IN THE AUGUST 1975 issue ofSPORT AVIATION well-known de-signer/engineer David B. Thurston(EAA 34906) introduced a new am-phibian, his TA16 Trojan. An all-metal, 4-place, T-tailed machinelarger than the typical homebuilt bya rather significant degree, it was notexpected to attract a vast horde ofeager builders, but would put a lot ofair/water capability into the hands ofthose able and willing to build one.

Then in the September 1977 issue,David made a progress report inwhich he announced that a Floridacorporation had contracted to certifyand produce the Trojan, so homebuiltplans sales had been ended with HullNo. 33 - 32 builders in all since noNumber 13 had been issued. (Later,this was increased to over 50.) Pic-tures of the most advanced project atthe time, Hull No. 10 being built byBilly Johnson of Leland, NC, wereincluded with the article.

A lot has transpired in the inter-vening years. The proposed manufac-turer fell by the wayside and anotherhas taken its place . . . and is at thistime in the process of certifying theairplane as the TA16 Seafire. De-signer Thurston and builder Johnsonhave also hung in there and, at last,a homebuilt Trojan has taken wing.Hull No. 10 - N1378J on the FAA'sregistration list - flew for the firsttime on May 20, 1983, but its publicdebut came in March at Sun 'N Fun'84. The prototype Seafire flew on De-cember 10, 1982 and improvementsmade as a result of test flight findingshave subsequently been incorporatedinto the homebuilt Trojans.

Billy's airplane was a big hit atSun 'N Fun and was awarded the BestOriginal Design trophy on awardsnight.

David Thurston mailed out the firstbatch of drawings in November of1975 and Billy set to work im-mediately. Over the years, Davestayed just ahead of him so that nodelays were ever experienced waitingfor plans. Billy is a machinist forDuPont in a plant in Wilmington,North Carolina and he normallyworks a four day week. With a lot oftime to work on the airplane, he es-tablished a work schedule averagingbetween 20 to 30 hours a week thathe adhered to religiously for the next7 Vi years.

The fuselage - or hull - was builtfirst. Thurston designed it to be builtupside down on a big table for ease ofaccess and alignment of the hullframes. After completion of the hull,it was moved outside . . . and re-mained there for the duration of the36 JULY 1984

project. If you are not familiar withthe climate of coastal North Carolina- the southeastern coastal area - win-ters are quite mild, with perhaps justa month or so when it is too cold towork in an unheated shop.

In 1978 and 1979, Billy traileredhis hull to Sun 'N Fun for display andfor Dave Thurston to have on handfor his builder's forums.

The tail feathers were built nextand were hung up in the shop aftercompletion to provide room to buildthe wings. After all the major compo-nents were made, the airframe wasassembled outside in Billy's yard andremained there for the next 3 yearsas the amphibian was completed. Theentire airframe had been carefullycorrosion proofed, so the outside expo-sure produced no ill effects.

At Sun 'N Fun Billy had a numberof interesting observations to makeon the project. First, he was verymuch impressed with DavidThurston's construction drawings.

"I am a machinist by trade and Ihave dealt with engineering drawingsall my life. Errors are an everydaything in most of them, but not withDave's plans," he says. "There werevery few in his drawings - very few. Ithink he did a great job."

When you see it out on theflightline as we did at Sun 'N Fun,the Trojan is a big and imposingairplane. It is downright intimidatingwhen you begin viewing it as a home-built project. Just how complex andtime consuming was it, I asked Billy.

"I was amazed at how easily I wasable to do the things I imagined to bethe most difficult in the beginning . .. and how time consuming some of theapparently simple things turned outto be. The landing gear, for example,looked difficult, but it just involvedmaking a lot of individual parts andthen one day you simply put them alltogether and you had a finished gear.The drawings for each part were verydetailed.

"The thing I enjoyed least was thecanopy. It wasn't difficult as much asit was . . . well, hard to handle. Youjust had too many large, floppy partsto hold and clamp while you put it alltogether. (This is probably the mostcommon complaint in all of home-building - fabricating canopies is noone's favorite task - Ed.) The airplaneis certainly larger and probably takesmore hours to build than most otherhomebuilts, but I don't believe it to bebeyond the ability of a good amateurbuilder - a good craftsman."

A few fiberglass parts - the nosecone, bow deck, nose bowl on the en-gine pod, turtle deck and rudder tipfairing - are available commercially,

but, otherwise, Billy built everythinghimself. (According to DavidThurston, he "even constructed heavyduty rollers to properly contour thespar capstrips, formed from Vi inchthick 2014-T6 aluminum alloy ex-truded 90° angle stock over 12 feetlong.") He also did a major overhauland balance job on his 250 hp Lycom-ing O-540-A4D5. He had built up autoengines before, but this was his firstaircraft engine overhaul. "I don'tclaim to be all that good, but the firsttime I tried to start it, it fired off afterthe first blade. It's been flying for al-most a year now and there are abso-lutely no leaks - not even any dampareas - so, I must have done some-thing right. The engine has nevermissed a beat since I started runningit."

