Taurus (oz612)

About this Plan

Taurus. Classic pattern plane, for Veco .45 power. Contest winning design. This is the Taurus design as it was first published, in MAN, January 1963.

Later kitted by Top-Flite.

Quote: "In June '60 MAN we stated that our author's Orion (oz927) was the best multi offered to date - it was! Now we go one step further and state his Taurus is the best. By best is meant just that. A look at the contest record shows that the man in the street in doing the winning.

In the last few years RC equipment manufacturers have made great strides in the development of RC gear. Radio and servo reliability is at an all-time high. Properly maintained, this equipment now allows the modeler to concentrate on the art of flying. During this lime the RC model aircraft has also undergone considerable development. Our objective was to come up with a plane that would perform the maneuvers more nearly perfect, but more important, would be easy to fly.

It goes without saying that smoothness is all important. Our thinking was that if we could design a plane that would fly slower and still do clean maneuvers, we would have the answer.

We see many new designs but are they really different? To change the shape of the fuselage, stab, rudder or wing may give some slight advantage here or there, but we were looking for a design that was really different. After about two years of experimenting, it added up to a lot of building and sweat) we evolved the design we now call the Taurus. What about the Taurus? What makes it different? Let's take a close look at its design.

First, we must remember that to win a contest or master RC flying it is a combination of 65% pilot and 35% airplane. A good pilot can take just about any design of ship and win contests with it. But what about the average flier? He needs a ship with some built-in advantages.

The big difference in the Taurus is the thick wing section. We use a modified NACA 2419. Let's consider the advantages of the thick wing section. A thick section has lots of lift and plenty of drag. We need both. Why do we want drag? If we had a ship that always flew at the same speed, the control response would always be the same. In a full scale airplane the pilot feels the pressure on the stick and by this feel he knows how much control to apply. In a model, we have to judge the speed and beep accordingly.

If we double the speed of a model, the drag goes up four times; therefore the thick wing and its drag tend to fly the model at a more constant speed, The advantage is that we have more it in the ship: making it much easier to fly.

The lift characteristics of the 19% section at low speeds is a big help in landings. We can now bring the ship in slowly over the spot and there is no tendency for the tip to stall with the thick lip section. If you slow it down too much. it just sinks. Assuming, of course, the wing is true.

Another advantage of the 19% section is that it is not sensitive to slight elevator beeps, making the ship very smooth in pitch..."

Update 17/08/2017: Added second article (one page, notes and drawing on modifying the Taurus for proportional control) thanks to davidterrell80, KraftyOne.

Supplementary file notes

Article.
Second article.

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