Overview
Taylorcraft was the light-aircraft company C. G. Taylor built after he lost control of the one that became Piper, founded in 1935 as the Taylor-Young Airplane Company and settled from 1936 in Alliance, Ohio. It is known for one family of aeroplanes: the fabric-covered, strut-braced, side-by-side two-seaters of the Model B line, whose post-war Taylorcraft BC-12D sold by the thousands and still flies in numbers today. The company has not built a series aircraft since 1992. Its type certificates are held by Taylorcraft 2000, LLC of Brownsville, Texas, which the FAA lists as the current holder of TCDS A-696.
Heritage
C. G. Taylor designed the Cub, then watched William Piper take the company. His answer was a two-seater of his own, first flown from Pittsburgh-Butler Airport in 1936 and put into production at Alliance the same year; the firm took the Taylorcraft Aviation Corporation name in 1939. The Model B split by powerplant, the BC behind a Continental, the BL a Lycoming, the BF a Franklin, and a tandem Model D followed. That tandem became the wartime aeroplane: nearly two thousand were delivered to the Army as the O-57 and L-2 Grasshopper for artillery spotting and liaison. Peace brought the BC-12D and a boom that ended almost as fast as it began. A factory fire and the collapse of post-war demand pushed Taylorcraft into bankruptcy in 1946. Taylor bought the assets back in 1949 and restarted at Conway, Pennsylvania; later owners revived the four-place Model 19 as the F-19 Sportsman in 1971, moved production to Lock Haven in 1985, and built the last of the line, seventeen F-22s, before a final bankruptcy in 1992. A Texas restart announced in the mid-2000s produced no aircraft that trade press or FAA records confirm.
Design Signature
Taylorcraft built the efficient one. On the same sixty-five horsepower that moved a Cub or a Champ, a Model B cruises faster and climbs at least as well, the reward for a slippery airframe and a very low wing loading; the same low wing loading is why the type is famous for floating the length of the runway when a pilot carries a knot or two too many. The construction is of its era, a welded steel-tube fuselage and wooden-ribbed wings under doped fabric, braced by steel struts. What sets the marque apart from its rivals is inside: two seats abreast behind car-style doors, and control wheels on the panel rather than a stick between the knees. The handling is honest rather than sweet. Aviation Consumer’s review of the type describes stiff, sluggish ailerons and pronounced adverse yaw, which is to say the aeroplane asks for the rudder its designer expected pilots to use.
For Owners
There is no factory in any meaningful sense. Taylorcraft 2000, LLC holds the type certificates and presents itself as a parts and support business, but no new Taylorcraft has been independently reported as delivered in more than three decades, and a buyer should not count on OEM support. What keeps the fleet flying is the aftermarket and the owners. Univair manufactures FAA-PMA approved parts for the B series and the F-19, with a dedicated Taylorcraft parts catalogue. Two separate organisations serve the type: the Taylorcraft Foundation in Alliance, Ohio, which archives manuals, service bulletins, and type-certificate documents and runs the annual fly-in at the old factory town, and the Taylorcraft Owners Club, an EAA-recognised type club with its own newsletter. Ownership means an eighty-year-old fabric aeroplane: budget the recover, hangar it out of the weather, and buy on the strength of a pre-purchase inspection that looks hard at frame corrosion, past repairs, and the wing-strut service bulletins.