Hawker Hart family - radial variants - lengths?

[Patrik]

The thread here https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235059212-hawker-turret-demon-rear-cockpit/ made me mildly curious, so at first I decided just to compare all Mushroom book drawings with the dimensional data of the Hart family. I started by looking for the dimensions in the available references, which seemed to be available in plenty.

Span was easy – the most frequently quoted figure is almost unanimously 37 ft 3 in for the whole family except Hart Trainer – 37 ft 4 in, Osprey – 37 ft 0 in, and Hector - 36 ft 11½ in.

Length looks easy too – in case of the Kestrel/Dagger variants. 29 ft 4 in without the rudder light, 29 ft 7 in with it. Hector has been quoted as 29 ft 9¾ in, or 29 ft 10 in eventually.

Now come the radial variants, the publications suddenly stop being communicative, and to a man (or ape – just reading – again – one of Terry Pratchett’s novels) bashfully avoid saying single word on the lengths. And this made me definitely curious. Has no one ever researched the subject?

Therefore, I decided to measure the side views from the scale drawings available (to me), and compare. The results are in the table below, which I decided to share with you. Please do not consider the figures definitive. I would say the accuracy of my measurements is ± 1 in at best. I used the lengths of the Kestrel/Dagger variants as a reference for the reliability of the various sources.

 

Now some details on the particular drawings.

Regarding Mushroom [1], make your own judgment. For me it means I will be using them with utmost diligence in the future. Would be nice, if someone in possession of the 1:48 drawings, published in an extra volume, made the same measurement as I did, so that we can say with certainty, if the drawings itself are in fact that wrong, or it is something in the print. However, as the spans are not that bad, the plan views had often been printed on the same page as the side views, and they have the same proportions, no matter if the plan view had been printed “portrait”, “landscape” or “oblique”, I would almost say the side views are simply wrong.

[2] – [4] look all like reliable sources to me, at least concerning the dimensions.

[6] is far more on the colour profile side, but the dimensions of the profiles are stable on all pages, and they do fit well with the known figures.

[7] + [8] have evidently the same origin. They both claim 1:72 and even contain scale bars on many pages. Unfortunately, the same Hart variants, on the same pages, do show quite various dimensions, so the drawings are definitely not reliable and I included them in the measurement only because they feature quite a few of the more exotic variants, not present elsewhere. I even skipped measuring the lengths of the Kestrel/Dagger variants, because they were so variable.

 

 

Feel free to amend, correct, dispute, oppose. I believe I am not the first one opening the issue, though my search in the paper references or over the internet has brought no results at all so far. Even not in the case of the Swedish Hart, which is available in the Royal Swedish Air Force Museum.

Patrik

Edited September 7, 2019 by Patrik

[John Aero]

Patrik,

The information I have from a Swedish source, for the Swedish Hart (Pegasus)  overall length, (with Rudder light) is 8.56 metres which converts to 28 feet, so by my reckoning this makes the Perseus version of 28' 6". The span is 37' 3".

 

John

[Patrik]

Thank you John,

seems we have two more unknowns (or here, as it seems in some cases, more like variables) solved.