Introduction

Whether you're just starting out with RC flight or you're an old timer, the Rumpler Taube is a great little plane to have in your collection. For those of you new to the RC hobby, you'll find the Taube easy to fly, quite forgiving, and fortunately, surprisingly durable when mishaps occur (more about that later).

For you experienced pilots, the Taube is a fun little plane to own when you don't have a lot of flying space, you just feel like flying slow and low, or you want to do some minor aerobatics in a nearby steelyard.

I've recommended the Taube to retired fellows I've met at fly-ins, too. It flies slowly, you don't have to fly high, and it's pretty easy to see what it's doing even when it's a hundred or so feet off the deck.

Power System

As with most electrics, there is some latitude as to the equipment you can use with a particular plane and still get good flying results. I pretty much stuck to the recommended equipment, with some exceptions. I bought the recommended Ikarus motor with gear box and two props (the same as used with Bleriot models). I also bought the Ikarus Micro Control 2000 BEC speed control. I've seen ads for the Taube that show a Jeti speed control.

I use 7-cell Sanyo 500AR mAh packs because I have 4 of those for other planes that I fly. The suggested pack is a 6-cell 250mAh pack, but I found my cell packs to work just fine and I didn't have to buy something else.

The Kit

The assembly instructions were fairly straight forward. If you are new to electric flying, you'll quickly learn that most planes are designed and built by folks for whom English is a second (or third) language.  Moreover, it sometimes seems technical writing is some pesky expense that companies try to minimize by slamming out what is usually bare minimum instructions about their product. You'll also find that the translations from Asian or German languages to English usually leave a lot to be desired.

The Taube is an ARF (almost ready to fly), but there is still a lot of stuff you have to do to get it into the air. If you are not experienced in putting kits together, even ARFs, find someone who can answer questions that you may have about construction details.

The basic kit, depending where you purchase it, includes the plane and all its airframe parts. You will need to supply servos, a receiver, a cell pack, and most likely a motor/gearbox and prop, and speed control.

Construction

If you read the assembly instructions carefully (you may have to read various sections several times) you should have no problem assembling the plane. There are a few things that I'll comment about, though.

I didn't paint my plane., because I didn't want to add any extra weight and I didn't want to take a minute longer than necessary to get it into the air. I didn't care if it really looked like a W.W.I plane when sitting on the ground. And, I found the brownish color of the foam easy enough to see in the air. I have put various colors and color schemes on some of my planes because it was too difficult to see what they were doing in the air without adding some color.

You definitely want to install the optional leading edge spars. Even if you don't  intend to try minor aerobatics with the Taube, you'll want the wing spars to keep the wings in one piece should you nose in, which I've done several times.

Another thing you may want to think about is replacing the wheels. The wheels that come with the kit are foam. They don't stand up. Ikarus might want to do something about this. Although the Taube will take off from the deck, I hand launch to get that extra minute or so of flight that would drain energy from the cell packs by taking off from the ground. Even though I hand launch, the landings put a lot of wear on the foam wheels fairly quickly, to the point where they wobbled. The little plastic inserts that are supposed to ride on the axles don't prevent the foam from wearing. I replaced the foam wheels with plastic wheels, which have worked fine.

Something that puzzled the heck out of me was how the rear of the wing assembly was supposed to stay attached to the fuselage. If you look at Figure 2 below you'll see a pink piece of foam and just above it a piece of brown foam in the top fuselage cover over the wing. The foam is supposed to slip under the fuselage to hold the back of the wing assembly down.

As I understand the instructions, you are supposed to glue the piece of bulkhead material to the wing assembly such that it sticks out so that it will slip under the fuselage and hold the rear of the wing assembly to the fuselage. There just didn't seem to be enough surface sticking out so I shaped a piece of foam and glued it to the bulkhead piece attached to the wing assembly. It has worked just fine.

Figure 2. Wing Attachment

Another problem I encountered after numerous flights was with the elevator and rudder. This is primarily a design problem, but can be addressed during construction. Look at Figures 3 and 4. Notice that the elevator is shaped like the top of a heart, where the center is very narrow. So too with the rudder; the bottom (Figure 4) where the connecting horns attach is quite narrow. You may have noticed in Figures 3 and 4 that the elevator and rudder are balsa. This is not original equipment. I replaced the original foam flight control surfaces with balsa after the originals broke.

After several flights the elevator broke at that narrow point and, needless to say, the plane was really difficult to control. I crashed in the street and broke the nose completely off the plane. This is where my earlier comment about durability applies and I'll get to that shortly.

Figure 3. Tail Section -- Top

While doing a ground check on my broken plane (sure glad I don't ride in the planes I fly), I noticed that the rudder, at the narrow point near the horn, was cracked and that the majority or the rudder just flopped around.

Since the plane was doing really odd things before I crashed, I believe the crash resulted from damaged elevator and rudder control surfaces, rather than the elevator and rudder being damaged from the crash.

The point here is that I believe there is a design issue that Ikarus ought to address, but which you can manage during construction. If I knew then what I know now, I would glue a thin piece of balsa on the narrow points of the elevator and rudder. You might want to consider doing that.

Figure 4. Tail Section -- Bottom

Flying

As I mentioned earlier, I've broken the nose off the Taube -- twice!

The first time was when the elevator and rudder failed during flight. The nose broke completely off near the motor mount. The balsa motor mount broke too. The break was clean and I was able to replace the balsa and glue the nose back on almost exactly where it broke off. You had to look really closely to see where the repair was made.

The second time I broke the nose completely off the Taube was pilot error. I bought a programmable radio from a long-time buddy, who introduced me to electric flying two years ago. (I bought the programmable radio so that I could get a Zagi in the air, but that's another story.) Still being somewhat a rookie at this, I thought I checked the new radio and the Taube, but I guess I didn't check well enough. I threw the Taube in the air and it didn't go where I wanted it to. Broke the nose off the second time. This time however, things didn't go back together quite as nicely as the first time. Now my Taube's nose has about a two degree tilt to the right. But, the little sucker still flies! It flies quite well too. As I said, it's really a durable plane.

The Taube will take off from the ground, but I generally hand launch to get an extra minute or two of flight. I've had full-throttle flights bucking a brisk breeze for 12 minutes. I've had the plane sit in mid air into the wind for nearly five minutes. In a gentle breeze, I've been able to stay aloft for nearly 20 minutes.

What's really fun is flying eight to ten feet off the deck, at a few miles per hour, in about a 200 square foot area. The Ikarus gearbox makes a sound much like an old engine. I practice flying a foot or two over my head (I've had to duck numerous times) because its kind of fun to hear and see the plane fly slowly by.

What's really neat, too, is flying in formation. That buddy I mentioned earlier who introduced me to electric flying - well he bought a Rumpler Taube after seeing and flying mine. We flew in formation (sort of) at an electric fly-in and it really impressed some folks.

Conclusion

The Taube is a durable and an easy plane to fly -- a good plane for beginners, and a nice addition to the experienced pilot's collection.

If you are starting out in RC flight, check out a Rumpler Taube. It is not complicated to assemble, it is easy to fly, and most importantly, it's pretty durable.

If you are a seasoned electric pilot and you just want something easy to fly when you don't have a lot of time or space, the Taube is worth looking into.

Charles Emerson-Henry emerson-henry(at)worldnet.att.net