The M-01 exhibited at Expo 2005, Aichi, Japan, was the first finished aircraft in this series able to fly with a human being aboard. The M-02 is a primary glider and the M-02J a powered aircraft equipped with a jet engine. After the exhibition, it will go through takeoff and jump-flight tests and then be flown with the jet engine.

The M-02 is an improved version of the M-01 and was used in initial tests of flying trim and bungee launch. It has been flown 62 times in five rounds of experiments. Photographs of the aircraft in flight show this model. Visitors who meet certain conditions will be offered the opportunity to climb into this glider and experience what the pilot saw in the fifth test flight in Asagiri Heights via video recordings.

*In order to protect the craft, the test flight experience will be limited to persons weighing no more than 58 kilograms and who draw the winning stone.

I built a flight simulator to let people experience flying this craft, using the fuselage pad that was shown in the Aichi expo. For the simulator software, I plugged the CAD data from designing the M-02J into the Japanese-language edition of Microsoft Flight Simulator X* in a special version for this exhibition.
*Microsoft Flight Simulator X is scheduled to go on sale this winter, but thanks to the kindness of Microsoft, I was able to borrow the software especially for this exhibition.
(There will be restrictions on the number of people who can use the flight simulator; successful applicants must weigh no more than 85 kilograms, answer all the questions on a quiz correctly, and meet other requirements.)

Because we do not have a wind tunnel for test purposes or computational fluid dynamics (CFD) facilities for conducting computer simulations, we flew the model and checked its behavior in flight to test our designs. This is the 1/5 scale model built for that purpose.

Our first objective, after initiating this project in 2003, was to fly a 1/2 sized jet under radio control to assess whether the project was feasible. This is the model built for those first tests. We equipped it with a small jet engine and carried out flight tests over the Tonegawa riverbed and in Aso, on Kyushu. (Collection of the Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto)

FairyFinder is a new series of small works that I began in 2005. The theme is "thinking about invisible things", images not visible with the naked eye. For example, this series presents images that can be seen through a hand-made telescope built with a paper tube, or a magnifying glass, or a coaster.
Telescope for Viewing the Skies was created for the Sky High exhibition at Kirin Plaza Osaka. Since OpenSky is, at heart, a project for viewing the skies, the monitor was set up at angles so that viewers could see the sky through the roof.

Here, viewers can look through coasters to see these Little People, or Colobockle, at play. This work gives form to some thoughts that HACHIYA, having become a father, has had, including "Why do babies like playing peekaboo?" and "Doesn't the structure of synapses in our brains look like the land of the Little People?"