[HN Gopher] Paper Airplane Designs (2013)
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Paper Airplane Designs (2013)
        
       Author : kkwteh
       Score  : 489 points
       Date   : 2022-07-18 04:32 UTC (18 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.foldnfly.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.foldnfly.com)
        
       | dwaite wrote:
       | I used to love making the ring wing glider:
       | https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/teach/activity/ring-wing-glider...
       | 
       | In addition to being able to glide very far, you could launch it
       | with a meter stick.
        
         | sumtechguy wrote:
         | I used to make the ones out of this book.
         | 
         | https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671555510
         | 
         | They are a bit finicky to make, but fly very nicely. One day a
         | friend and I were messing around and added a dumb amount of
         | weight to the front of one. Think it was a clip his mom used to
         | dry cloths outside. Nearly doubled the weight and put the
         | center of balance way near the front of the plane. We expected
         | a nosedive. Gave it a toss and it 3x'd the flight length
         | easily. It was already fairly decent and you could easily get
         | across a room with little changes. Now it was easily getting
         | across his yard.
        
       | beaker52 wrote:
       | Given the weather at the moment, I remember, as a kid, being
       | astounded when I threw a paper airplane on a hot summers-day that
       | didn't immediately come back down to earth like normal, but
       | soared and soared and soared for minutes before I lost it. It
       | blew my little kid mind.
        
         | themodelplumber wrote:
         | What a great feeling that must have been.
         | 
         | It's funny, it's kind of similar to walkie talkie transmissions
         | in the summer. They can get tunneled through the troposphere
         | and suddenly you are talking to people you never expected to
         | contact.
         | 
         | A couple summers ago I was out in my yard, called out randomly
         | on my little 5W handheld, and the signal went just over 8 miles
         | through flat, forested city neighborhoods into the back end of
         | a guy's directional antenna on his house. We had a good laugh
         | at that. I've run tests in the neighborhood and I'm usually
         | lucky to get out a single mile.
         | 
         | During the same season I also like that I can pick up Indian
         | music from an FM radio station 150+ miles south of me (KSJO),
         | using a small pocket radio. Searching around for those signals
         | is also kind of like fishing.
         | 
         | Anyway. I think it's pretty neat how different seasonal
         | conditions change the dynamics of a hobby interest or a
         | science.
        
           | beaker52 wrote:
           | Amazing. I'm grateful for the way this universe creates
           | magical experiences for us. Sometimes I wonder if it really
           | is just an accident.
        
       | jankovicsandras wrote:
       | Very cool.
       | 
       | Just for info: these use the "Letter paper", not A4, as I
       | remember. But most designs should work anyway.
       | 
       | "The most used of this series is the size A4, which is 210 mm x
       | 297 mm (8.27 in x 11.7 in) and thus almost exactly 1/16 square
       | metre (0.0625 m2; 96.8752 sq in) in area. For comparison, the
       | letter paper size commonly used in North America (8+1/2 in x 11
       | in, 216 mm x 279 mm) is about 6 mm (0.24 in) wider and 18 mm
       | (0.71 in) shorter than A4. Then, the size of A5 paper is half of
       | A4, as 148 mm x 210 mm (5.8 in x 8.3 in)."
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_216
        
       | 2143 wrote:
       | Nice.
       | 
       | However, I see that it doesn't have the plane which I usually
       | made as a child.
       | 
       | As an aside, I was a wannabe pilot who never went to flight
       | school. I love aircrafts, and I love long haul flights (I never
       | got tired from the multiple 15+ hour India<->America flights I
       | took).
       | 
       | In India to become a pilot you had to learn math and physics in
       | high-school, and at my highschool, you could either take Math-
       | Physics-Chemistry-Biology, or Math-Physics-Chemistry-
       | ComputerScience.
       | 
       | Computer Science (CS) meant they taught you coding, Boolean
       | algebra (incl. Karnaugh Maps), history of CS and the internet,
       | and we eventually moved onto OOP.
       | 
       | I'm terrible at Biology, so I choose the latter option. I found I
       | liked CS, and now here I am :)
       | 
       | Though I never went to flight school, even today I'm still
       | passionate about it. I follow these youtubers -- Mentour Pilot,
       | Captain Joe, Kelsey (74gear), and Dutch Pilot Girl.
       | 
       | And I closely follow the aircraft models and the industry in
       | general. I can tell what model an aircraft is just by looking at
       | it.
       | 
       | I sometimes have those _what if_ moments.
       | 
       | It's like the great American poet Robert Frost's _The Road Not
       | Taken_ , except I took the well travelled road.
        
