Weird Wings - Sharman Aviation Design Girostat Micro Airships

Since summer 1989, Frank Sharman, of Blidworth, East Midlands, England, has designed a number of balloon and airship projects, known as Micro Airships. The sizes range from 2 foot balloons to 36 foot cigars.

Weather conditions restricted him to bursts of testing (now and then of multiple craft or of mixed cigars and discs) which sometimes generated UFO 'flaps', such as one in the November 1994 - March 1995 period, when he was developing the saucer-shaped Girostat SA-39 which, to be impartial, looks as if it had been designed to emulate a flying saucer's appearance.

By 1996 he had built over 60 Micro Airships, cigar- and disc-shaped. SA41/01 is a thin helium ship with underslung car for instruments or power plant.

Girostat SA39/01 was assembled in the summer of 1992, though it only received the designer's full attention in 1994. By then he had simplified the design to SA39/03 and the smaller SA39/04. Captive tests to 200 ft. altitude were conducted, with powered free flight tests indoors, using the two 5-foot diameter craft.

The Girostats are scale test models for a potential full-sized craft. The balloons are fitted with a variety of steering and propulsion systems to push or pull them along at low speeds. Smaller test models even used rubber band power.

They can be rotated by small jets or propellors to overcome the distorting effects of air resistance on the envelopes. Weight is minimised by using fine envelope films and light frames such as balsa or bamboo for the control car.

The last SA39s were generally blue-grey, with non-rigid yellow ducts around the rim. These might flap and give an illusion of flickering.

The tethered SA39 tended to rock during low speed rotation tests and, further than 100 feet away, was not clearly recognisable as a familiar man-made device.