VH-UAC
de Havilland D.H.53 Humming Bird
(c/n 103)
The interesting shot above comes from The A.J.Jackson
Collection at Brooklands Museum. (for
their great range of
historic prints
go to http://www.ajjcollection.co.uk).
The image below comes
from the
Stephen Barnham collection and was taken by his father (or uncle) at
Point Cook, Victoria
whilst the aircraft was still registered
G-AUAC . The photo at
the foot of the page via Geoff
Goodall shows -UAC during a rebuild at Rockhampton circa 1931.
The Humming Bird was
de
Havilland's entry into the
ultra-light aircraft field. It was built
primarily as an entrant
for the light
aeroplane trials being
held at
Lympne, Kent in October 1923. Including the two built for
the trials
(which were
powered by
750 cc Douglas motorcycle engines), de Havilland's built
about 15 of them,
no fewer
than three
of which went to Australia. The production
models were powered by a 26 hp
Blackburn Tomtit
two-cylinder vee engine (looks like something one
would put in one's
model).
This particular machine had
the Tomtit exchanged for a
more powerful Bristol Cherub
engine in
1928, four years after it was
imported for the Australian
Department of Defence,
Civil Aviation
Branch. The photo below
appears to show it with the original engine.
Anyway, the Branch
sold it to the Aero Club of NSW in
1930 and it
had several private owners after that. A further
engine change
was made in 1935 to a 35 hp ABC
Scorpion and incredibly it was then sold to a
Mr. J. Bower in Samoa, departing
Sydney
on 20 May 1937.
