ARBA

1/48 DH-108 model kit

Product Article by Matt Swan on Nov 24 2003

 

 

 

Developmental History
        The De Havilland “Swallow” aircraft were evolved to study investigate the transonic region near the sound barrier with tailless aircraft. Three prototypes were built although the aircraft was originally conceived as a half scale model of the proposed DH-106 airliner.

        The first two aircraft built were low speed airframes but the third was built with a longer nose and the pilot's seat was lowered for the fitting of a low-drag canopy. This increased the overall length to 26 ft. 9˝ in. (8.165 m). The aircraft designated VW120 was powered by a DH Goblin 4 engine of 3,750 lb. thrust (1700 kgp), did not fly until 24th July 1947.

        On April 12, 1948, the aircraft set a new 100 km (62.1 mile) closed circuit speed record of 605.23 mph (974 km/h), flown by John Derry, and it was certain that it could better the top speed of the preceding low speed airframes. On September 6, 1948, again flown by John Derry, the aircraft reached Mach 1.0 in a dive between 40,000 and 30,000 ft. (12192 m to 9144 m) without any buffeting or instability, only some tightening of controls. It became the first British aircraft to break the sound barrier and the first turbo-jet aircraft in history to exceed the sound barrier. Fifteen weeks later, a Russian Lavochkin La-176 broke Mach 1.0 to join the ranks of supersonic turbo-jets. The sound barrier had previously been exceeded by both the rocket-powered Bell X-1 (Mach 1.46) and the mixed power Douglas Skyrocket.

        The third DH.108 ended its career on February 15th, 1950, in a fatal crash near Birkhill, Bucks.

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The Kit

        Alan Ranger and Bill Anderson (ARBA) produce these limited run kits in the Bigglewade, Bedfordshire area of the United Kingdom. Although they are not big producers of kits they are consistently putting out a trickle of high quality resin products and can still be found on the Hannants stand at the Duxford Airshows. This particular item is a multi-media resin kit that includes white metal landing gear, two vacuformed canopies, 15 resin pieces and no decals – this is the norm for an ARBA kit. The vacuformed canopies have a very rough texture to them and will require a lot of polishing to clean up. Fortunately there are two of them provided so if you screw up one you have a second chance or if you want to display the model with an open canopy you have lots of pieces you can hack up. The framing on the canopies is very light and will require some careful study when masking.

        The white metal landing gear are nicely cast and show good detail. I was very happy to see that the gear were of metal as this will be a very heavy model when completed and resin gear would definitely sag with time.

        The resin parts are quite interesting. The main fuselage is a solid cast part and all pieces show finely engraved panel lines. The pour stubs have been sawn off fairly close to the bodies but will still require a good bit of sanding. The oddest thing on the large pieces is that they appear to have been poured in two stages. The first stage being nearly 90% and then a second pour on top of that giving a weird definition line that is only visible to the eye and not detectable by touch.

        As I examine the parts I cannot find any defects such as micro holes other than one corner of the main fuselage right by the cockpit where it appears a single air bubble had been trapped in the mold. Not a serious problem and one that will easily be repaired. Compared to Czech Master Resin kits this would rate superior. The interior parts look good on a casual inspection but on close inspection the dash is not cast very well with lots of distortion in the instruments. I don’t really see this as being a big problem unless you plan on building the kit with the canopy open and even then you would have to be a member of the flashlight brigade to take notice of it.

The instructions consist of a single page (front and back) of typed directions and a multi-view drawing showing marking placement. Remember – there are no decals included with this kit so you must either paint the markings or provide them from alternative sources such as the spares box. Odd thing about the directions is that they speak quite a bit about the low speed airframes and picture the taller canopy for the craft but the kit does not include that canopy or the anti-spin parachute fairing illustrated on the sheet. Considering that there was a size difference between the two craft and the lack of these parts the modeler is pretty much confined to building the high-speed version only. They do include a brief history of the “Swallow” and gives the modeler a fairly good idea of the proper order of assembly. 

Conclusion
        This is an unusual aircraft, there can be no question of that and it represents an important branch in the history of the race to break the sound barrier. The overall quality of the kit parts is very high and it appears to be a fairly easy model to build. The biggest problem facing the modeler is simply finding one to build.

Matt

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Photos and text © by Matt Swan