Tailwind_Fan
Member
If I had more money I’d purchase a newer Lycoming o-233, which is closer to the weight of an o-200, but retains the power advantage of the o-235...
Taylor Titch Anniversary
- Thread starter Little Scrapper
- Start date
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Here is my favorite Taylor Titch looking a lot like a 1930s racer thanks to the spat-like gear fairings and Walter Minor inline engine. I bet you could do something quite similar with a Suzuki G13 auto conversion (Aeromomentum, Air Trikes, etc.) and a small radiator under the chin, belly, or wing.
From the Air Trikes web site, here's a compact G13 installation with SPG-3 gearbox and the radiator behind the engine....
From the Air Trikes web site, here's a compact G13 installation with SPG-3 gearbox and the radiator behind the engine....
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As n45bm pointed out about the photo in post #7 The red T-mono has many changes to appear more like the T-Titch. The landing gear is a give away along with the tail group and the turtle deck has a different shape entirely. As a builder of the Mono I'm glad to see J Taylor addressed the way the controls were changed from the Mono with torque tubes in the Titch. I can imagine there is some stronger mods in the firewall also.
Lovely, and the plane's not bad either. I smell an impostor, though... How can you be "Kiwi" and posting from the UK? I do like the right registration, though!
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Tailwind_Fan
Member
Did your wife build her Titch? Terry told me that there has only been one other female who purchased a set of plans from him?
-Alana
BrianW
Well-Known Member
That certainly fits with my experience with it. At Elstree? My first landing proceeded into seven (count 'em) bunny hops with a little thrust between each until I learned the delicate touch needed.
Brian W
JimCrawford
Member
Cluttonfred: that GMISS must be the most beautiful Titch built. That inline engine takes the shape most of the way to looking like the Mew Gull of Henshaw fame. I believe there is also a Mono with the small Walter Mikron which similarly improves the looks.
I have made a fibreglass pan seat for my Mono, it hooks over the main and rear spars. I also have a seat back which is inclined just a little, forward above the rear spar. This makes it more comfortable and I fit quite easily at 5ft 5ins and 160 lbs. I have a small bubble canopy, rather like the original GAPRT.
There are a couple of gotchas for Mono builders from the original plans:
1. The elevator cable runs won't work as drawn. I tried and tried to get the tensions right until, nearly reduced to tears, I drew the scheme into AutoCad and found that as the stick moved from fully aft to fully forward the cable system changed length by about 5mm. I solved this by replacing the poorly positioned fairleads with correctly positioned pulleys at the seat bulkhead and immediately in front of the tailplane.
2. Similarly to 1 above the aileron circuit doesn't work. This is again geometry based and results in the ailerons drooping or rising as the stick is operated in pitch. This is solved by running the aileron power cables through the centre of the pitch cross tube so their length doesn't alter with pitch.
3. Again with the ailerons. The bellcrank bracket on the spar works as advertised, giving a differential motion. However the aileron down stop is made by the lower forward edge of the aileron meeting the aft face of the rear spar. In a perfect world this is fine however it is possible, due to stretch and flex in the system, to push the aileron past fully down and it starts to come up again. Eventually you could even get the motion to go over-centre and have to give it a good heave to recover. Simply fixed by putting a hard down stop on the bellcrank bracket. A suitably placed bolt through the bracket would do. I've fixed a small block on mine.
My Mono is derigged at the moment but I'll look out a photo.
I'm curious about the formula V comment. I'll dig out my original drawings, I'm sure formula V is mentioned in the brochure as the driver for the 75 sq.ft. wing area. I bought my drawings and started building in 1969. I'm told it is the oldest aircraft on the LAA books which is still in build by the original owner!
Jim
I have made a fibreglass pan seat for my Mono, it hooks over the main and rear spars. I also have a seat back which is inclined just a little, forward above the rear spar. This makes it more comfortable and I fit quite easily at 5ft 5ins and 160 lbs. I have a small bubble canopy, rather like the original GAPRT.