         | abc_lisper wrote:
         | What I came to say. Reading the first line I figured this is an
         | Indian ;)
        
           | 2143 wrote:
           | Yep, the relatively short plane with large wings.
           | 
           | Doesn't go fast, but it hovers in the air for quite a bit.
           | 
           | Does this until it hits the ground: Go down, gather lift and
           | go up, reach stall speed, stall, repeat.
           | 
           | Nice to watch if you have a tiny one that you launch from a
           | great height.
        
         | vkdelta wrote:
         | Get a PPL if you really want to fly. It is much more accessible
         | and you can make your dream come true.
        
           | 2143 wrote:
           | Eventually I'd like to obtain a licence, at least the one for
           | smaller planes.
           | 
           | But even if I get one, general aviation isn't really a thing
           | here in India so it's kind of a dead-end.
           | 
           | I think USA is a better place for these kinds of activities,
           | where the plane scene is much more active.
        
             | outworlder wrote:
             | What about gliders? Glider hours are much cheaper. Not sure
             | how their availability looks like in India - but if there
             | are, I imagine there are AMAZING mountain ridges your could
             | use for soaring :)
        
       | la_fayette wrote:
       | Homeoffice > Reading HN > Building Paperplanes with Kids ...
        
       | itsryanirl wrote:
       | Has anyone done any research on which type of paper travels best?
       | How does weight distribution play a factor? Does the type of
       | paper impact the design of the plane you build?
        
       | elevaet wrote:
       | I've noticed that in N. America "The Dart" is the standard and in
       | S.E. Asia kids fold something that's like a hybrid between "The
       | Dart" and "The Buzz" that flies really well. I've never had much
       | luck with the dart, it's usually really unstable.
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Related:
       | 
       |  _Paper Airplane Designs_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29466325 - Dec 2021 (8
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Paper Airplane Designs_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23545860 - June 2020 (8
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Paper Airplane Designs_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18249755 - Oct 2018 (206
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Real Paper Airplane Designs_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12632253 - Oct 2016 (1
       | comment)
        
         | achow wrote:
         | Yes this website keeps popping up in HN.
         | 
         | Which makes me to wonder what is the logic for checking a
         | duplicate? I know that dups are checked while submitting a
         | link, but how far in time does it go?
         | 
         | If the check is time bound is it due to performance or is it
         | due to belief that after sufficient time gap content inside an
         | identical link could be different?
        
           | pvg wrote:
           | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.
           | ..
        
             | achow wrote:
             | Thanks.
             | 
             | This thread gives some idea about the complexity, but still
             | I'm none the wiser.
             | 
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23206417
        
               | pvg wrote:
               | The two important things are that duplicates are ok after
               | about a year and most other duplicates get caught by
               | users and moderators if they get past simpler checks. So
               | fundamentally the technical problem of dupe detection is
               | not all that important to the site. There's some
               | annoyance for submitters who feel they miss out on their
               | rightful karma when their submission of something doesn't
               | get traction but I guess they are a small magnanimous
               | fraction of all users.
        
       | anderspitman wrote:
       | Is there a good biodegradable paper for making planes? There are
       | lots of great buildings/bridges/mountains/cliffs that would be
       | really fun to launch them off of.
        
       | screwgoth wrote:
       | Nice. Can't wait to try out some of thee with my 11-year old. At
       | one point of time we used to be obsessed with paper planes ...
       | and that's when we only knew 2-3 designs.
        
