taxied onto the flightline in the vintage aircraft camping area just as the crowds had thinned for the day. The early evening sun ca ressed its bright scarlet gull-shaped wings, setting them aglow atop a vel vet black fuselage. Freshly restored to show status in August 2005, this victorious 1944 Stinson-Vultee V-77 (AT-19) was making its first public ap pearance at the 2006 Sun 'n Fun Fly In at Lakeland, Florida. The judges, along with many other pleased vin tage aircraft buffs, discovered it there the next morning, and it was soon proclaimed Custom Champion.
N9116H
Milt"fory to Oivilion. Those graceful, double-tapered
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gullwings denoted N9116H's Stin son Reliant heritage, but N9116H began life as a military AT-19. The Stinson Aircraft Division of Vultee built 500 of these robust aircraft for use as navigational trainers by the United States Army Air Forces. Pow ered by a 300-hp Lycoming R-680, the AT-19 had a wingspan of 41 feet 11 inches, measured 28 feet 3 inches from nose to tail, and stood an im pressive 8 feet 7 inches tall. It carried 38 gallons of fuel in each of its wing tanks and was capable of cruising at 120 mph while burning around 17 to 18 gph, giving it a range of about 500 miles. It landed smoothly at half its cruising speed on widespread, cantilever oleo landing gear. Hydrau lic toe brakes and a full-swivel tail
wheel facilitat ed ground handling. The majority of the AT-19s were sent to Great Britain via our govern ment's Land-Lease program during World War II, and the British military employed them for a variety of uses, ranging from training naVigators and transporting personnel or cargo to fly ing observation and aerial photo mis sions. Yet their need was short-lived, and several hundred AT-19s were des tined to become military surplus back in the States after the war. These hardy, five-place airplanes were soon made available for civil ian purchase and subsequently cer tificated as the V-77. They quickly gained popularity in Alaska as bush planes-whether on wheels, pon toons, or skis. While 134 V-77s and 15 AT-19s remain listed on the FAA Registry, they are still a fairly rare sight to behold. In fact, restorer Mark Henley hadn't ever seen one until he and his father went to look at N9116H. Although the disassembled aircraft had been in storage for sev eral decades and its major compo nents were stored in three separate locations, Henley knew it would be come his third significant restoration project. liMy father and r bought it the night I looked at it," he recalls, adding, "I loved it from first sight."