Questions about DH Comet

[asolyom]

Is there any airworthy Comet 4 worldwide? I mean apart from still flying Nimrods.

[Garry Russell]

Sadly not

The last Comet was Canopus some years back now

Civil Comets finsehed in about '81 of there abouts leavin I think three military at the time flying

[asolyom]

Thant is a pity. Some should have been preserved like DC-3s.

[Garry Russell]

Last flight 30th October 1997

There are a few preserevd but far to complex and expensive to keep airworthy and also perhaps dificulties with certification..

DC3's are plentiful. with vast amounts of spares and support and relitively simple.

The blueprints for the Comet are rumoured to no longer exist.

[asolyom]

That's true, thousands of DC-3s were produced, while only a few hundreds of Comets. Comets are really more complex than Dakotas, thus more difficult and more expensive to keep airworthy.

[biglazy01]

There are several dc-3s close to my home town that still fly. I believe 2 are privately owned and 2 are museum owned. I know the cost of maintaining them is high by most of our standards but the cost of maintaining a comet i couldn't imagine. I know the A-26 invader operated by the Commemorative air force out of Waco, Texas lost an engine last year flying into my home airport. It needed a complete engine at a cost of just over 1mil USD. They had it repaired and now have a spare to go along with it but have cut the amount of hours they fly it due to projected costs on repairs and maintenance. I do have a hard time understanding that the blue prints to the comet are lost? Those type of documents are usually preserved in several places by the companies that had them. I bet somewhere in an old filling cabinet they are around.

On another cool note, last year at the local air show there was a spitfire trainer flying. Rummor has it that this year they will offer rides in it and I will be there for that. Ive been up in the DC-3, A-26, and AN-2. But being able to go up in the spitfire would beat all that!

[asolyom]

I have just found that Comet 4C's fuel consumption was 8800 lbs (~3960 kg) / hour. Can this be also considered for the FS Comet model?

[MALTBY D]

Hi Andras

Comet fuel consumption is from around 3600 kg/h to 4100 kg/h, depending on the particular Comet model and route.

There is lots of info and all sorts of statistics available from the VA page here...
http://www.cbfsim.org/CBFS_VA.php

The links off that page include this one for aircraft status and info...
http://www.cbfsim.org/cbfsim/g-cbfs/CBF ... FT_SQL.php

And there is a route enquiry page that can give you expected fuel use figures for all our routes...
http://www.cbfsim.org/cbfsim/g-cbfs/CBF ... ES_SQL.php

Cheers
David

[SkippyBing]

I do have a hard time understanding that the blue prints to the comet are lost? Those type of documents are usually preserved in several places by the companies that had them. I bet somewhere in an old filling cabinet they are around.

I do remember reading an article in Air International years ago by Roy Braybrook that indicates BAe's approach to archiving material involves a cylindrical metal storage container. In the article it states that many of the flight test reports for the Hunter had been destroyed due to a lack of storage space.

Thinking about it one of the problems in the Nimrod MRA4 program was that they had to take measurement from one of the airframes to manufacture the new wing boxes etc. which would imply they don't even have the blueprints for the Nimrod. Obviously it didn't help that all the airframes differed...

[VEGAS]

The blueprints are probably in an old tea chest covered in cobwebs, locked away in someones garage and will no doubt pop up on Ebay in twenty years.