Sikorsky R-4 Hoverfly

A procedural model built in Blender from the type’s published dimensions, painted as ‘KK995’, the RAF Museum’s Sikorsky Hoverfly I, which the museum’s own history identifies as KL110, built as R-4B 43-46596 and assembled at Hooton Park in February 1945, flown by the Helicopter Training Flight at Andover, the Transport Command Development Unit and on the King’s Flight mail runs at Balmoral, then by 705 Squadron of the Royal Navy and the College of Aeronautics at Cranfield, presented to the museum in 1966 and refurbished at Bicester in 1967–68 with parts of KK995, whose identity it has carried ever since: the first helicopter in quantity production and the first in RAF and Royal Navy service, a two-seat trainer and liaison helicopter with a 38 ft three-blade fabric-covered main rotor, a Warner R-550 Super Scarab radial buried behind the side-by-side glazed cabin, a long tapering tail boom ending in an open truss that carries a three-blade anti-torque rotor on the starboard side, and fixed main wheels on splayed struts with a tail wheel under the boom, shown standing level with the blades parked and drooping: olive drab upper surfaces and sides over light blue-grey undersides, a white ‘E’ on each side behind the cabin and a smaller one on the band across the nose, Type C1 roundels on the tail boom with ‘KK995’ in black behind them, yellow and black hazard stripes round both cabin doors, grey main blades and black tail rotor blades with yellow tips. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · all 215 models · download .glb (976 KB) · Plate 103 in The Hangar