There are a couple of gotchas for Mono builders from the original plans:
1. The elevator cable runs won't work as drawn. I tried and tried to get the tensions right until, nearly reduced to tears, I drew the scheme into AutoCad and found that as the stick moved from fully aft to fully forward the cable system changed length by about 5mm. I solved this by replacing the poorly positioned fairleads with correctly positioned pulleys at the seat bulkhead and immediately in front of the tailplane.
2. Similarly to 1 above the aileron circuit doesn't work. This is again geometry based and results in the ailerons drooping or rising as the stick is operated in pitch. This is solved by running the aileron power cables through the centre of the pitch cross tube so their length doesn't alter with pitch.
3. Again with the ailerons. The bellcrank bracket on the spar works as advertised, giving a differential motion. However the aileron down stop is made by the lower forward edge of the aileron meeting the aft face of the rear spar. In a perfect world this is fine however it is possible, due to stretch and flex in the system, to push the aileron past fully down and it starts to come up again. Eventually you could even get the motion to go over-centre and have to give it a good heave to recover. Simply fixed by putting a hard down stop on the bellcrank bracket. A suitably placed bolt through the bracket would do. I've fixed a small block on mine.
My Mono is derigged at the moment but I'll look out a photo.
I'm curious about the formula V comment. I'll dig out my original drawings, I'm sure formula V is mentioned in the brochure as the driver for the 75 sq.ft. wing area. I bought my drawings and started building in 1969. I'm told it is the oldest aircraft on the LAA books which is still in build by the original owner!
Jim
I am Six foot two and I have about 80 hours in my Taylor Mono. It is narrow in the shoulders, but otherwise I fit snugly but fine. Getting in and out is a slow process... My rump doesn't hit the fuselage bottom and I have to sit on a cushion to see out very well. My head head just clears the canopy.
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The history of the Taylor Titch is readily available so I won't repeat it here, Suffice to say, my wife did considerable research into the aircraft before electing to build, including a visit to Terry Taylor in the south of England before committing and buying plans - so indeed, my wife is likely to be the lady that Terry alludes to. She also corresponded quite a bit with Jim Miller in the US, whose Titch is a superb example of the design.
During this build Taylor Titch G-MOLE came up for sale and was one of those things that she 'just had to have'.
The aircraft now resides in the Far North of New Zealand where is is registered as ZK-RMC (my wife's initials).
I have been occasionally permitted to fly the aircraft, and the closest aircraft that I can liken it to within my limited experience is the Mudry CAP10B.
The aircraft is unusually spacious inside - the previous owner was about 6'4" and 220lb (in American money) although he had built a lowered seat pan in aluminium (aluminum) as opposed to the plywood platform called for in the plans. Both my wife and I sit on comfy cushions for best visibility.
The flaps do little other than to create drag - fine on the approach but the Titch is not exactly a STOL machine and so my wife has elected to save weight and omit them on the aircraft that she is building.
During this build Taylor Titch G-MOLE came up for sale and was one of those things that she 'just had to have'.
The aircraft now resides in the Far North of New Zealand where is is registered as ZK-RMC (my wife's initials).
I have been occasionally permitted to fly the aircraft, and the closest aircraft that I can liken it to within my limited experience is the Mudry CAP10B.
The aircraft is unusually spacious inside - the previous owner was about 6'4" and 220lb (in American money) although he had built a lowered seat pan in aluminium (aluminum) as opposed to the plywood platform called for in the plans. Both my wife and I sit on comfy cushions for best visibility.
The flaps do little other than to create drag - fine on the approach but the Titch is not exactly a STOL machine and so my wife has elected to save weight and omit them on the aircraft that she is building.
Kiwi, please tell your wife we'd love to have her join our group and share her building experience. We have few female members and fewer still actually building and it would be great to hear her perspective.
BrianW
Well-Known Member
Cannot believe how beefy these structures look: that nicely tapered front rudder spar; that fully triangulated cockpit section forward - compared with the see-through birch plies I half expected. What *IS* that structural wood species? Not balsa, can it be spruce?
