Hi, my name is Bryan Yerks. I am fifteen years old and I like to play with things that fly, rockets model airplanes and paper airplanes. I have thought about making very small paper air planes before to try and get them in side model rockets to get very high. what I came up with was a very small glider that was to fragile to do any thing but glide. I tried many designs and found that a hang glider shape worked best. While I was fling my kite, I noticed the airfoil created when it flew and decided to test these little airplanes out with this airfoil shape. WOW!! they glided so smoothly and so well I lost countless numbers of them in thermals. the most recent ones I make uses a hot glue gun to hold the wings on. using the glue gun allowed me to put a vertical stabilizer on it improving its performance even more. The best ones can glide over twenty feet when launched by hand standing up on the floor. ( I am about 5.5 feet tall) I am getting disappointed because I can not get them to go high and glide down like your world record plane dose. I would appreciate it if you could help me get altitude on these babies!
I hope you will try and make one of these. They are a lot of fun to play around the house with. You can make them turn in circles by the tail, or by differentiating the airfoil by making one side more or less than the other side. You can also make the plane pitch up or down by adding more air foil or less airfoil.
You make the airfoil by taking one side of the wing and running your thumb and forefinger along the front edge of the wing in a curling motion. You cut the wings out by folding a piece of paper in half and cutting half of the wing out.
Bryan Yerks
P.S. They are very sensitive to any adjustments. Cobwebs and humidity are its worst enemy!