
Originally Posted by
JDNSW
In 1934, CWA Scott took the controls of a DH88 aircraft, (with Tom Black as relief pilot) taking off to fly to Melbourne, in the MacRobertson air race, arriving in 71 hrs.
A couple of interesting bits of trivia.
While Scott was an experienced pilot, and had flown the route previously, the plane he was to fly was only finished building the day before they had to be at the starting point. Their new DH88 had only flown just over an hour by a DeHavilland test pilot. That day Scott flew a circuit before flying to the departure point at Mildenhall the next day.
He had never flown a twin, nor a retractable, nor a plane with variable pitch props, nor one with anything like this plane's wing loading. And his departure was both his and the plane's first full load takeoff.
The flight was relatively uneventful, except that most of the flight from Dili to Melbourne was with reduced power on the port engine, which had low oil pressure (later attributed to a faulty gauge). It was effectively used only for takeoffs. No fault could be found in Darwin, but they nursed the engine for the rest of the trip. This resulted in severe leg pains, as there was no rudder trim.
They won the race, or at least the elapsed time. Second was a KLM DC-2 operating as a proving flight for a commercial service, with passengers, twenty hours later, after an unscheduled landing at Albury. This aircraft won the handicap prize, which would also have been won by the DH88, except the rules said that no plane could win both prizes. A second DH88 arrived 37hrs after Scott and Black.
The third DH88 in the race, flown by the Mollisons, got lost after takeoff from Karachi, had to land at Jubulpur for fuel, could not get aviation fuel, so filled up with motor spirit, and flew on to Allahabad. By the time they landed there both engines were unserviceable.
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