CompTaur (oz16914)

About this Plan

CompTaur. Radio control pattern plane.

Note this is a low res plan.

Quote: "CompTaur, by Don Botteron. Thirteen years ago Pattern flying took a large step upward with the introduction of Ed Kazmirski's Taurus (oz612). It was advanced, it was beautiful, it was the best of the reed machines. Today the CompTaur takes Pattern still further with a revisit to the old bird. lt too is a beautiful, fine bird!

The Taurus. After pounding your way through the AMA classification system to the shaky status of a neophyte expert rating, you have the opportunity (responsibility?) to test fly a great variety of untried, untrimmed airplanes. It was in just such a situation that I was reintroduced to this 'grand old lady.'

Compared to flying my latest semi-guided missile this test flight was like slipping on a comfortable, old pair of shoes. The basic difference was a feeling of being in complete command of the airplane, flying, instead of merely aiming. After coming down from my nostalgia trip it was impossible to shake the impression that there was a quality inherent in this bird that has somehow been bred out of our modern pattern designs. Now if we could only combine the best of both worlds, today's phenomenal guidance systems, power plants, retractable landing gear, along with some modern aerodynamic technology and still retain that confident feeling of control, we might finally approach that illusive, perfect airplane.

While we are all aware that there is no such thing as the perfect pattern airplane, it is my sincere belief that the CompTaur, as presented here, is the most versatile, high performance R/C design available today. It is equally at home in the hands of the neophyte, as it is trying to squeeze a perfect FAI figure 'M' into that little piece of sky allowed by the new rules.

The Taurus (oz612) was published in Model Airplane News in January, 1963, 12 years ago. It is a great tribute to Ed Kazmirski that after all these years the Taurus is still commonly seen at local flying sites and even on the contest circuit.

Let us go back and examine just a few of the design innovations set forth in this machine and check their validity in view of today's requirements. Actually the Taurus is a redesign of a previous Kazmirski plane called the Orion (oz927), a highly successful design in its own right. The major innovations in the Taurus are a shortened nose moment, causing less center of gravity (CG) shift as the fuel burns off, an extended tail cone for smooth pitch control and most important an extremely thick high lift airfoil.

The theory behind the thick airfoil (19% of chord) is a basic principle of physics that tells us that drag is a square function of velocity; in other words, when speed is doubled, the drag is squared. This results in a more constant speed through the vertical maneuvers, especially in a plane with relatively light wing loading such as the Taurus. Extremely smooth pitch control response is an additional benefit derived from this type of airfoil.

If we can agree that this self-induced drag can be used to our advantage, particularly considering the new pattern framing requirements, let us discuss its application to the CompTaur. I do not claim to be an expert on fluid mechanics, but it does not take a scientist to realize that if this drag we impose creates turbulence, most importantly over the tail surface, buffeting takes place, and there go our ten-point maneuvers down the tube.

The CompTaur is an effort to combine these factors and eliminate as much parasitic or turbulent drag as practical, while retaining, the desirable characteristics of the thick airfoil. If everything works out, we should be rewarded with a machine capable of extremely smooth flight at a relatively slow, nearly constant speed.

I would like to be able to say that these parameters were programmed and fed into a computer with the resulting design being extensively wind tunnel tested and refined - but unfortunately, it just did not happen that way. The CornpTaur is the result of building, testing, changing and refining three separate prototypes to arrive at the final configuration you see here. This was done over a period of approximately 18 months, 2,000 pots of coffee and 500 bull sessions..."

Direct submission to Outerzone.

Update 2/8/2026: Added alternate plan scan, (unscaled) thanks to Pit. This is maybe easier to read.

Supplementary file notes

Alternate plan scan (unscaled).
Article.

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