VH-UVV de
Havilland D.H.87B Hornet Moth (c/n 8077)
No shortage of photos of this square-winged (as
opposed to tapered) Hornet Moth. (See VH-UUW
for comparison to the latter). My own photo above
was taken with my old Kodak 120
camera at
Archerfield
in 1951 when the aircraft was owned by the Royal Queensland Aero
Club. The much
nicer shot (below # 2) is from the Alan J.
Sheppard collection and depicts the aircraft when on the
strength of the Casino (NSW) Aero Club later
in the 1950s. The aircraft was being used in a fly past
for the funeral of Dr. D.K.Hume, a dentist, who was
a past President of the Club. Note black ribbons
on the struts. Shot # 3 is
actually a Xeroxed copy of a snapshot gleaned by Roger McDonald and
was also taken at
Casino, at an air show, circa 1948. I suspect that in this
day and age the little boy
would have been severely reprimanded by the
pilot (probably his father) but in those days
"she'll be
right" was more the posture
of the day
and nobody got over-excited when we, as children, ran amok
among the
light planes. Don't try it today, even
assuming you can find an airfield with unlimited access
to said
aircraft The # 4 shot was taken by David
Daw (via the Geoff Goodall
collection) at an air
show
at Bankstown in 1960, still with the Casino Aero Club, but just before
they sold it. Clearly
they tried to convince members that it was a modern
machine by painting
it in pseudo Piper Tri-Pacer
markings! VH-UVV has survived
to this
day and is seen in a the nice
contemporary shot of it (# 5)
by John Burford at Parafield, SA in April of
2006.
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