de Havilland DH.53 Humming Bird

A procedural model built in Blender from the type’s published dimensions, painted as G-EBHX, the Shuttleworth Collection’s de Havilland D.H.53 Humming Bird (c/n 98), the first prototype, first flown at Stag Lane in 1923 and entered as No. 8 ‘L’Oiseau-Mouche’ in that year’s Lympne light aeroplane trials, rebuilt in 1960 by the de Havilland Aeronautical Technical School and flown from Old Warden until it crashed in July 2012, since rebuilt and awaiting completion: Geoffrey de Havilland’s single-seat motor-glider, a wooden monoplane of 30 ft span with a strut-braced, fabric-covered low wing, an open cockpit and a 34 hp ABC Scorpion II flat-twin whose two cylinders stand out bare from each side of the nose, shown standing tail-down on its V-strut main gear and tailskid as last photographed complete at Old Warden: a royal blue fuselage, cowling, struts and undercarriage legs, silver-doped wings and tail with the fabric sagging between the ribs, a white ‘G-EBHX’ on both sides of the rear fuselage with a small maker’s legend beneath, a white ‘L’OISEAU-MOUCHE’ under the cockpit, a large black ‘G’ on the rudder, buff wheel covers and a wooden propeller with cream outer blades (the small legend under the registration is too small to read in photographs, so its wording is not a transcription). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · all 215 models · download .glb (858 KB) · Plate 41 in The Hangar