Navy flyer,
I can't let that `The airplane thinks it's flying much faster' go. I would have thought a better explaination would have been that as the camber increases with flap application, lift and drag generated increases until equilibrium is again reached (ie the model will `balloon' and bleed off airspeed, inertia effect) at a lower airspeed than before, where L & D again = T & W. The airspeed will change, effectively the cl of the wing has changed, so the lift generated at any airspeed will change but the weight will not. For there to be equilibrium then L still equals W, so the IAS must reduce in this case if the craft is not to descend or climb. To descend then, L must be less than W, and pilots do this with both trim and power changes, but then you knew that.