to use them for fire training and, if the conditions are right it can actually snow inside them but no outside!
 
Living in Upminster, I saw this regularly over the summer and up until recently. Saw it a few times all lit up doing night flights coming home off of late shifts from work and also lit up tethered in the airfield. In fact it seemed to spend more time tethered in the airfield, than actual flying.
 
Funny actually, only seeing Paul's shots of it being put in that shed gives me an idea of scale of the airship.

In the sky I imagined it to be very large, but its not!

Also, look at the size of that shed - gives you an idea of the size of the original airships it was built for.
 
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