Allen, the last video is the most revealing. Did you notice how graceful the flights became once her turned Nausicaa into a big rudder ( on top of the tip rudders, disguising themselves)? The first videos are more of a series of recoveries, not very stable. It flew, but if it was made out of anything other than Styrofoam, I doubt it would have got gone very far, Styrofoamis very forgiving.
The last flight was about as nice as a flight as could ever be achieved with those wings, very nice. I saw these videos last year on YouTube (there are some guys there flying mini Savoia S021's), when another member (who was making an R/C Biplane) was posting his discoveries. IF this guy did a little tweaking on the wings, he could have a much more graceful flying craft, but it is really nice.
You can see the plane fighting not to spin, In this case, the Nausicaa figure is acting as a rudder. I followed this guy when he first started. He worked on this very hard on this. He posted many videos of the crashes he experienced. He was very confident he would succeed. I think the key to his success is that is he essentially turned the two fuel tanks into rudders by extending them way out and making them flat and perpendicular to the wings. Once he did that, he stabilized the wing. Some would cause this cheating but whatever works. If someone wanted to keep the model accurate, a better result would be using a clear sheet of plastic placed between the legs of the Nausicaa figure. You would then get a far more stable model. Very neat stuff. Flying the ship as it came out of the comic could not work, but as with most of Miyazaki's designs, they have a strong basis in real aerospace, so with very little tweaking, it was made into a flying machine. You work on a flying wing long enough, you will get flight.
Now, getting a Flapter to fly? This is freakin' amazing!!
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