       | jfk13 wrote:
       | In my childhood, our reference for paper planes was Capt.
       | Barnaby's classic:
       | 
       | http://www.jumpjet.info/Offbeat-Internet/More/Misc/How_To_Ma...
        
         | ThinkingGuy wrote:
         | For me, it was "The Great International Paper Airplane Book"
         | (which I was happy to discover is now available for borrowing
         | on the Internet Archive):
         | 
         | https://archive.org/details/greatinternation00jerr
         | 
         | I went through 2 physical copies cutting out all the patterns
         | to make the various planes.
        
       | enviclash wrote:
       | Great pedagogical resource, I am in parental leave and might
       | spend our afternoons with the kids with this foa a couple of days
       | :) thx!
        
       | maicro wrote:
       | It might be fun to implement these in something like this origami
       | simulator: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31281700
       | https://origamisimulator.org ; that seems to have a bit of
       | trouble with order-of-operation steps, but I think would still be
       | interesting.
        
       | Scandiravian wrote:
       | My father was a high school math teacher and he would borrow
       | books on paper plane folding at the library, then photocopy the
       | books with the photocopier at his school
       | 
       | We spent a lot of weekends folding planes together - I think we
       | both liked the repetitive nature of it. It's definitely one of
       | the things that got me hooked on engineering as a child
       | (alongside Legos)
       | 
       | He died of an anyorism when I was 11 and I haven't folded a paper
       | plane ever since - maybe it's time I give it a go
        
       | photochemsyn wrote:
       | While they'r not in the foldable category, the paper plane
       | designs of Yasuaki Ninomiya are pretty incredible, though
       | apparently no longer produced commercially.
       | 
       | https://bluegrassroots.ninja/whitewings
        
         | dls2016 wrote:
         | I still have a some un-assembled Whitewings on my bookshelf!
         | The book that came with it was pack full of design details.
        
       | outworlder wrote:
       | I really like the 'Fun Flyer', never knew it had a name. Although
       | I like to do a variation where I fold the wing tips to create a
       | kind of 'winglet'. And sometimes cut 'flaps' on the back of the
       | wing to adjust the flight path. So the wings may end up looking
       | like the 'king bee'
        
       | daveslash wrote:
       | If you uncheck _all_ boxes, except  "easy", then you get this
       | plane recommendation [0] which is note listed on the landing page
       | by default. Easy, but with 100+ folds.
       | 
       | [0] https://www.foldnfly.com/404.html#The-Goof-Up
        
       | kqr wrote:
       | My interest in science started when a friend and I folded a few
       | paper planes, tested them over a small downhill section outside
       | my house, made notes about what worked, tweaked and experimented
       | with new designs, and so on. It blew my little mind that with
       | structured experimentation you could design things that actually
       | got better with each generation. Where would the improvements
       | stop?
       | 
       | With hindsight, I realise that most of the improvements we
       | measured were really just statistical noise. We never had a
       | control plane, so if one by accident flew better one test, then
       | we would tweak something and then we would naturally see
       | regression to the mean, but we would record that as a tweak that
       | made things worse.
       | 
       | To little me it was a lesson in deliberate design. To grown-up me
       | I guess it's a lesson in how easy it is to delude yourself
       | without proper experiment design and statistics.
       | 
       | Anyway, then after seeing my interest my father brought me an
       | early Windows program that contained animated instructions on
       | some paper plane designs. One of them was vastly superior to
       | anything I had ever seen. But with the years, I forgot how to
       | fold it. I had been looking for it for over 20 years when a few
       | months ago, I wanted to show my son (of two years) a good paper
       | plane and guess what? I think I've found the design! But it took
       | a blurry YouTube video and some trial and error. I ought to write
       | it down some day.
        
         | molszanski wrote:
         | I've found "Paperang paper airplane" to be the best. It is
         | pretty hard to fold properly because the margin of error is
         | thin, but it is really a fun one
        
           | JKCalhoun wrote:
           | "The Basic" should not even be on the list. Doesn't fly.
        
