Taylorcraft Aircraft
Taylorcraft Aviation is an airplane manufacturer that has been producing aircraft for more than seventy years in several locations.
The company builds small single-engined airplanes. The Taylorcraft design is a conventional layout: high-wing, fabric-covered, two-seat aircraft. The basic design has remained unchanged since 1936, and this design is sold as a personal sport aircraft today.
Company history
The designer, Clarence Gilbert Taylor, a self-taught aeronautical engineer from Nottingham, England, can be called the father of private aviation in America, as he designed the original Taylor Cub in 1931 at Bradford, Pennsylvania. Taylor, along with his brother Gordon, formed Taylor Brothers Aircraft Corporation - slogan; "Buy Your Airplane Taylor Made" - in Rochester, New York in 1926, offering a two-seat high-winged monoplane called the "Chummy", priced at $4,000. The Chummy failed to sell, and after Gordon died flying another Taylor design in 1928, Clarence moved to Bradford, Pennsylvania, where the townsfolk had offered him a new factory at the local airfield plus $50,000 to invest in the company. One of the investors was William Thomas Piper, who had made his money from oil wells.
Taylorcraft B
The Taylorcraft B is a light, side-by-side two-place, single-engine, high-wing general aviation monoplane that was built by the Taylorcraft Aviation Corporation of Butler, Pennsylvania.
Production and construction
The Model B was constructed in large numbers during the late 1930s and early 1940s and was available for delivery from the factory as a land plane and a floatplane. Like many light aircraft of its day, the fuselage is constructed of welded steel tubing and covered with doped aircraft fabric. The wings are braced using steel-tube struts.
Operational history
The Model B was mainly bought by private pilot owners. Large numbers were flown in the United States, and many were sold to owners in Canada and several overseas countries, including those in Europe. Many are still active in 2015.
Variants
Specifications (Taylorcraft 19)
Data from Plane and Pilot
General characteristics
Taylorcraft Ranch Wagon
The Taylorcraft Model 20 Ranch Wagon was a four-seat cabin monoplane designed and built by Taylorcraft Aircraft as a development of the earlier experimental Model 18. The Model 20 was constructed of moulded fibreglass over a tubular framework. It had a conventional landing gear and a nose-mounted 225 hp (168 kW) Continental O-470-J engine.
Variants
Specifications (Ranch Wagon)
Data from Jane's All The World's Aircraft 1955–56
General characteristics
Performance
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