With all the approvals in place, Bedfordshire eyes were on the weather and the buzz on social media was that Wednesday looked suitable. With the last flight in mind I arrived at the Cardington airfield fence around 8am. The light on Airlander is from behind at this time of day, so great for photos. Unfortunately there was a disappointing lack of activity on the airfield, so I settled in for a long wait.
Around 9.30am a very nice man from Hybrid Air Vehicles came over to the handful of us on the fence and informed us that the plan was for a 2pm flight, so we should expect to see activity on the airfield from around 1pm, as starting the engines is a 45 minute procedure due to EASA regulations, despite on needing 5 minutes. With this information under my belt I went to work until lunch time. I returned around 12.30 to make sure I was there before the engines started, as that's when the crowd would start building and would become harder to park. On arrival there was a an Airlander Club tour on the airfield, so we knew nothing would happen until they left.
The visitors left the airfield, 1pm came and went with no increase in activity and we started to worry as the wind seemed to be picking up. The nice man from HAV returned at about 1.30pm and informed us that take-off had been pushed back to around 4.30/5pm to await the correct wind conditions as specified by EASA for phase 1 of flight testing. Photography-wise this wasn't going to be ideal as it meant shooting into to the sun and through a lot of heat haze. Eventually things started happening and Chief Test Pilot Dave Burns and Experimental Test Pilot Simon Davies, pictured, walked out to the aircraft.
The fire engine had arrived on the airfield and the red flags were deployed so we knew that engine start was imminent.
The engines started...
..and they began to disconnect the ropes from the MMM (Mobile Mooring Mast). This was when we knew that a flight was definitely happening, rather than just ground testing.
The covers came off the skids...
...and were dragged out of the way.
The final ropes came of the MMM...
..and as the RAF attempted to distract us with a pair of Chinooks...
...the MMM started to push Airlander into position for take off.
The local police took time out from ensuring that people were parking sensibly to join the party.
Airlander disconnected from the MMM and we were good to go!
more follows...