         | JKCalhoun wrote:
         | "Great International Paper Airplane Book" [0] was my drug.
         | 
         | [0] https://archive.org/details/greatinternation00mandrich
        
           | Pokepokalypse wrote:
           | Oh, yes, that book was great. The helicopter one is pretty
           | unique, and there was another one that is VERY simple to
           | make, and you end up making a flying-ring, and that plane
           | actually performed beautifully. It flew straight and fast;
           | wasn't much for long slow glides, but it never failed to
           | impress people - especially with it's simplicity of
           | construction.
        
             | JKCalhoun wrote:
             | It featured some "match rockets" too that probably would be
             | a hard-sell to an editor/publisher these days....
        
         | xattt wrote:
         | > Anyway, then after seeing my interest my father brought me an
         | early Windows program that contained animated instructions on
         | some paper plane designs.
         | 
         | Microsoft Publisher 97 had (and still has in the 365 version)
         | templates for different papercraft, including a couple of paper
         | airplane designs. I honed my standard paper airplane design on
         | this, and likely wasted gallons of ink in the process. Living
         | in an apartment with a balcony also upped the incentive to make
         | paper airplanes.
        
         | isaacn wrote:
         | Link?
        
           | kqr wrote:
           | This was the YouTube video where I think the person makes the
           | same design as the one I remember:
           | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t2sozrof3HY
        
             | 14 wrote:
             | That is absolutely amazing and for anyone glossing over
             | this link unsure if you will bother checking it out I
             | highly recommend checking it out. 2 minute video. So cool
             | the ending. I know what I am doing tomorrow.
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | They didn't show the landing. What happens if it lands on
               | the cook top? I saw no fire extinguishers nearby. ;P
        
             | skavi wrote:
             | this is the first and only "cool" paper airplane I learned
             | to build. the version I learned had a tail, which was built
             | from a strip of paper torn off the end of the page.
        
             | scoot wrote:
             | > I think I've found the design! But it took a blurry
             | YouTube video and some trial and error.
             | 
             | That isn't at all blurry.
        
               | ectopod wrote:
               | The plane construction is speeded up. It's often blurry
               | when you pause it.
        
             | hellectronic wrote:
             | That brings back old memories! I used to fold my paper
             | airplane like this for the most part : ). I do not remember
             | who showed it to me.
        
             | ansible wrote:
             | Interesting. I had learned a similar design back in the
             | late 1970's early 1980's in school from classmates. I have
             | learned some designs from books, but I guess we had a
             | decent oral tradition, passing down good designs from grade
             | to grade back then.
             | 
             | It was probably the combination of available letter-sized
             | sheets of paper (old homework) and some free time (recess
             | and/ study hall).
        
         | horsebridge wrote:
         | Was it this [1] program?
         | 
         | [1] https://archive.org/details/thegpa
        
           | rcthompson wrote:
           | What a great app that was. The step-by-step animated folding
           | instructions were actually 3D. It had buttons to rotate the
           | view around to any angle. In hindsight they must have written
           | their own simple 3D engine or something. Obviously they
           | didn't need to render too many polygons at once, and no
           | textures or shading.
        
             | ultrafez wrote:
             | The thing I'm most impressed and surprised about is that
             | archive.org runs a Windows 3.1 emulator in the page, so you
             | can actually use the program. I fully expected it to just
             | be information about the program, perhaps with some
             | screenshots. Modern browser tech is amazing.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | kqr wrote:
           | Yes! I did not expect that out of this thread! Thank you so
           | much.
        
             | jb1991 wrote:
             | Which one of those designs is it?
        
