DH Hummingbird (oz12151)

About this Plan

DH Hummingbird. Radio control scale model.

Quote: "We wanted to prove a point, that pulse rudder was the ideal system to control a free-flight model. With Walt Mooney's help - mission accomplished. The Humming Bird was a free-flight first and an R/C model second. The transition was painless, in fact it became a perfect combination. By Walt Mooney.

This was the first light plane designed by the De Havilland firm. It was built for the Daily Mail's lightplane trials at Lympne in October 1923. A three-view of the Humming Bird and several pictures of the various versions (mostly with differing engines), are presented in Volume I of British Civil Aircraft 1919-59, by AJ Jackson. On page 296 is the photo that inspired this model. It shows G-EBRW taking part in the comic event at the Woodley Flying Meeting on 5 April 1930 piloted by a gentleman wearing a Roman helmet.

The model actually started out as a Jumbo (over 48 in span) rubber scale model for the Flightmasters annual Jumbo Scale meet. One of their rules re-quires a pilot, so I modeled the happy Roman warrior as well as the G-EBRW. As a rubber model it flew but did not place, mostly because it was finished just the night before the contest. (Of course nobody ever does that! Ed.)

However, Bill Northrop thought it would fit in with a concept of his which he calls Radio Controlled Free Flight. So, with the advent of Ace's Commander '72 radio control system, a conversion project was born. The Perelli rubber and the propeller with a wire hook was replaced with a Cox .049 and the Ace '72 system.

Now the Ace '72 system is the ans-wer to a beginner's prayer for an easy way to start out in the RC business. The connections between the various components are color coded and every-thing is extremely neatly done. We used the Stomper actuator in this model with a scale rudder (Big!). Even so, the RC version turned out to weigh the same as the rubber version, because a 48 inch span rubber job uses quite a bit of Perelli and the Ace '72 system is quite light.

Only the actuator need be installed in the model in a rigid fashion. The radio and the battery/switch combination can be encased in some rubber foam and dropped into a hatch in the model..."

Hummingbird, Model Builder, May 1972.

Direct submission to Outerzone.

Supplementary file notes

Article pages, thanks to RFJ.

Corrections?

Did we get something wrong with these details about this plan (especially the datafile)? That happens sometimes. You can help us fix it.
Add a correction