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| British Airship R101 | |||||
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The great British passenger airships were built to meet the requirements of the Imperial Airship Scheme, a plan to provide travel throughout the British Empire by air. R101 was constructed by the Royal Airship Works while a rival ship, R100, was built by a private company. When first flown in 1929, R101 was the largest flying object ever built, with luxurious accomodations for her passengers. In spite of the huge volume of hydrogen lifting gas she was found to be too heavy, and in 1930 the ship was lengthened to 777 feet to add an extra gas cell.
Even then R101's performance was unsatisfactory, but political pressure caused the ship to be sent on her maiden voyage to India on 4 October 1930. Early the next morning, struggling against wind and turbulence over northern France, the huge ship struck the ground and burst into flames. Of the 54 people aboard only six survived. The disaster caused the cancellation of the Airship Scheme, and the rival ship R100, though a successful design, was scrapped the next year. This model builds into a detailed 1:700 scale replica of R101 at the time of her last voyage. The completed model is over 13 inches long. Click here to see photos of the finished model. Note to webmasters! If you want to offer this kit on your site, please read this first.
To print your own model You will need a colour printer capable of handling card or cover stock to print the parts sheets. 67 lb cover stock (approx 8.5 thousandths of an inch or 0.2 mm thick) is recommended. The parts and instructions are in Adobe PDF format, and have been compressed into ZIP files for faster transfer. They should work on any Windows, Macintosh, OS/2 or Unix/Linux computer. You will need Adobe's Acrobat Reader and an un-ZIP program. If files are unavailable or slow to download, try at a different time of day, when the file servers may be less busy. Primary site: Follow this link to download the instruction and parts files.
Secondary site: If you have trouble downloading files using the above link, you can try getting them from another site.
To purchase a pre-printed model The model may be purchased as a pre-printed kit from Paper Models International for those who want high quality laser-printed parts sheets without the bother of downloading and printing. This kit also includes the mooring mast model. Go to the pre-printed models page for more details.
Related links Airshipsonline: The Imperial Airship Service - A wealth of information about the R101 and the British airship programme. Les dirigeables R-100 et R-101 - Many rare photos of the great British airships. This site is in French, but is worth a visit for non-French speakers.
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Last updated on December 6, 2005 Copyright 2004-2005 by Ralph Currell |
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