[HN Gopher] Paper Airplane Designs
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Paper Airplane Designs
Author : thunderbong
Score : 636 points
Date : 2023-05-26 17:48 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.foldnfly.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.foldnfly.com)
| furyofantares wrote:
| As a kid I just did what they call Basic Dart over and over
| again. https://www.foldnfly.com/1.html#Basic-Dart
|
| I was simply not open to any design that didn't look like a jet!
| noobcoder wrote:
| is there a way to query it?
| coin wrote:
| Many of those are from the classic Great International Paper
| Airplane Book published in 1967.
| carapace wrote:
| FWIW, the site presents a _variation_ of the origami design of
| Prof. James M. Sakoda of Brown University "winner of the
| origami award in the First International Paper Airplane
| Contest" in 1967 as published in that book.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Very cool. I always upvote anything about paper airplanes, ha ha.
|
| Many, many hours of my youth were spent making paper airplanes
| and flying them. I also enjoyed modifying designs with my own
| embellishments to see if my changes were improvements or no.
|
| Perhaps after catching "The Birdmen" (1971) on TV I became
| obsessed with building catapult-like paper airplane launchers
| using thread, paper clips and weights to drag the airplanes along
| the length of the kitchen table and send them sailing off the
| end.
|
| I think part of this was due to a lack of toys to entertain
| myself with (my sister and I, growing up with a single mother who
| worked as a secretary -- she stole office products so that I was
| kept in letter-size paper, pencils, pens). Perhaps too there were
| a lot of those months spent indoors in the either too-cold or
| too-hot/humid Midwest.
| riansanderson wrote:
| One of my favorite gifts for kids in the 6-12 year old range is
| the [Klutz Book of Paper Airplanes](https://a.co/d/2dscUDL)
|
| It's a great kick start for kids to inspire their inner maker. It
| has just ten designs, well laid out with good instructions.
| jhanschoo wrote:
| My childhood interest in paper airplanes was completely fuelled
| by the excellent https://archive.org/details/PAPERAIR , which you
| can now find on the Internet Archive by the link! The emulation
| is imperfect, though.
| amelius wrote:
| Is this for Letter or A4 (series) paper sizes?
| okl wrote:
| I had a book around the turn of the century with paper airplane
| folding instructions. Lazily, I stuck to the simple ones and my
| favourite was called "Phoenix". Could not find it on this page
| but searching for the book I found a video where the author
| demonstrates: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2V55rc58cDg
| akramer wrote:
| The book you're thinking of is called "the gliding flight" and
| is my favorite paper airplane book.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Gliding-Flight-Paper-Make-Original-Ai...
| sumtechguy wrote:
| whenever a discussion like this comes up I try to recommend
| this book
|
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671555510
|
| Not as simple as the one in that vid. But a decent selection of
| them.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Look up whitewings
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| I have an unused set of the original vintage kits. There are
| quite a number of loop wing and asymmetric ones. These are more
| advanced than paper airplanes.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| Spent a lot of time throwing paper rings:
| https://www.10paperairplanes.com/how-to-make-paper-airplanes...
|
| you get some really good distance if you throw it like a
| (american) football, managed to clear a couple city blocks once,
| thrown on a hot dry day from a high floor at school...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Those are cool.
|
| Because I am unsafe, I started making them from aluminum cans
| with the top/bottom cut off. Some strips of duct tape along one
| of the edges balances it (and so defines your leading edge).
|
| The right wrist action was needed but you could send them
| sailing across an auditorium to clatter against the far wall.
| jtr1 wrote:
| I spent a very fun holiday break methodically working through
| these with my nephew and documenting how far we could get them to
| fly. Big takeaway is that simpler is better and the classics are
| classic for a reason!
| hk1337 wrote:
| Put this in the list of things I didn't know I needed.
| ranting-moth wrote:
| Another brilliant site is "Toys from Trash":
| https://www.arvindguptatoys.com/toys.html
|
| A whole bunch of fun things you can make with stuff lying around.
| mg wrote:
| I tried a lot of paper plane designs and this one is by far the
| most elegant design _and_ the best flying plane I found so far:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDiC9iMcWTc
|
| The simple flight path in the video does not relly do it justice.
| When you throw it outside, it will have a beautiful loooong
| curved flight. When there is some wind, it often goes to explore
| the sky for quite a while before it comes back down again.
|
| If anybody knows a design that can compete with this one, I would
| be _very_ interested to try it!
| nielsbot wrote:
| That's a great one. (The "Suzanne") Wired covered it a few
| years ago. Simple enough my 7 year old son can do a credible
| job of folding it.
