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Paper Airplane Designs

foldnfly.com

41–50 of 218 posts

Re: Paper Airplane Designs

#41
Imagine my surprise when I'm reading down the HN list like I do every day and I stumble upon my own website. Thats a pretty cool feeling! Im happy to answer any questions people may have. This was my Angular learning project back when Angular just came out. I think Angular ended up being the wrong choice for this project, but it works and I learned Angular, so its all good.

Re: Paper Airplane Designs

#42
I actually "invented" another paper airplane design called the Nakamura Hammer (because it combines the designs of the nakamura lock and the hammer). I made it to the frontpage of Reddit, so that were my 15 minutes of fame. Here's the tutorial

https://imgur.com/gallery/b2Q8X

It flies really really well inside.

Re: Paper Airplane Designs

#43
In high school we used to receive printed notices aka 'circulars' from administration to give our parents (do they still do this?) -- our classroom window overlooked a cabin used for temporary classes with a corrugated asbestos roof. After promptly turning my circular into a plane and flying it out the window, exclaiming "hey i got to the 5th row on the cabin roof!"

Thus began the hottest aerodynamics contest in my academic life, we experimented with so many designs, tried all kinds of crazy modifications.

The interesting thing was, our classroom window was an entire story higher than the cabin roof -- the usual "paper plane contest hack" of rolling a paper ball and chucking it as hard as you can was not very good compared to a functional aerodynamic design with some lift.

The "contest" ended when a week later someone reported our antics and the school was aghast to find 40-odd paper planes roosting on the portacabin roof and our entire class was given some stern warnings but luckily noone sold me out as the instigator.

Re: Paper Airplane Designs

#44
post #41

Imagine my surprise when I'm reading down the HN list like I do every day and I stumble upon my own website. Thats a pretty cool feeling! Im happy to answer any questions people may have. This was my Angular learning project back when Angular just came out. I think Angular ended up being the wrong choice for this project, but it works and I learned Angular, so its all good.

Which one flies furthest? (I can narrow down by category, but not sort).

Re: Paper Airplane Designs

#45

In the 90's I went to a small middle school, the 8th grade class was 21 people. Once, the school had a contest in the indoor gym, we each designed paper planes and the one who flew it the farthest won a prize. We argued with teachers over an allowance for a little bit of tape, which some of us used just as nose weight. However, each kid was the one to "fly" his own plane, a big oversight. Almost the last kid, when it…

I did the same in elementary school, I made my own plane design after many iterations of a/b testing. It won pretty much every airplane contest. No tape, pennies, or paperclips needed, they actually reduced the overall distance if the center of mass was too close to the tip. When thrown you had to keep the wings folded down unlike a traditional plane. Basically I made a dart. You didn't have to be good at throwing ei…

I'm interested! Maybe you could document it (drawing, video, whatever)?

Re: Paper Airplane Designs

#46
post #37
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar story from a university aero course that ended with a paper airplane competition. There were some remarkable paper airplanes, making amazing flights, all sorts of research and time went into developing the ideal model. One guy comes up representing his team and he gets out a piece of rolling paper and a lighter. Tears the tiniest portion off the rolling paper, sets it alight, and then follows it with his fing…

> follows it with his finger through the air as it took forever to land on the ground. Sounds interesting, but I'm confused. So is he walking in front of it, and the flame is pulled toward his finger? Did it travel the farthest that way?

No, apologies. He burnt the paper and then picked one of the ashes as his "plane"

His finger never touched the plane after it took "flight" just pointed to it from the side so that everyone could follow the "flight path."

Some classmates were upset, I was just impressed.

Re: Paper Airplane Designs

#47
post #41

Imagine my surprise when I'm reading down the HN list like I do every day and I stumble upon my own website. Thats a pretty cool feeling! Im happy to answer any questions people may have. This was my Angular learning project back when Angular just came out. I think Angular ended up being the wrong choice for this project, but it works and I learned Angular, so its all good.

This is such an awesome project :)

Re: Paper Airplane Designs

#48
post #37
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar story from a university aero course that ended with a paper airplane competition. There were some remarkable paper airplanes, making amazing flights, all sorts of research and time went into developing the ideal model. One guy comes up representing his team and he gets out a piece of rolling paper and a lighter. Tears the tiniest portion off the rolling paper, sets it alight, and then follows it with his fing…

> follows it with his finger through the air as it took forever to land on the ground. Sounds interesting, but I'm confused. So is he walking in front of it, and the flame is pulled toward his finger? Did it travel the farthest that way?

[deleted]

Re: Paper Airplane Designs

#49
post #41

Imagine my surprise when I'm reading down the HN list like I do every day and I stumble upon my own website. Thats a pretty cool feeling! Im happy to answer any questions people may have. This was my Angular learning project back when Angular just came out. I think Angular ended up being the wrong choice for this project, but it works and I learned Angular, so its all good.

I have had this bookmarked on my phone for years, so I can pull it up every time one of my kids asks me to make one. :)

Re: Paper Airplane Designs

#50
post #34

Suprisingly enough, this collection doesn't seem have the design most common & popular in Russia, roughly this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrsxMqvHXkw .

That's the de-facto design I used as a kid growing up in the US.
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