What is amazing is how many people are falling for this. It is towed up to speed and altitude by being pulled by a truck, then glides back down to earth. Yes, it flaps it’s wings, but I really don’t think the flapping does enough to keep it aloft. It is just ‘falling with style’.
From another article:
Others have claimed to have built machines that flew like a bird, but the Canadian group says they have the telemetry data to prove their ornithopter powered itself through the air rather than just glided after being lifted aloft.
“Those past claims were never verified. We believe we are the first, because we know what it took to do it,” chief structural engineer Cameron Robertson, said in an interview from Tottenham, Ontario, north of Toronto, where the Snowbird was displayed on Thursday.
count me among the “not falling for it”. It’s towed and it’s a glider.
Using the sun as a meter, you can see it doesn’t have positive vertical momentum. I give them credit for all the hard work and vision. Good luck to them all.