Getting High on a Bag of Hot Air

There haven’t been this many airships over one city since 1915 when zeppelins raided London, and even they had the good manners to arrive one at a time.

The Los Angeles skies bulged with blimps on Super Bowl Sunday. There was Goodyear’s gasbag--grandblubber of them all--which has spied on Los Angeles’ sports since the 1932 Olympics.

A new bubble, the Slice dirigible, was bumbling around the same airspace. So was a droopy balloon powered by a Volkswagen engine.

It was like watching three sumo wrestlers in the same doorway.

Fuji’s blimp from the 1984 Olympiad is back. What was McDonald’s airship (McBlimp) is now promoting San Diego’s Sea World.

But amid all this jockeying to achieve novelty among the strangest, there’s nothing so impudent as that VW blimp . . . brought to us by IDS Financial Services and Brinks.

Fully inflated, it resembles a house bagged for termites. Country of construction (England) and posture (porcine) suggest its role model was Colonel Blimp. Color and shape--black-and-white-striped from bulbous nose through whale belly to Dumbo-eared rear--have prompted another nickname from its crew: Flacid Orca.

By all Archimedean tenets, this airship is a hot-air balloon. But the three-person cupola is mounted to an engine and propeller and the blimp has forward motion. It is equipped with a puffy rudder and can be steered.

The bad news is that Orca is far from being all-weather transportation. Even picnic conditions of middling to mischievous breezes will keep it grounded. Low clouds are another inhibitor because they’ll engulf the blimp faster than it can get out of the way; rain weakens a coating used to decrease the gasbag’s porosity. Also, damp grows mildew and until Maytag develops a dryer that can handle a five-story bag of wet nylon. . . .

Ergo, aviation is left with an oversized pool raft that is the only balloon of its type in the world. At $85,000 and unable to shift into reverse, that should surprise no one.

But Ed Chapman loves her. Wrinkles and all. He’s the one-man businessman who sold IDS and Brinks on the idea of touring California, Florida and Connecticut with his inflatable billboard.

“It’s as close as you can get to doing what a bird can do,” he said. “You can descend, climb, sit and do circles without the noisy clatter of a helicopter.

“It doesn’t have the frustrations of a conventional balloon, that so-near-but-yet-so-far feeling when looking for a landing spot. With other forms of aviation you’re fighting wind. Here you are using the wind, going where it goes.”

Chapman, it must be noted, is more than a weekend aeronaut. He is a former Marine fighter pilot who flew in Vietnam. He drives 727s for Braniff. Chapman has flown gliders and operated a sport balloon business.

“I’ve been 1,500 m.p.h. in an F-4 and zero m.p.h. in a balloon and enjoyed both. It’s pleasure from involvement in all facets of flight.”

He doesn’t even mind the aborts. He wasn’t upset by Wednesday.

That’s when he was up at dawn and at Oak Grove Park north of the Rose Bowl by 7 and struggling to inflate Orca by 8.

Winds were a fond whisper. But shifting. The morning was a warm promise of a great day at the beach. But heat would warm slopes of the Angeles Forest foothills, Chapman explained, and build swirling thermals.

“Today is trying to sucker us into thinking we can pull this off without eating a tree,” he said. “Over there is a blimp-eating tree. I can hear it saying, ‘Come to me. Feed me.’ ”

So he bagged the flight; the sixth cancellation in as many days. Then ballooning must be considered dodgy, fringing on dangerous?

“The most dangerous part is getting a balloon ride as a Christmas gift,” said Chapman. “Then you’re hooked on it.”

The blimp will be at the Orange County Fairgrounds Swap Meet today and Sunday. Launching will be from Charles Tewinkle Park near the fairgrounds, the softball field at Orange Coast College, or near the control tower at John Wayne Airport, depending on wind direction.