Solo Musings

One of my wife’s coworkers has a husband with a rather unique part-time job: He flies the remote control blimps at the Pepsi Center (the Denver arena).

He and a group of guys handle the flying details for the home Avalanche and Nuggets games. They load up gift certificates on the blimp gondolas and then fly out during various intermissions to fly over the lower deck crowd dropping the prizes.

It seems he has been looking for an occasional assistant. A ‘”blimp bitch,” if you will… His wife mentioned it to my wife and my wife volunteered me. I think she feels I need to get out of the house more often!

Last night was my first night. I almost didn’t go — I’ve been fighting inner ear infections that are causing some vertigo… but I decided that I just couldn’t pass this up and gutted it out. I’m glad I did, turns out it is a lot of fun!

First perk of the job: An A lot parking pass. The A lot is the one up close to the arena and makes for a short walk in.

Once I arrived, I gave him a call and he met me out front and guided me around to one of the side entrances. This is where you go in if you are working at the arena. I surrendered my drivers license for a temporary badge and signed in on some old kiosks that sure looked to be running a version of Windows CE…

I got a little tour of the back hallways. Saw the press room, locker rooms and such. We work with the blimps just around the corner from the main “floor” access so it is nice and close to where they get launched. Right behind our work area is where the players families hang out during and after the game.

Being out by the ice when the place is empty is… weird. Heck, just being at floor level is pretty unusual when you consider my track record of buying the cheap seats!
First off, we setup a big bank of battery chargers and topped off all the batteries. The blimps run 2 or 3 big battery packs for each voyage. Those batteries don’t last long either, but they are good enough to get ‘em around the seats and back to the starting point.

Sometimes the blimps are deflated in between events. Other times, they are tied together and hung from the rafters. For last night, they were hung from the rafters. I took one look up there and say “nuh uh. Not me, kemo sabe.” I’m not much for heights as it is, and with the vertigo thing? Oh hell no!

So, he went up top and I stayed down. (eventually, I do want to go up there… someday…) He lowered the ropes down and I unclipped the blimps and got them over to where we could pull them into the staging area.

Once in that area we topped off the helium levels and did a bit of ballast work. The larger blimps aren’t completely full of helium. If they were, they’d actually be too buoyant. So on those there’s a mix of just plain old air as well (courtesy of a little shop-vac).

After getting them full, we did a bit of tuning of the ballast weights. Ideally, you want the blimp to have a slow drop when not under power. That saves them from going to the roof if there’s an electronics issue. So, we just added various amounts of weights to the gondola until it felt about right.

The picture here is of the blimp I helped with. It is about 12 feet long (that’s a forklift that it is butted up against).

When it was show time my job was quite simple. Help my pilot get the blimp over by the ice entrance. Load up the prizes on a clever dispenser underneath the gondola. Then I’d get under it, grab the gondola and give it a good shove straight up. He’d make a lap around the arena and then bring it back and basically drop it onto me. I’d then grab it and drag it back to the staging area. Toss the batteries on the chargers and kick back a bit.

In between flights, we’d go find a good place to stand and watch the game. Oh, and somewhere in there I got a meal voucher to trade for arena food (so good and yet so bad )

About 5 minutes before the period ends we would head back down to the staging area and get ready for the next run. When the Zambonis headed out, we were right behind them starting our flights.

All in all, a very fun and educational evening. I hope to do it again and get some more/better pictures.

2 Responses to “Just Call Me: Blimp Wrangler”

1. Joe on February 12th, 2008 2:33 pm

   Nice work, if you can get it. Wish I’d known about this 3 years ago before I started the MBA…

2. chris on February 16th, 2008 2:10 pm

   The basketball games are even more fun. I’d get pictures… but they’d probably be all of cheerleaders

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