De Havilland 53 Humming Bird in 1/72 (scratch)

[CarLos]

My entry for this Group Build is one of the smallest (if not the smallest) De Havilland aircraft. Having followed the excellent series of articles on "British pre-war ultra-light aircraft" published in Aeroplane Monthly by Ricard Riding, and having later acquired the book, the Humming Bird is a long time favorite of mine. I started scratch building a model long time ago after plans published in AM, but these proven inaccurate and the model stalled. I also tried to represent the very prominent ribs with tape and didn't like the result, another reason for putting it apart. Here is the picture of the parts made, before Choroszy issued a resin kit:

 

 

As you may see, the wing is wrong in plan view (I decided to believe in Granger's drawings!) and has also a bad profile at the root (hard to see from the photo).

 

 

 

Also the fuselage is twisted:

 

 

All this correctable. I started working on the wing. Made a groove to have more gluing surface and glued some triangles of thick plastic. After an hour or so of working with files and sanding sticks the result is still not perfect but it is much better.

 

 

 

 

I also cured the twisted fuselage, but before going any further I must decide on the aircraft that my model will represent. I am not sure if it will be G-EBHX or any other aircraft. At the moment I am more inclined to one of the aircraft at the Lympne Trials with a Douglas engine, but this may change. This to say that I will concentrate at parts common to all aircraft (wings and tail, top fuselage) and leave the nose for later - there is a considerable variation among the airframes, and also the same aircraft at different times.

 

 

 

That's all for now. I hope to come back soon, with more progress on the wings.

 

Carlos

 

 

[Col.]

Fantastic project! Another lovely Dh product and a scratch-built one at that. It's a pity that poor quality plans set you off on a false start but I'm glad to see you can salvage some of your previous work.

[Grandboof]

Good luck with this Looking forward to the finished model 

Martin H

[CliffB]

Hats off to you Carlos and good luck with this project

 

Cliff

[CarLos]

Thank you very much for watching, guys!

 

Some little progress... I made a mold out of balsa for the upper part of the fuselage. I planned to crash mold, but instead I decided to give another try to my Mattel vacuformer. After several trials the output was not good, as both the valve and the piston gasket needs replacement. It is usable anyway, but it still needs some work.

 

 

 

 

 

As you may see I almost managed to ruin the molding and I must be very careful when opening the cockpit.

 

 

I promised to progress on the wings but I am making some experiences about the better option to represent the ribs. Strips of decal, bare metal foil or simply stretched sprue are the candidates. What do you think?

 

Also I became distracted by another De Havilland project...

[MickE]

Excellent scratchbuilding.

 

Mick

[Col.]

Nice work on the fuselage. Perhaps a few experiments on how best to represent the wing ribs are required but I'd suggest perhaps forming the sprue into a rough triangular cross-section before stretching it and see how that looks.