De Havilland DH.88 Comet
by Anders Lindström – August 2009
Anders Lindström writes from Sweden to describe his latest O/D PSS model, the impressive Comet racer.
The De Havilland DH-88 Comet must be one of the most beautiful aircraft ever built. It flew in the MacRobertson Race in 1934 from Great Britain to Australia.
The sleek elliptical wing and nice fuselage shape makes it a very beautiful plane.
I started my build in late 2008 with the goal to fly it on a Swedish slope meeting in August 2009. I managed to finish it during the meeting and flew it successfully.
The model has a wingspan of 3 meters and is built from foam which has been hot wire cut and covered with brown packaging paper. I don’t have the AUW but it’s really light and I had to put a large rock into the fuselage on the second flight when wind conditions was over 10 m/s and the extra weight was really necessary.
The plane is controlled by two aileron servos and two elevator servos on a simple Y-lead. Spoilerons have been mixed in for landings to make it lose altitude.
Wing section is MH-32 which seems to work fine.
During the second flight unfortunately the Comet was involved in a mid-air collision and crashed. When it flew so well it will be repaired and more scale details will be added and also nicer graphics.
Here are some of my favourite pictures from the maiden flight.
