OGDEN -- Police Chief Jon Greiner started the paperwork this week on the federal clearances he'll need to get the department's crime blimp launched in April.
He's in the midst of the certificate of authorization process required by the Federal Aviation Administration before the blimp can get off the ground.
"We're shooting for April," Greiner said.
And it's only part of the department's vision of the future. Staff is also working on the idea of integrating all the various private security camera systems around the city into the real-time video center to be set up for the blimp.
The day of signing up all the many businesses with surveillance cameras in their parking lots is a long way off. But the concept includes commandeering all those cameras to train them on crimes in progress.
"Yes, I know it sounds like 'Big Brother' but it's just something we're looking at," Greiner said. "We're waiting on a vendor to tell us if it's even possible."
To date an inventory is under way of how many private security cameras are in use in the city's high crime area, the zone bounded basically by Washington and Harrison boulevards and between 20th and 28th streets.
For now the blimp is the thing.
It drew a stir in the media when Mayor Matthew Godfrey talked about it briefly during a Jan. 11 city council meeting, making the news nationwide, including NPR's "Wait, Wait. Don't Tell Me" news quiz show and a Jay Leno monologue.
Planned at 52 feet long with a diameter of four feet if it can hold a 20-pound payload of cameras, the blimp would likely be the first to patrol the skies of an American city, according to Greiner and the departmental blimp partner, the Utah Center for Aeronautic Innovation and Design, or UCAID, at Weber State University.
Greiner's not worried about it getting shot down by the FAA or any of the city's crime element. The blimp will be chambered so multiple punctures aren't a problem.
"If that does happen, the blimp will be able to turn around and get video or infrared imaging of who's shooting at it," Greiner said.
The blimp would be filled with helium, an inert, non-flammable gas, he said. "The Hindenberg was hydrogen."
Greiner has been researching the idea of air reconnaissance for two years. Small, propeller-driven, remote-control drones are already in use, he said, in places such as Miami, Houston and in Sacramento.
"A number of big cities are looking at drones," he said, "But drones are much more expensive. And there's a lot less air time. A blimp was a natural evolution of discussions."
The blimp can stay up for five to seven hours at a time at a top speed of 40 mph, running a pre-programmed route or tasked for such things as following a single individual or vehicle -- all from an elevation of 400 feet.
Greiner said that's likely the elevation the blimp would stay at in patrolling the city. It would be fitted with a transponder so it turns up on radar so aircraft pilots would be aware of it "even though they are not supposed to drop below 1,000 feet over an urban area."
Two cameras are planned, one for infrared night vision and the other for regular viewing, both with the ability to record.
"It will pan, tilt, zoom and joy stick from here," said Greiner, referring to the blimp's planned launch site, the patrol parking lot at the Ogden Public Safety Building at 2186 Lincoln Ave.
"We'll send it to fires. I see a big use for search and rescue."
He expects the cost to be well under the $40,000 cost of a patrol car fitted with all the police extras, such as the overhead light bar, dashboard camera and computer. After that, it's $100 a week to keep it in helium and charge its electric batteries, one for the propeller and one for the cameras.
Daniel Geery is president of Hyperblimp, the Salt Lake City company the city appears ready to contract with for the crime blimp. UCAID would do all the fitting of the cameras, transponder and other equipment.
Geery said he's built about 600 blimps since 1995, with marketing begun in earnest the past year as he became satisfied with his designs. He recently landed a contract for three blimps to accompany a University of Utah research project observing whales off the coast of Argentina. The U.S. Forest Service entertained a demonstration of infrared filming of a controlled burn by one of Geery's blimps tethered at 800 feet.
"The quest is always on for the ultimate material for blimp-making, for the envelope" said Geery. "It's always evolving, the research is expanding tremendously at the molecular level."
Over the years an occasional problem has been a smaller blimp simply "wafting away," Geery said. "Sometime the battery would go dead, so we lose control when we lose the propeller like that."
He got in the habit of labeling the experimental blimps with reward and return information. "Of 12 lost, eight were brought back ... we lost one by the LDS Temple downtown. There was some publicity over that."
Greiner said he sees even non-crime uses for the blimp, such as parades.
How about selling advertising on the underside?
"I suppose that's a possibility, but I'm not interested."
Greiner said he met with Brad Stringer, head of UCAID, earlier this week about the blimp.
"He's still getting calls from all over the world."
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