         | clankyclanker wrote:
         | The one in the YouTube video looks very similar to (or exactly
         | like) one of the designs from one of the Klutz books around the
         | turn of the millennium. I might've found it in the Explorabook?
         | I'm pretty sure they called it the best paper airplane you'll
         | ever make, it even had the same wing flaps.
         | 
         | It also looks almost exactly like one in the cover of the paper
         | airplane book:
         | 
         | Klutz Book of Paper Airplanes Craft Kit https://a.co/94zUS0G
         | 
         | Turns out Klutz might've printed quite a few paper airplane
         | instruction manuals.
        
           | amatecha wrote:
           | Explorabook is the best!! That big fresnel lens was the most
           | amazing way to quickly start a fire! I mean not that I tried
           | or anything :D Klutz made so many awesome books back then. I
           | still have my Explorabook, Klutz Book of Knots, and "Juggling
           | for the Complete Klutz" (and the original bean bags)... all
           | super awesome stuff for a kid to enjoy and learn from!
        
       | mod wrote:
       | In fourth grade we had a paper airplane contest, but they had a
       | restriction on the design: a circle about the size of a quarter
       | was on the page, and no fold or crease could go through the
       | circle.
       | 
       | The circle was located a few inches above the exact center of the
       | paper.
       | 
       | Anyway I made a "dart", and just offset the angle a little to
       | avoid the circle. It was good, and most of the competition was
       | incredibly bad. And a few maybe had a bad launch. One throw only.
       | 
       | One clever design was submitted by a duo composed of my two worst
       | nine year old enemies: Derek and Derek's sidekick. It was
       | basically a UFO (saucer) made by carefully crumpling the edge
       | until it was a nice size to throw. They threw it sidearm with one
       | finger hooked around the rim.
       | 
       | It really sailed, maybe went twice as far as the second best
       | plane: my plane.
       | 
       | But their plane was disqualified on the grounds that it wasn't a
       | plane. So, I was deemed winner.
       | 
       | For the announcements the next morning, my name was announced as
       | the wrong-gendered version (something like Jesse announced as
       | Jessica) and it definitely didn't feel like a win anymore.
       | 
       | I still like paper airplanes, though.
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | >my name was announced as the wrong-gendered version
         | 
         | that really sounds like the kind of thing a person might get
         | stuck with through out their days in school. did this stick
         | around for awhile, or was it mercifully a short lived thing?
        
           | mod wrote:
           | Honestly, not that bad. Classmates openly laughed during
           | announcements. The next day they issued a correction, which
           | was worse than no correction.
           | 
           | A few teases in the first week maybe, overall quite merciful.
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | I guess you had better friends that I did. I had a name
             | "given" me that stuck all through school, and would
             | probably still get mentioned by some of the asshats from
             | back then.
        
         | mcherm wrote:
         | Reading that story, I feel bad for Derek. They thought outside
         | the box, and came up with an objectively superior solution --
         | only to have it rejected for no reason other than the fact that
         | they thought outside the box.
         | 
         | On the surface, this sounds like a fabulous exercise: it
         | requires some creative engineering thinking. But apparently,
         | the way they addressed the winners left both of the top two
         | teams feeling unsatisfied. Great exercise; poor execution.
        
           | werds wrote:
           | #justiceforderek
        
             | mod wrote:
             | I looked Derek up on Facebook and it seems he's living a
             | good life. Beautiful wife, four kids, and seems like he
             | coaches youth sports.
             | 
             | He'll never have my blue ribbon, though.
        
           | mod wrote:
           | I recognize injustice that his clever idea didn't win, but he
           | was my worst enemy, so I disguised a smug grin while he pled
           | his case to the judges.
        
         | yreg wrote:
         | I was at a math camp where one of the activities was that each
         | team had to design a paper plane and get it to a castle on top
         | of a hill by throwing it the fewest times possible (like in
         | golf). Several teams converged on a design of a crumbled ball
         | of paper as that was what offered the best combination of
         | accuracy and distance.
         | 
         | Since there was no rule against it, we've allowed it. Some of
         | the teams who played with conventional airplanes got furious.
         | (These were all adult people!) Although innitially looking
         | fairly innocent, I believe it ended up as the second most
         | controversial activity we've held.
        
