Thanks for all the replies you guys,

MESAE,
Your post more or less vindicates my friend's "eccentric" line of thought and makes some sense of the message he was trying to convey to me, so I'll (try) get in contact with him and see what he thinks of the replies so far ( he doesn't know about me putting this on the forum as yet but I know he won't mind).

I don't think he has flown it much lately because he has many and varied interests, this being only one of them, also this is only one of his arsenal of weird and wonderful flying "experiments".

When he flies, it often attracts a crowd of passers by, and he gets comments like " what is it? - aren't you going to put the wings on?, - that thing can't possibly fly but it does, - ooh aah "- or, haw haw what a load of crap ( this often from people who consider themselves expert fliers of course), but it doesn't faze him at all.

Thanks again everyone.