Here are drawings
of one of the airpanes with more "personality" that
I've ever seen. Ignaz Etrich, an austrian amateur airplane
designer, developed an airplane whose wing shape were inspired in
the Zanonia seed, thus giving to his aircraft an inherent
stability in flight. This design was so succesful in the first
years of the 1910 decade, that more than 50 different
manufacturers built his own versions, amongst them Gotha,
Albatros, Jeannin, etc. Apart from this page you can see another
specimens looking at the Rare Birds page in this same website and know how the
Frassinetti or the Wolsit Taube were. In the eve of WW1 many of
this gentle birds served as artillery spotters for the German Air
Service, but the introduction of faster, armed enemy airplanes
led to its complete retirement from the front by the beggining of
1915.
Etrich Taube plan and front
views, from an
era when serial industrial production was in its infancy,
each Taube was different from one another. Here are a
characteristic sample of this lovely two seater, showing
measurements. Note that under each external spar there's
a little wheel. it must have been quite a ride to land
with this dove in a crosswind!
Wing construction diagram, showing how the flexible
trailing edge of the taube's wing and elevator were made.
there were several methods to arrange the fabric to the
edge, but generally all followed the same principle: each
rib (a & b in the diagram) had a flexible extension,
fitted with a tiny metal cap with a transverse hole in it
(c). Each rib cap were threaded with a single wire (d)
and the wing were covered with fabric on the under (n)
and upper (m) surfaces to the third wing spar (see
preceding drawing), where a single layer of fabric
continued to the trailing edge defined by the threaded
wire(d). Simple, don't you think? ;-)
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