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/learn-how-to-fold-a-world-record...
| mysterydip wrote:
| Something I've been curious about, are there paper airplane
| designs that translate to usable full scale designs? If not, why
| not?
| amenghra wrote:
| (disclaimer: not an aeronautic engineer) when you double an
| object, its weight increases by 8x (all three dimensions
| increase by 2x) but the wing area surface only becomes 4x
| larger. You thus end up with a worse lift-to-weight ratio.
|
| In addition, the purpose of a regular plane is to transport
| goods and people while the purpose of a paper plane is to just
| float. The closest full scale objects to a paper plane would be
| gliders, which do ressemble paper-planes to some extent.
| mysterydip wrote:
| makes sense, thanks!
| cvg wrote:
| This is cool. If you're wondering about top performers:
|
| Longest Distance: https://www.foldnfly.com/32.html#The-Bird
| Longest Time Aloft: https://www.foldnfly.com/43.html#Stealth-
| Glider
| T3RMINATED wrote:
| [dead]
| cpayne624 wrote:
| Love it. My 8 y/o is stoked to use up all of daddy's printer
| paper on designs :)
| tysam_and wrote:
| I made hundreds of paper airplanes as a kid.
|
| This design scheme was consistently among the best (not on the
| website above directly): http://www.10paperairplanes.com/how-to-
| make-paper-airplanes/...
|
| You could also just do what I did and just fold only the top over
| itself, and use a bit of the back wing for the winglets, folded
| out. Tiny, tiny grip, enough to hold, deeper in the back than the
| front for stability, tiny y in the wings and winglets going out
| slightly. The wings need to make a y when you drop it in the air
| (you can simulate this while holding this so you don't mess up
| your shot at a perfect first flight!). Make sure to fold the
| front extraordinarily tightly. Otherwise it starts to tank.
|
| Then it's a matter of how hard you launch it. As a child, I was
| getting shockingly long flight times, and on those special days
| where there was a breeze...oh boy. What a world.
|
| Super stable, super easy to make, super easy to teach, the
| hardest part is the arm, the patience to keep trying, the luck
| that it doesn't catch in a tree, and the patience to adjust the
| winglets for a nice little spiral.
|
| A lovely part of my engineering days as a child, definitely
| helped get the creative juices going for this field! I had a
| white trash bag at one point with all of these novel little
| designs I came up with just for funsies. :)))) :D :)))) <3
| roqi wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. You made me make my first paper airplane in
| years. Oh joy.
| tysam_and wrote:
| Oh my gosh, no way. You have no idea how much you just made
| this stranger's day. Thanks so much, dear! <3 :)))) :D :) :)
| <3
|
| If you have trouble with flight time, you might enjoy having
| some flaps on the back too. Just ever so slight, almost
| little bumps that you'd push up subtly with your thumb in the
| back. If you do it perfectly, it just sails, almost sitting
| on the air itself. Too strong and it does little swoopy up
| and downs, too little and it goes straight down.
|
| I'd ask you to send pics of your creation but I guess this is
| the Hacker News comments section! Super proud of you either
| way, dear! <3 :)))) :D :)
| tysam_and wrote:
| Well, I just went outside and had a ton of fun for 30
| minutes or so with a paper airplane outside of my
| neighborhood's tennis courts. I forgot how hard elevator
| tuning was, as well as the apparent unfavorability of the
| wind sometimes (and how hard it hurts to really chuck
| something). Super sweaty and happy now, thank you for
| encouraging _me_ in turn to go out and build a paper
| airplane for the first time in years. Total blast! Thanks
| again! <3 :)))) :D :)
| dang wrote:
| We changed the url from https://www.foldnfly.com/lounge/national-
| paper-airplane-day.... to the home page, which is a better match
| for the title.
| thunderbong wrote:
| I should have titled it 'National Paper Airplane Day'!
| lbotos wrote:
| If you'll accept one piece of tape (not totally needed but does
| help) one of my favorite designs is the tube. Super easy to make,
| flies decently well, and surprises most people:
| https://www.instructables.com/The-Incredible-Flying-Paper-Tu...
| hackernewds wrote:
| Unacceptable!
