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Paul
Giannamore
DYNALIFTING MEN – Brian Martin, left,
and Robert Rist are two Ohio men with a dream and a
start-up company to follow that dream: The Dynalifter.
Their Ohio Airships Inc., based in Mantua, has spent
years developing a small prototype of what they say can
be the next big thing in cargo carrying: A huge capacity
vehicle that uses helium for much of its lift, but still
requires wings to fly and land, which it can do without
a ground crew, like an airplane. The pair made a
presentation about Dynalifter to members of Experimental
Aircraft Association Chapter 859 at the Jefferson County
Air Park on Tuesday. |
WINTERSVILLE — Look, up in the
sky.
It’s a blimp.
It’s a plane.
Someday,
“it” might be a Dynalifter, with origins in Mantua, Ohio, home
base of a company called Ohio Airships Inc. The prototype was
to fly at Barber Airport in Alliance earlier this week, though
the prototype is much smaller than what the inventors foresee
as possible.
The co-founders of the company, Robert
Rist and Brian Martin, were guests of Experimental Aircraft
Association Chapter 859 at the Jefferson County Air Park
Tuesday evening.
Rist and Martin explained how they got
to know each other while both were working at Mount Union
College in Alliance, how they bounced invention ideas and
concepts off one another at lunch and how they arrived at the
idea of the Dynalifter.
Essentially, it’s not a blimp,
nor is it a Zeppelin. It’s a hybrid of lighter-than-air craft
and airplanes, using helium to provide lift, but not all of
the lift the vehicle needs to fly. For that, it requires
wings, just like a regular airplane.
The centerpiece to
the invention is a central bridge frame to which the wings,
flight surfaces and the cargo bays will attach. The concept is
like the Veterans Memorial Bridge, a central tower with cable
stays to apply tension to the load platform. Except, unlike
the bridge, the superstructure of a Dynalifter is surrounded
by helium bags and covered by fabric.
Rist and Martin
have conceptualized commercial and military Dynalifters in
small size for patrolling an area and in freighter sizes of
500, 700 or 990 feet in length, each size being able to carry
heavier loads. The 990-foot Dynalifter would be 100 feet
longer than the Hindenberg, the famous German Zeppelin
Transatlantic luxury airship that exploded at its mooring mast
in May 1936 in Lakehurst, N.J.
Dynalifter is no
Hindenberg. It can bolt load carrying cargo pods or other
modules to its belly between the two internal bridge support
towers, rather than having to distribute its load throughout
the structure as was needed in Zeppelins.
It’s no
Goodyear Blimp, either.
Blimps still require 15-man
ground crews to catch and moor the vehicle on landing.
Dynalifter would land and takeoff as a regular airplane, with
even the biggest Dynalifter able to run off a 4,000 runway,
the inventors said. Without the need for a ground crew,
Dynalifter saves money compared with operating a blimp or
other kind of airship. And with its lifting capability and
speed advantage over ships, (a Transatlantic voyage would take
about 32 hours), Martin and Rist see Dynalifter filling an
untapped middle ground in the shipping of goods around the
globe.
Rist said it has taken him and Martin 18 months
to build the prototype, meant mostly to test the bridge
structure and airworthiness of a Dynalifter. The
proof-of-concept prototype at Alliance is a plain white fabric
tube stretched over the underlying bridge framework and filled
with 32 helium bags made of nylon with an aluminum coating
over the outside.
The 120-foot-long prototype is
powered by a pair of Rotax 92-horsepower snowmobile engines
and has been undergoing taxi testing. It received an
airworthiness certificate July 28 to begin test
flights.
Martin said he and Rist were working at Mount
Union for about 10 years, and the only aviation experience
between them was that Rist had been an aviation electronics
technician for awhile.
“We were looking for the next
big thing,” Martin said.
They founded Ohio Airships in
1999 and have obtained a patent for its internal structure.
Daniel P. Raymer, a former director of advanced design
for Lockheed Martin, honed the design. The vehicle’s name says
much about what it is: A dynamic lifting aircraft.
It
needs its wings to fly and it needs its helium to help with
lift, which adds to the vehicle’s ability to be made huge to
carry massive loads while taking off, landing and exhibiting
ground behavior of an airplane.
Computer modeling shows
a full-sized Dynalifter with a load and fuel aboard would be
able to withstand 70-mph — Category 1 hurricane force — winds
on the ground.
But without its airplane features,
Martin said, “you’d need a ground crew of 800 people to catch
it if it were a blimp.”
“It’s just enough airplane for
all-weather handling and just enough airship for fuel
economy,” said Rist.
The Dynalifter doesn’t just float
away like a blimp. It flies like an airplane.
Its
largest capacity model would be able to cruise at between 115
and 230 mph while carrying as much as four times the gross
payload of a C-130 military cargo plane.
The plans call
for big Dynalifter freighters to be powered by eight C-130
turboprop engines.
The cargo pods, roughly the size of
one of the larger hangars at Jefferson County Air Park, would
not face the volume limitations of modern cargo aircraft,
Martin and Rist explained. Because of the tube shape of a jet
fuselage, it can’t be packed to maximize its space. The cargo
pods of a Dynalifter would be designed as if they’re a room in
the sky.
The inventors foresee firefighting roles,
military airlift roles, patrol roles, evacuation and emergency
response roles, as well as potential work as an RV or luxury
tour liner.
But it’s the heavy lifting capability that
holds the most promise, they figure.
They’ve met with
great response from the Air Force, and their business
promotional material portrays a trucking system in the sky,
ready to serve without adding to current infrastructure,
especially in developing nations where highways are cost
prohibitive to build.
What’s in it for the Ohio
economy?
Potential, for now.
The two men say
they’re not in the business of taking their concept to their
own future assembly lines. Rather, they want to develop
Dynalifter and license it to aerospace companies with the
wherewithal to produce it in big quantities to serve the
commercial and military markets.
“It’s a cause, with
large cargo bays and small runways and saving fuel while doing
it. It’s a quantum leap in cargo bay sizing for an aircraft,”
Rist said.
They say employment would be improved if a
production facility is built in Ohio, and having Ohio’s
underutilized airports serve as terminals for Dynalifter cargo
carriers could be a boon to the airports and to trucking
needed to deliver the products to and from the
airports.
The concept has garnered its share of
attention in the aviation world and the general press. It will
be featured on the cover of the October issue of Popular
Mechanics, Rist said, and National Geographic will be
reporting on the Dynalifter in
November. |