Brian W
Tailwind_Fan
Member
Agreed, I’m posting on Facebook under Aviation adventures with Alana. While I’m concentrating on my Tailwind build at the moment, I’d love to follow along with your wife’s build. As I’m starting with the wood wing on my Tailwind, there’s a lot of overlap at this point.
-Alana
flitzerpilot
Well-Known Member
Well as a one-time group owner of the prototype Taylor Monoplane, G-APRT, I can confirm Jim's experience with over-centering/control reversal of the ailerons unless exceptionally carefully rigged. When we first bought it from the previous owner in 1973 it was in an even worse state that we first thought, although it had a current Permit to Fly and I ferried it from Halfpenny Green to Coleford and blasted it around for a few weeks before tearing it all apart and finding several horrors.
I provided the full story on this to Clutton Fred some years ago, before I joined this group, so I won't attempt to repeat it all here. 'PRT has been recently retired to a museum by its last owner who felt that its lack of stall warning might prove fatal to a neophyte pilot, and indeed a few Monoplanes have suffered stall/spin accidents, one at least fatal as I recall. I also remember a beautiful Titch crashing on take off from the strip from which I was operating the Flitzer back in the '90s. There was some discussion that possibly a one-man tent and camping gear had impeded the pilot's control inputs, after all there's not that much extra room in a Titch.
The history of 'PRT was published in the last issue of Vintage and Classic Magazine, but there was a lot of missing information about its operational use from over 40 years ago. So I wrote an article to fill in this detail which should appear in the latest magazine. It included several photographs of the Taylor in its 'Yak 9' guise, in which the sling seat was lowered to its maximum possible depth and a sliding canopy was fitted. I also increased the length of the undercarriage legs by 3" and reduced their rake considerably which massively improved ground handling and manoeuvrability as well as enabling fully-stalled three-point landings.
I attach a couple of photographs and a PFA submission drawing from the article herewith. In one I am kneeling down to better create the impression of standing in front of a 'real Yak'.
Oh, well. Back to working on my Sperry.
I provided the full story on this to Clutton Fred some years ago, before I joined this group, so I won't attempt to repeat it all here. 'PRT has been recently retired to a museum by its last owner who felt that its lack of stall warning might prove fatal to a neophyte pilot, and indeed a few Monoplanes have suffered stall/spin accidents, one at least fatal as I recall. I also remember a beautiful Titch crashing on take off from the strip from which I was operating the Flitzer back in the '90s. There was some discussion that possibly a one-man tent and camping gear had impeded the pilot's control inputs, after all there's not that much extra room in a Titch.
The history of 'PRT was published in the last issue of Vintage and Classic Magazine, but there was a lot of missing information about its operational use from over 40 years ago. So I wrote an article to fill in this detail which should appear in the latest magazine. It included several photographs of the Taylor in its 'Yak 9' guise, in which the sling seat was lowered to its maximum possible depth and a sliding canopy was fitted. I also increased the length of the undercarriage legs by 3" and reduced their rake considerably which massively improved ground handling and manoeuvrability as well as enabling fully-stalled three-point landings.
I attach a couple of photographs and a PFA submission drawing from the article herewith. In one I am kneeling down to better create the impression of standing in front of a 'real Yak'.
Oh, well. Back to working on my Sperry.
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I love the kneeling trick for the photo, Lynn, absolutely classic. ;-) I believe the "full story" you mentioned is here for anyone who'd like to read it:
Warbird paint scheme for a Taylor Monoplane?
I just bought a set of plans for John Taylor's classic Taylor Monoplane from his son Terry. The Mono looks very much like a little fighter, especially with an enclosed canopy, so now I am daydreaming about building one and painting it up in warbird colors. Does anyone have any suggestions of...
www.homebuiltairplanes.com
Chilton
Well-Known Member
What canopy did you use for the Taylor Yak? Looks like a good fit.