| drewtato wrote:
| There's 48 designs, so this isn't much of a database, more like a
| short list. For something completely different, my favorite
| collection of paper planes are those by Jayson Merrill:
| https://www.youtube.com/@jayson5674 They're the most complex
| planes I've seen under the restrictions of no cuts and no
| adhesive. Here's a good one:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-n6NAbJduk
| doublepg23 wrote:
| The fact we have YouTube channels for people making paper
| airplanes, eating MREs and reviewing junk MP3 players is what
| keeps me optimistic of the Internet.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Paper Airplane Designs (2013)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32134691 - July 2022 (96
| comments)
|
| _Paper Airplane Designs_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29466325 - Dec 2021 (8
| comments)
|
| _Wake Turbulence from a Paper Airplane (2020) [video]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27137827 - May 2021 (29
| 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)
|
| _Designing, folding, and flying the finest paper airplanes
| [video]_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16784941 - April
| 2018 (11 comments)
|
| _Learn How to Fold a World-Record-Setting Paper Airplane_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16715728 - March 2018 (14
| comments)
|
| _Real Paper Airplane Designs_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12632253 - Oct 2016 (1
| comment)
|
| _The best paper airplane in the world_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=420523 - Jan 2009 (30
| comments)
| standardly wrote:
| My cousin and I were particularly destructive children and used
| to build paper airplanes and fly them up into the ceiling fan.
| Sometimes they'd get caught on a blade and come flying off. Was
| playing a lot of Starfox 64 at the time, so we imagined we were
| attacking a boss. We'd try and see how many attacks we could get
| in before our plane was completely mangled and wouldn't fly
| anymore. Good times.
|
| Another destructive game we used to play was lighting army men on
| fire and fusing their melted plastic bodies together to create a
| zombie army of plastic amalgamations. Half-green, half-tan
| grenadiers with bazookas for a heads, etc. God bless America!
| timbeccue wrote:
| Hah, I flew planes into ceiling fans too! I also remember
| scraping my planes against the floor until holes wore into the
| paper, and seeing how well they could continue flying. There
| was something really cool about seeing a plane with so much
| accumulated damage still able to fly.
| Fell wrote:
| When I was little (about 20 years ago) I found a website where
| you could download sheets to print out. They contained parts to
| cut out that would make an elaborate little glider airplane. You
| layered multiple layers of paper together and glued them. It
| included many different parts, but all of them were just paper in
| the end of the day.
|
| I think the site is gone, I can't find it anymore. It had a blue
| background and about 10-20 designs available for download. It was
| either German, Swiss, Austrian, Italian or French, but I'm pretty
| sure it had multiple Languages.
|
| Anyways, I found something very similar:
| http://www.zovirl.com/paper-airplanes/
| amelius wrote:
| Kinda disappointed that the instruction video doesn't show the
| plane flying.
|
| Yeah, I know, the internet made me lazy.
| yabones wrote:
| I'm surprised they don't have the "lock fold" or "Nakamura Lock"
| design. When I was younger, that was the most consistent design
| for a _good_ plane. Not always the best, but never the worst.
| Somebody talented could fold up a dart to beat it on distance, or
| a glider to stay up longer, but everybody could make a decent
| "lock fold".
|
| https://origamimag.com/nakamura-lock-paper-airplane/
| andrewflnr wrote:
| This one doesn't cut it? https://www.foldnfly.com/2.html#The-
| Stable Granted, they fold the wings a really weird/ugly way.
| Also this variant for some reason:
| https://www.foldnfly.com/29.html#Lock-Bottom-Plane
|
| That's not even the kind of lock I expected. It's possible to
| design a plane so once the wings are folded down, the fuselage
| is locked in a tightly folded position. I don't have a good
| online reference at the moment...
| vasvir wrote:
| I agree. I didn't know it had a name. Thanks for it.
|
| Also plus points. 1) It was easy to remember how to fold it. 2)
| It had good structural resistance and could withstand several
| flights and bumps. 3) It provided the first lesson in
| aeronautical engineering i.e. you could slightly tilt the one
| or the other wing in order to make flight behavior corrections.
|
| My real love was one model that I didn't know how to make. An
| older cousin did. It was a tailed design. Best Flight Ever...
| See, when you are 5 it is easy to impress!
| markdown wrote:
| This is the only plane design made in my country. Every kid
| makes these.
| xattt wrote:
| For the longest time, I thought this was the only kind of paper
| airplane and that other designs were just for kids who didn't
| know how to fold.
| asteroidz wrote:
| [dead]
| takoid wrote:
| This is the exact same design I used in middle school to win a
| paper airplane competition! It is called "The Moth" on the
| website I found it on back in the day:
| https://www.10paperairplanes.com/how-to-make-paper-
| airplanes.... I still remember how to make it to this day.
| tommywiseausmom wrote:
| [flagged]
| felipesabino wrote:
| It has been a while that I try to find the design for this type
| of paper plane [1] that glides so smoothly and allows you to
| guide it.
|
| I am not even sure how to search for it, even with this database
| in hands
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/UVUQC_yZe_Y
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Filter by "Time Aloft" [1]. I did and don't see the specific
| plane in the YT video (they certainly don't have every airplane
| in their database).
