RE: TOM BRETT'S DESIGNS-UPDATE
I received a real nice PM from Onewasp about his ideas regarding Jimmy Grier's, (from Chicago) airplane. They were his opinions, and as such, I can't post them here without his approval, but I thought they were great, and I hope he posts them himself. In the meantime, I'm going to post a "generic" version. I will also put it on the Taurus thread because I think this particular topic hasn't had enough attention.
Originally when I was referring to Jimmy's plane I called it a "Taurus". It has that general Taurus look, but when you take a closer look at it, you can see all the differences. This is the point...THE TAURUS was the SPRINGBOARD for MANY OTHER PATTERN DESIGNS. They were modified Taurus models. Let me illustrate with Jimmy's plane, and another from Howard Thombs. Howard's plane was essentially a Taurus with swept wings. I remember this plane doing a split-S right into a landing with seemingly no corrections...so cool for a young kid to witness. I think Howard's paint scheme is simple yet effective...as Chuck's video points out, Howard had at least two of these models painted the same, only with different numbers.
Once you had the basic Taurus, (which was such a revolutionary design in 1962), and its tremendous success, it was only natural for others to want to "play" with the basic design to improve upon it, or to give it a certain "look", or more simply for each pilot to be able to give it his own special "touches". When I modified my Taurus in 1981, I did the same thing...the Taurus was just such a natural to serve as the basic design to which all sorts of modifications and exerimentations were made. The nose on my Taurus was cowled in, which gives the appearance of a longer nose moment, (it IS a little longer). Jimmy did the same with his inverted engine plane. Ed himself made mods with each Taurus he built...it has been esstablished that he never built two exactly the same way. Look at Ed's Taurus II with its tapered wing, and you se Ed's OWN experiments. Jimmy did the same with his plane. That tapered wing became the favored wing design and the new standard for future pattern planes.
Duane