1.
SV PAN from nose to blimp to body of blimp
0.11

2.
LV Blimp with musicians playing in foreground (3 shots)
0.24

3.
SV Musicians march near blimp at night
0.27

4.
SV Women breaks bottle of champagne over blimp nose
0.32

5.
SV INTERIOR..Blimp nose painted in hangar (2 shots)
0.45

6.
GV Blimp in hangar
0.50

7.
CU ZOOM in men painting blimp (3 shots)
1.02

8.
GV Blimp ZOOM into man painting top or blimp and man guiding painter in swinging chair (7 shots)
1.52

9.
SV & GV Man preparing to come down and man on ground lowering painter to ground (4 shots)
2.06



Initials TA 1740 ES.1800



Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: Not the most artistic, but certainly one of the largest painting jobs has just been carried out in a marine air base in California -- a blimp was completely repainted last week. Blimps are becoming rarities in the air. This one is used by Goodyear, principally for advertising purposes, but the vast oval-shaped balloon is also used for aerial television coverage of sports events. Ten men spent more a week on the job, at a cost of about ten thousand dollars (US).

SYNPOSIS: The bright red nose shone with new paint and the body of this blimp glowed on the day of her dedication about two years ago.

It was a time of great festivities when the blimp was finally christened and brought into action. Day faded into night as the merrymakers celebrated the occasion.

Blimps were once a common sight. But the times have changed and the christening of a bright new one is a rare event.

So is the restoration of an "old" one and that red nose, once so glamorous is grounded now and crewmen have tied the airship down indoors for the large job of repainting the Goodyear Blimp, Columbia.

It takes ten men more than a week to do the work, and costs ten thousand dollars, Yet with all the advances of modern technology, a paint brush is still the major tool.

The captive, earthbound blimp is further humiliated by having people fly around it, such as this airborne painter riding in a bosun's chair. A buddy on the ground holds the rope that keeps the painter aloft with enough slack to let him manoeuvre, but taut enough to keep his team-mate out of trouble. The rope man eases the artist across the top of twenty-four hundred square yards of neoprene coated dacron in the big bag. The chairborne painter is a member of the blimps regular flying crew. Yet even an experienced airman could find this duty a little dizzy, whether looking down or up at the swaying ropes that hold him aloft.... he hopes. At coffee break time, the painter has to walk to a convenient dr??? area for his return to earth. The man below has the power to give any painter an unexpected fast ride down.