           | michaelbuckbee wrote:
           | I'm aware of an even more efficient "hack" of the rules as
           | different versions of this type of story are a mainstay of
           | certain types of business courses where they want to try and
           | teach a lesson of working together, delegation, cooperation,
           | task specialization, etc.
           | 
           | The most efficient way to move a stack of paper to a goal
           | isn't to take each piece and do something to it
           | (crumple/fold) but to just leave it together and heave the
           | entire ream of paper.
           | 
           | Note: this also frustrates the folks putting on the activity.
        
           | farmin wrote:
           | I'll bite. What's the most controversial activity you have
           | held at maths camp?
        
             | yreg wrote:
             | Haha. It wasn't my game and it was called "The Stick".
             | 
             | Played outdoor, between two teams who face each other on
             | the opposite sides of a small playing field. In the middle
             | there is a stick stuck into the ground.
             | 
             | The players are assigned various numbers. In each round a
             | moderator announces a predicate such as "even numbers" or
             | "factors of three primes" or "sum of digits is a power of
             | two" etc.
             | 
             | The players who satisfy the predicate are allowed onto the
             | field and their goal is to get the stick and bring it to
             | their side. If a player mistakenly steps into the field
             | they are out of the game. Grabbing and pulling other
             | players while battling for the stick is fine.
             | 
             | The last time this was played it rained a bit and the
             | terrain was muddy and slippery and also the game was
             | probably needlessly violent. Too many people didn't enjoy
             | it and we've decided to retire it.
             | 
             | ----
             | 
             | While I'm at it, the third most controversial game was a
             | game where teams had to complete various tasks in and
             | around the village after the sunset, find some objects,
             | etc. We always have at least one such game and it is
             | usually one of a kind, played just that one time.
             | 
             | This time there was a special twist. Unknown to the rest of
             | the players, each team had a traitor whose goal was to
             | hinder the progress of their team as much as possible. The
             | traitor whose team finished in the last place was the
             | actual winner of the game.
             | 
             | The activity was not scored, but the players were led to
             | believe it is going to be scored.
             | 
             | When we played it some teams had conflicts and it sowed a
             | lot of distrust and paranoia that spilled into the next
             | day's games as well. Also the players who gave the game a
             | lot of effort were angry that it is not scored in the end.
             | It was the opposite of a team building activity so we never
             | explored it further.
             | 
             | Although I have to say, I'm still intrigued by the concept
             | and would like to try it in some other form one day again.
        
               | eurasiantiger wrote:
               | That traitor game looks, feels and smells like a cult
               | brainwashing tactic.
        
               | yreg wrote:
               | Are BSG or Saboteur cult brainwashing tactics?
               | 
               | - https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37111/battlestar-
               | galacti...
               | 
               | - https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9220/saboteur
               | 
               | There are also some D&D campaigns that work in the same
               | way (and unlike in the board games the heroes don't know
               | that there might be traitors among them).
        
               | eurasiantiger wrote:
               | There's a major difference between expected betrayal
               | being part of the rules of a game, and gaslighting groups
               | of children into competing under false pretenses. Does
               | playing by the rules of BSG or Saboteur guarantee a loss
               | for the team that by the rules should be winning?
               | 
               | The analogy would be appropriate if BSG was a competitive
               | space fleet management game and some players decide in
               | advance to make it a meta-game to join and sabotage each
               | fleet without telling anyone of their intentions, leaving
               | everyone else playing the "fake" game while they at the
               | end reveal the "real" game and that whoever lost the real
               | game actually won and vice versa.
        
               | yreg wrote:
               | These are camps for adults and the activity was not
               | scored. Playing by the rules didn't guarantee a loss --
               | there were no winners or loosers among the non-traitors.
               | 
               | I think the major issue that sets the game apart from the
               | mentioned board games is that players don't know there
               | might be traitors. OTOH it's impossible to have the board
               | game that way, since it would only work the first time it
               | is played. However, the D&D campaigns are the same as our
               | game in this regard.
               | 
               | Anyway, the game wasn't all bad, some teams told us that
               | they had a great time and found it an interesting and
               | uncommon experience. But since too many people struggled
               | with it we've decided to not run it again.
        
