There was this plane called the Taurus. It was ahead of its time. I can't disbute this statement. We are now full circle.

I once drove up to a flying field in Knoxville, TN. Do as the Romans do. SPA international event wrapping up. I pulled out my 42% Extra 300 and started to fly through the Senior Super pattern. One of the pilots said, hey, you should try pattern. I thought that was a great complement. I told him, I may try flying pattern some day. So he called the maneuvers and I flew through them without delay. I then landed the Extra plane and they let me fly one of the Taurus (or such) planes in the Super Senior class maneuvers. No mixes on the radios, just 4 channels. This pilot would shoot anyone who dared enter mixes. It would destroy the nastagia. All the aerodynamics were made for speed, and as much speed as one could muster. It was fun and challenging to fly, no different than P-11 from the "think forward and move stick" perspective. There has been progression in pattern designs. Next major milestone was Hanno with the tuned muffler. We entered the Jet age with ballistics. Look at the EU-1, now that as an F-4 down to the nose inlets. Then came and idea of turnaround. That changed everything with regard to speed, and designs soon followed. Tony Frakowiak's Challenge. Now we looked at speed control, although Dave Brown flew very constant in AMA style a that time. 4 Cycle engines were introduced to swing larger props at slower airspeeds. The next major step was rolling loop and circle maneuvers. The FOCUS would get through but the trend was toward constant speed and radius. Larger fuselages and other devices followed, tips, cantalizers, and the such. You see Seba and the props, electrics and many variations, in the theme for displaying the best picture to the judges. Now with the P-11 and F-11 moving things out a bit past 150, with greater speed and the VF3 looks and flies attractive. I stumbled across some claims on this website called custom airframes. I read through them to disbute but could not. It's been a great trip down memory lane. Many Cheers, Don