Indoor RC Blimps

If you want to builod your own RC blimp without wasting too much time with research and development, you might consider buying an RC Blimp Kit from one of the following companies.

West Coast Blimps & Electronics
West Coast Blimps (official page) offer mylar blimp kits using micro-components. Their hulls are ready to be inflated. They also sell corresponding plans and material kits. If you want to build an RC airship without all the hassle of designing your own model they are the way to go. It's a fairly inexpensive solution too. A new version of the Gondola Blimp with geared motors and a functioning rudder, that is more performant than the standard version, came out in 1996. Having built a test series version of this model, I can confirm that it is unbelievably well designed and can fly for almost 2 hours on NiMH accumulators.

Yoshioka Model Factory
Yoshioka, a Japanese company, offers only one model, the "3ch Radio Control Balloon" with a volume of 100 liters. (They traditionally manufacture gliders and electric sailplanes). Like all ultralight indoor blimps, it is very fragile. But it offers an insane amount of fun. You can maneuver around furniture, make precision landings and fly races because six different frequencies are available. In addition it is impressively fast. Its price is affordable (ca. 350.- Swiss Franks in Switzerland = ca. 250.- US$) and for purely flight related fun it offers a maximum of bang for the buck. You may contact Yoshioka by mail at: Yoshioka Model Factory, 1-1-19 Hagimachi, Kochi City 780, Japan. Tel: 0888/33'25'32; Fax: 0888/33 68 94.

DraganFly Innovations, Inc.
DraganFly Innovations (official page), a company based in Saskatchewan, Canada, offers a variety of small, almost ready to fly, saucers and blimps. Have a look at the videos on their website to see how much fun you could have flying one of their airships in your living room.

Mobile Airships & Blimps
Mobile Airships & Blimps in Canada also sells kits for small Mylar indoor blimps.

Do you know of other commercial R/C Airship producers? Please tell me (webmaster@myairship.com) and I will ask them for more information to add to this list.

RC Airships and Blimps