         | rpaddock wrote:
         | Sounds like an Aerobie?
         | 
         | The inventor, when it was a new things years ago, submitted it
         | to a Paper Airplane contest. The contests disqualified him
         | because it was not an "Airplane".
         | 
         | He argued A) It s made of paper (Cardboard from a Pizza Box),
         | B) it flew (for very long distances), therefore it is a Paper
         | Airplane. QED
         | 
         | From experience I can tell you that A) They are attracted to
         | trees, B) They swim like bricks (lost my first one in the first
         | half hour to the local creek), C) They are very sensitive to
         | thermal gradients. You can watch it ride up and over the finger
         | tips of whomever you are playing with so it is just out of
         | their reach. D) You need football size field, at a minimum, to
         | paly with these.
         | 
         | https://aerobie.com/en_us#our-story
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | worthless-trash wrote:
         | Sounds so scooby do, I love it.
        
       | mgdlbp wrote:
       | My friends and I could never get any of the pointy darts to work
       | with a hard throw--they never had the right balance not to loop
       | or nosedive at high speed. What we settled on as the most
       | satisfying to hurl is this design (found online widely under this
       | name; requires letter proportion paper):
       | https://www.instructables.com/The-Hammer-Paper-Airplane/
       | 
       | Carefully made, it flies straight when yeeted without trimming,
       | and the blunt nose handles landings without damage. I surmise
       | that the fold along the entire edge of the wing contributes to
       | high-speed performance by preventing the trailing edge from
       | fluttering. Could this also be why the world record designs tend
       | to have winglets?
       | 
       | A design that's amusing to experiment with is the most
       | minimalistic glider, made with a heavy roll-fold of the leading
       | edge of the paper and three parallel folds forming the wings and
       | fuselage.[1] The parameters being length & number of folds and
       | camber of the wings, it can be tuned to manage a hard throw
       | straight before stalling and leveling out to a long flight in
       | phugoid motion.
       | 
       | Flying rings are interesting, too. The rotationally symmetrical
       | type formed from only a roll fold and tape (purity
       | notwithstanding) are similarly minimalistic
       | 
       | [1] like this without the winglets, thus a case against my theory
       | of wing support: https://www.origamiway.com/plane-spy-plane.shtml
        
       | carapace wrote:
       | One of the finest paper airplanes is the origami design of Prof.
       | James M. Sakoda of Brown University "winner of the origami award
       | in the First Inernational Paper Airplane Contest" in 1967 and
       | published in "The Great International Paper Airplane Book" (Jerry
       | Mander, George Dippel, Howard Gossage)
       | 
       | https://i.imgur.com/Kv94Glf.png
        
         | JKCalhoun wrote:
         | Yes, that is perhaps my favorite. It always reminded me of the
         | Orion space clipper in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey".
        
           | MrPoush wrote:
           | Did a fascination with paper airplanes inspire Glider, or was
           | it just a happy coincidence?
        
             | JKCalhoun wrote:
             | Oh, definitely related. My single mom was a "secretary" and
             | occasionally brought home typing paper for me to amuse
             | myself with. I drew a lot of pictures, made a lot of paper
             | airplanes. :-)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | offsky wrote:
       | Author of the website here. Always fun to see my site pop up in
       | my own news feed.
       | 
       | Happy to answer any questions.
        