|
| Search for Walkalong Glider [2] to find what you want.
|
| [1] https://www.foldnfly.com/#/0-1-0-0-1-1-1-1-2
|
| [2]
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=walkalong+glide...
| felipesabino wrote:
| "Walkalong Glider", uow, I didn't even know the term to look
| for, thanks!
| lelanthran wrote:
| Honestly it looks like it is flying solely on the thermals from
| his breath.
|
| Still pretty cool though :-)
| voynich wrote:
| Glad to see that paper airplane culture is still alive, haha. I
| was looking forward to this day for a while!
| m463 wrote:
| Many years as a kid were spent reading through this old book my
| father had:
|
| The Great International Paper Airplane Book
|
| https://archive.org/details/greatinternation00mandrich
| caboteria wrote:
| When I was 10 or 11 years old I won a mai-tai cocktail in a
| paper airplane contest at Club Med. I used the helicopter from
| this book!
| cwilkes wrote:
| Hah! Me too. Fond memories.
| euroderf wrote:
| The origami winner never fails to impress laymen.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Paper Plane:
|
| - 1oz Amaro Nonino
|
| - 1oz Aperol
|
| - 1oz bourbon
|
| - 1oz lemon juice
|
| shake with ice, strain to a chilled coupe glass.
| swarnie wrote:
| A very short one and done drink by the sounds of it.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| I appreciated OpenWRT's prior release naming system which
| included cocktail recipes in the Message of the Day (MOTD) http
| s://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenWrt#:~:text=OpenWrt%20rele....
| whoisthis4chan wrote:
| the lock-bottom plane used to be my bread & butter in elementary
| school
| ktm5j wrote:
| I think it's really cute how they handled the case if the user
| unchecks all of either the "Type" or "Difficulty" filters hehe
| duxup wrote:
| I like the implication that there was a goof on someone's part.
|
| I get a lot of "yeah but what if they do something like search
| for things that don't exist" (or similar situations) and some
| weird ideas follow about how they user gets confused and the
| software is supposed to solve all "user behaves illogically"
| problems and we get some really strange solutions that makes
| the software even more unpredictable.
|
| Like no man, search for nothing is "yo you goofed and searched
| for nothing".
|
| /rant
| HiroProtagonist wrote:
| Same, thank you for mentioning it elsewise I would never have
| seen it.
| ranting-moth wrote:
| Hey, I've made quite a few of those. They fly pretty decent if
| you aim at something irritating and throw it in a fit of rage.
| gl-prod wrote:
| And the `kids mode` toggling
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I wonder if they've tested that one against conventional
| designs. Depending on how well you compress the ball, it might
| well be very competitive for distance.
| selecsosi wrote:
| One of my favorite research projects on the subject. This
| research publication from the 2014 siggraph conference covers a
| ML backed design optimization approach to design novel paper
| airplanes designs, and simulate flight paths.
|
| [Research]: http://www.nobuyuki-
| umetani.com/publication/2014_sigg_pterom...
|
| [Video]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KJUVJAUY8o
| rekoros wrote:
| When I was pretty young - maybe six - I spent about a month at a
| hospital in the USSR. I don't know why I was there
| (observation?), and it's not be point - the point is, while
| there, slightly older patients taught me how to fold beautiful
| paper airplanes, with unbelievable aerodynamic properties - I
| mean those things could fly.
|
| Many years later, I was taking an aerodynamics course at Embry-
| Riddle Aeronautical University taught by Bob Sweginnis (died in
| plane crash, while practicing aerobatics), who dedicated an
| entire class to a paper airplane contest. The winning criteria
| was "plane that stays in the air the longest wins".
|
| My plane came in second - I designed it to make an easy curve
| through the bungalow to maximise air time, and Bob Sweginnis did
| an excellent job launching it. He stopped the timer when my plane
| hit the wall of the bungalow, with plenty of altitude to spare.
|
| The winner? A sheet of paper, basically, that pendulumed to the
| green carpet in a swinging motion, like a leaf, about a second
| slower than it took my Mona Lisa to commit suicide.
| shanewwarren wrote:
| That's great! Reminds me of elementary school when I was in
| "gifted and talented... " program. We did a similar experiment.
| Each kid had some ornate paper airplane, but my simple design
| won out.
| garashovb wrote:
| My dad studied aviation in USSR between 1980-83 while my
| country was part of USSR. He also had amazing skills in
| aerodynamics and making paper planes. I guess USSR aviation
| schools were pretty good that times. Dad's school now
| http://kkluga.ru/
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(page generated 2023-05-27 23:01 UTC)