The Lycoming drives a freshly over-hauled 80 inch Hartzell constantspeed propeller and, as you can see in

the accompanying pictures, is tightlycowled in a pylon-mounted pod. It isa tractor rather than the pusher con-figuration that has been more com-mon on similar amphibians in yearspast.

Two jobs Billy didn't do in theirentirety were the upholstery and thespray painting. His wife, Jane, wasinstrumental in designing and fab-ricating the cabin upholstery, andafter accomplishing the necessarysurface preparation, he turned thespraying of the Pratt and Lambertpolyurethane finish coats over to aprofessional painter.

When finally ready for its initialtest flight, Billy's Trojan was a faith-ful "original" off Dave Thurston'splans. About the only visible altera-tion was its 6:00x6 nose gear tire.Thurston had initially prescribed a5:00x5 nose gear tire, but when mostbuilders asked for a larger 6:00x6, he

acquiesed and made provision for itin the drawings. The nose wheel doesnot fully retract - it leaves a portionof the tire exposed to act as a bumperfor docking operations. The larger tiresimply makes a better bumper.

May 20, 1983 was a big day forBilly Johnson. He had already de-cided to do the test flight personallyand had himself and the airplaneprimed and ready to go. With a newchrome major, he knew he could notdo a lot of ground running for fear ofruining the Lye, so after only about 5minutes of taxi work to check thebrakes, steering, nose wheel shimmy,etc., he pulled out on the runway andpoured on the power. His intentionwas to accelerate slowly up to about40 mph, then feed in full power. Bythe time he had half throttle in, how-ever, he was already roaring through80 ... "So, I just firewalled it andflew." He climbed out to 4,500 feet,

flew around for a half hour or so, stal-led it a few times and finding noglitches of any type, brought it backin for a landing.

Like most aircraft designs, the Tro-jan has taken on additional weight -empty and gross - in its transitionfrom the drawing board to the sky.Flight tests on the Seafire prototyperesulted in some additional beefingup and mass balancing of the tail tokeep the now heavier airplane out ofthe flutter mode. Making these mod-ifications caused Billy to miss Osh-kosh last summer, so that Sun 'N Fun'84 was his first opportunity to showoff the Trojan.

N1378J tips the scales at 2,050pounds empty and is limited to a grossweight of 3200 pounds. It stalls at amodest 60 mph clean and at a verylow 50 with full flaps (20°). Billy flieshis approaches at 80 indicated withfull flaps and says it "handles like a

SPORT AVIATION 37

dream" at that speed. At 3,000 feet,the Trojan cruises at 145 mph indi-cated ... and 135 at 8,500 feet. At fullthrottle, 27 inches and 2700 rpm, ittops out at 180 mph at 2,000 feet.

Billy is extremely pleased with theTrojan and expects to have it at Osh-kosh this summer. Just look for thetallest T-tail on the homebuilt line.

Billy Johnson (EAA 84812) lives atRt. 3, Box 248, Leland, NC 28451.He's a lifelong resident of the Wil-mington area and began flying therein 1971. He soloed in a Cherokee 140and went on to get a Commerciallicense and instrument and multi-en-gine ratings. He had never flown offwater when he soloed his Trojan -from land, of course - but likely willhave a water rating by the time you38 JULY 1984

are reading this.The Trojan was not Billy's first

homebuilt project. He has built a BD-5 but it has not been flown. "DaveThurston says he will whip me if Itry," he laughs. He also has anotherBD-5 still in the factory crate. Unlikesome BD-5 owners, he is not bitterabout the experience. In fact, he cre-dits the building of the Bede airframewith providing him a good educationin aircraft metal work - an educationput to use in building the Trojan. Oneof those persons who has to have aproject of some sort going all the time,Billy is currently about a third of theway through a Skybolt. He's obvi-ously not afraid of work!

And speaking of work, I asked forsome numbers on the actual time and

expense involved with the building of1378J. Billy says he has about$25,000 in cash in the airplane andfiguring 25 hours per week for 7 Vizyears, he has about 9,750 hours oflabor invested. At his current straightwages - no overtime - he figures hehas about $125,000 in personal laborin his Trojan! That doesn't botherhim, however. Where else, he reasons,could he get a brand new amphibianwith the land, water and air capabil-ity of the Trojan for that price?

Not to mention, of course, the satis-faction he derived from building theairplane, the new friends he met andthe fun he expects to have in the fu-ture flying the Trojan. Altogether avery worthwhile project, Billy be-lieves.