# Airships



## starduster (Feb 12, 2006)

OK, I have a question, does anyone here know of any scratch built models of the mysterious airships that people were seeing across America in the years 1896 and 1897' ? the descriptions were of some gas filled cigar shaped balloon 100 feet long with a lighted car hanging below with bright search lights as these were all seen at night. I found the descriptions on Google but no models are depicting these machines any help would be greatly appreciated. Karl


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## btbrush (Sep 20, 2010)

Hey Karl,
Is that like the one I saw on UFO Hunters that crashed into a farmer's windmill? Nope, never seen any models. UFOs don't exist, ya know. Swamp gas refecting off of Venus.
Bruce


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## Tone (Jan 21, 2006)

Very interesting topic! I used to build paper model fantasy airships back in the late 70s but they were crude. Sometimes I would even use a garment bag. I wanted to build a flying model using a helium-filled sausage balloon and a fuselage from a cheap rubber band powered balsa glider but I never got around to doing that. (I have since discovered that one type of "toy airship" made in the 1930s consisted of a balloon and cardboard cut-outs of gondola and fins. They were sold in wax-paper envelopes. One can sometimes find them on on-line auctions.)

The 1897 stories began in a San Francisco newspaper and they just "snowballed." The only "airship" flying in US in 1897 was a Carl Myers pedal-powered thing, and it never flew at night. Regarding the Eureka, Texas story about a spaceship crashing into a farmer's windmill, nobody has ever found the grave in which the alien was supposedly buried; however, the 1897 Texas "alien airship cattle rustling" tale has been exposed as a hoax, as the perpetrator himself confessed to belonging to a "liar's club." If you can dig it up, look for Daniel Cohen's book _The Great Airship Mystery_ - it goes into the subject in great detail. Cohen concludes that many people merely saw the planet Venus and imagined that it was moving - quite the let-down, when one expected to discover a mysterious inventor.


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## starduster (Feb 12, 2006)

Thanks guys, I was just curious that no models exist on this interesting subject,
I guess maybe I'll just see if some real clear drawings exist of these things and go from their, I was just hoping there were some models as a basis to start from. although I have seen some lamp shades that might be a basis for a balloon shape for the main structure then add the decks and other items to form some kind of aerial craft, this just might be a fun project, any work will of course have photos posted. Karl


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