I love
aerostat balloons,
blimps,
zeppelins and airships of all kinds. I've ridden in an aerostat a couple of times, and once, in a moment of madness, bungie jumped out of one. Being dangerously hungover at the time, and bungieing entirely against my better judgement, the results were spectacular and very unpleasant for the ground crew.
At this stage of my life it is unlikely in the extreme that I will realize my life's ambition, and become a blimp pilot. It's unlikely that I will ever get a shot at even
riding in a blimp, much less piloting one. So I'll have to make do with other avenues for pursuing my hangups with lighter than air travel.
One of these avenues is building paper models. Check out some of these models of paper balloons, zepps, and airships. The Fiddler's Green stuff is mostly commercial, but they only charge 3.95 a model and do the Paypal thing. With a color printer you can make as many as you like.
After the big COLD WARS thing next month, I'm gonna build a few of these suckers, and post my laughable progress here.