[rotorwrench]

The landing gear and pilot's weight likely put the CG where it was supposed to be. The drag flaps used instead of a rudder would have made low speed handling very tricky if not impossible. I'm sure Jack Northrop looked the design over along with the German and Russian designs before he started tinkering with the idea a few years after. His N-1M was a flyable design but it has pusher props that can be manipulated for some directional control as well. Ford experimented with aluminum flathead engines several times but they didn't make very many of them. They would have been a lot better off with a conventional design. The problem was that they were looking for a design that would be simple enough that they could produce it for little more cost than a model B car but it was a bit too minimal to be a safe design to fly. The crash in the initial testing pretty well tells the story. I'd love to have the engine though.

Pietenpol proved that even a model T engine would power an aircraft at 20 HP but I think I'd prefer a Model B engine myself.