       | mg wrote:
       | My favorite paper plane is the one that is explained starting at
       | 03:00 here:
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BNg4fDJC8A
       | 
       | Out of all paper planes I tried, it has the best flying
       | capabilities by far.
       | 
       | Form and function really come together in this one. It looks
       | beautifully simple and elegant. And that's also how it flies.
       | When you throw it from a rooftop, you are in for quite a show. It
       | often flies loooong smooth circles. If you are lucky with the
       | wind, it can stay in the air quite a while.
       | 
       | I do not use A4 paper though. I prefer A5, which is half the size
       | of A4. I usually tear an A4 into two equal halves and use one of
       | them.
       | 
       | I also do not do the crease at 04:18. Without it, the paper plane
       | is even more beautiful, because you can put it on a flat surface
       | and it stands on its own.
        
         | navane wrote:
         | Wow, after the first two folds, this plane really folds itself.
         | 
         | The first fold is at 22.5 degrees, which makes all further
         | folds have alignment with the base of the plane.
         | 
         | My entire life i was folding a plane that starts with two
         | classic 45 degrees, then a 90 degree fold of the top 2/5th of
         | the paper, again 45 degrees tip, hook in the little triangle.
         | Fold over symmetry line and add wings however you want them.
         | It's quite similar with hooking in the tip (the 04:18 crease),
         | but not nearly as elegant to fold. It is capable of doing a
         | looping, and is otherwise a decent flyer.
         | 
         | Curious about yours though, can't try it out here as I'm in the
         | office.
        
           | mg wrote:
           | Yes, it's cool how logical all the creases are. The first two
           | align with the border of the paper. All other creases align
           | with previous creases.
        
         | mgdlbp wrote:
         | The Nakamura Lock, a schoolyard classic worldwide. It has a
         | name, but no apparent origin; an Eiji Nakamura did publish a
         | book _Flying Origami_ in 1972, but no such plane can be found
         | within.
         | 
         | The only source I can find is a Reddit comment stating that the
         | design is named after Nakamura for having invented the type of
         | fold that holds the plane together (https://redd.it/j2yjsd)
        
           | navane wrote:
           | He is not folding the Nakamura lock, as far as my googling
           | goes. The nakamura lock starts with a perfect 90 degrees tip
           | (two 45 degree folds), whereas OP starts with two 22.5 degree
           | folds that don't form a a tip).
        
       | bdg wrote:
       | As a kid I had a great book with lots of science experiments in
       | it called "Science Is" (Author: Susan V. Bosak)
       | 
       | It had an entire section on airplanes but there was one that
       | absolutely destroyed my intuition about flight and to this day
       | confuses adults whenever I get the chance to make it (something
       | like a team building event where we need to make paper
       | airplanes).
       | 
       | It's literally two hoops of paper and a stick. Here's a page I
       | found with the design.
       | 
       | https://www.exploratorium.edu/science_explorer/hoopster.html
        
         | JKCalhoun wrote:
         | The two rings + stick design was also in "The Great
         | International Paper Airplane Book":
         | http://www.codex99.com/design/images/airplane/18_lg.jpg
        
           | aidenn0 wrote:
           | That's two annular wings
           | 
           | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_wing
        
         | shard wrote:
         | It's not clear from the webpage, but does it do something
         | different from a paper airplane with just 1 hoop like this?
         | https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/teach/activity/ring-wing-glider...
        
           | JKCalhoun wrote:
           | I would make variations of those ring gliders from an
           | aluminum coke cans cut down to half-height, something heavy
           | like dict tape on the leading edge to provide weight.
           | 
           | You throw them fast and underhanded imparting a bit of spin
           | -- they'll sail across a gymnasium.
        
         | jhanschoo wrote:
         | Let me guess how this works: from the nose view, the paper
         | strips being at one side cause the stick to angle toward it,
         | since the center of mass is close to the stick than the center
         | of the drag force due to the stick's relatively small cross
         | section for its mass. This causes the craft to keep pitching
         | up. In addition, the same difference in cross sections between
         | the hoops and the the stick from the plan view give it roll
         | stability. Meanwhile, the larger hoop being at the back causes
         | more drag, giving it yaw stability.
        
         | swagasaurus-rex wrote:
         | The French C.450 Coleoptere had a cylinder wing which provided
         | plenty of lift:
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unz6mfjS4ws
        
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