RE: Airship model

> I'm working on an airship flight simulator with FlightGear 
> for visualization.
> 
> I checked Aircraft Downloads at FlightGear homepage, it seems 
> there is no aircraft model for airships. Is there anybody 
> could give me some suggestions about how to build a 
> customized aircraft model, or where I can find some airship 
> model compatible with FlightGear? Thanks.
> 
> With best regards,
> 
> -Joyce

Joyce:

I think you are in relatively new territory with airship modeling - at
least as far as FlightGear is concerned. I've reviewed the document
pages you sent a couple of weeks ago. The major difficulty I see is in
modeling virtual mass, but I think there are also ways around that. The
questions I have, at the moment are these:

1) Do you know the aerodynamic coefficients and stability derivatives?
2) Do you have a propulsion scheme picked out - i.e. turbine and
propeller? Piston engine?
3) Is the control system complicated, or is it defined in a simple block
diagram at the moment?
4) Can you quantify the virtual mass aspect of the flight dynamics with
an equation, or empirical data?
5) Do you have performance data for your proposed airship?
6) Do you have volume and bouyant gas specifics for the airship?

Jon Berndt
Development Coordinator,
JSBSim project
www.jsbsim.org


-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files
for problems?  Stop!  Download the new AJAX search engine that makes
searching your log files as easy as surfing the  web.  DOWNLOAD SPLUNK!
http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid3432&bid#0486&dat1642