It’s only been 4 years in the making. On Tuesday December 19th at 5:00pm, EAA Chapter 15 officially kicked off the rebuild of the 1939 Taylorcraft BL-65. What took so long you ask? We originally planned to start in 2020 but Covid had other plans. We put it on the back-burner the last 3 years waiting for the perfect time to start. With our youth membership and involvement at it’s highest, and a little help from a couple new members, the time was right.
The first phase started with exposing one of the wings. The work went rather quickly as we didn’t have the hangar heated and it was a blistering 31 degrees outside. It only took about 10 mins to shed the skin… and release the smell of decades old mouse droppings. Man, that sure woke us up!
After careful examination, everything looked better than we hoped. The spars looked in good shape, none of the nails were backed off on the ribs, 2 ribs will need to be replaced along with part of the leading edge. But overall, the wings are very serviceable.
This is going to be a great learning experience for the youths in the chapter. One of the goals is for them, after they obtain their PPL’s if not already, is to get their tailwheel endorsement. They’ll also have access to fly the plane on a regular basis, which will allow them to gain hours as cheap as possible. Most have expectations of flying professionally, some are on the aircraft mechanic path. Either way, this plane will help with their future goals.
Our next step is to reach out to those we were in contact 4 years ago. We had plenty of offers for help and parts if needed. We briefly spoke to a crowd that attended the Taylorcraft seminar in the vintage area at Oshkosh in 2019 and discussed how we were working with the students at Lewis University and some of the local high schools. That goal never changed, it’s just 4 years later and a new batch of youths to work with.
We’ll post more updates as we continue this journey. A realistic goal could be July 2025, just in time to fly it to Oshkosh and share with everyone who’ll be following our progress. Until then…