Mr. Hockaday's Comet

Air Classics, Oct 2003 by O'Leary, Michael

RELYING ON EARLIER TECHNOLOGY, THIS ATTEMPT TO CAPTURE THE POST-WAR LIGHTPLANE MARKET WAS DOOMED TO FAILURE

During the 1930s, the firm of Porterfield Aircraft Corporation, located in Kansas City, was enjoying a modest success with the Model 35 light aircraft - a tandem two-seater built of traditional steel tube fuse-lage with a wooden wing - all, of course, covered in fabric. The exceedingly slim fuselage sported a variety of engines including die five-cylinder Warner Scarab junior radial of 90-hp. Aimed at the lower-cost sport flying market, the Model 35 could be fitted with various options and numerous paint schemes were available.

As the new four-cylinder opposed powerplants came available, Ed Porterfield modified his basic design a bit to take advantage of these new and reliable engines. The CP-50 retained the standard Porterfield profile but it was fitted with either Franklin, Continental, or Lycoming engines - all of 50-hp. Given the name Collegiate, famed race pilot Roscoe Turner was briefly the sales manager and director of advertising for the new design. Available in variants ranging from a very basic training machine to a more deluxe sports model, over 50 were built before attention was turned to the higher-powered CP-55 and CP-65 models.

Once again, these aircraft were all fitted with opposed engines from the three manufacturers but the airframes were basically similar to the earlier design.

Porterfield never achieved the numerical success of the larger light aircraft manufacturers such as Piper, Aeronca, and Taylorcraft but the planes were well made and popular with pilots. However, with the start of World War Two, light aircraft production for civilian use came to a stop and the bigger companies benefited greatly from military contracts but Porterfield, with no large military orders forthcoming, quietly faded away.

As the end of the war neared, light aircraft manufacturers were looking forward to the thousands of returning combat pilots - who they reasoned would want their own personal light aircraft. Well, the manufacturers were wrong for many reasons but one of the companies anticipating this mass market was Hockaday Aircraft Corporation of Burbank, California.

Noel Hockaday had been an officer with the pre-war Porterfield and had apparently purchased a quantity of spares along with drawings and jigs for the aircraft. Hockaday reasoned that an updated version of the Porterfield would be ideal for the post-war market and he gave his aircraft the name Comet.

The Comet was basically the old design with a few new features - including a very tight cowling under which could be fitted either a Continental C-1154 or a Franklin 6AC-298-D3 of 130-hp. The forward fuselage had been redesigned and widened so that the two passengers could be accommodated in side-by-side seating. Dual control yokes were fitted and Hockaday stated, "This is the first panel-mounted wheel control ever designed that completely does away with dangerous control column binding. It is being used first on the new Hockaday Comet. No more skittish landings because of sluggish control columns. Just feel for your controls, ball-bearing mounted. The wheel comes straight back!"

The landing gear on the Comet had also been redesigned and, once again, Hockaday stated, "The Comet gear is slick, modern, yet designed for inexpensive service in the field. It is the first shock-cord gear ever devised that makes use of the Overload' principle long employed on expensive undercarriages. When you land, you have all the 'beef you need. Yet your gear will be soft as a pillow for taxiing."

The first and, as far as we can tell, only Comet received the experimental registration NX18933 and was flying by mid-1944 with the war still raging in Europe and Japan! A Ms. Penny Rogers was apparently displaying the Comet across the country and on 28 July 1944 she wrote a letter to Hockaday which stated, "My observations of the Hockaday Comet during the 2000-mi trip brought forth surprising facts, a few of which I mention herein. The Comet made 20 miles per gallon, 130-mph cruise, remarkable takeoff at 7200-ft with full load and a general ease of handling both aground and aloft. It became necessary to spend about l:15-hr on instruments on this trip, and I was pleased with the inherent stability of the Comet under turbulent instrument conditions. Also the smooth operations of the Franklin engine lent further enjoyment to the trip."

Construction of the Comet was like the earlier Porterfields with the wing built around two laminated wooden spars, wood ribs, reinforced leading edge, and fabric covering. The fuselage was steel tube with fabric and aluminum covering while the tail was welded steel tubing with fabric covering.

Hockaday hoped to produce the Comet at a lower cost than the other post-war designs but it appears that orders were not forthcoming and the Comet simply disappeared into obscurity - probably a victim of its rather dated basic design.