Help me design a paper airplane!

[ShockSlayer]

Requirements:
Must glide far from a high place
human powered

Ok, GO!

I need this for a school project in physical science.

We get a prize.

SS

[Valium]

Heavy front, wide wings.

[bicostp]

Start with normal letter paper. Fold a normal dart, but before you fold it back in half and do the wings, fold about an inch and a half of the nose in. Now fold up the wings, leaving about 3/4 of an inch of fuselage. Now fold a bit of the ends of the wings up so you have two stabilizers that are parallel to the fuselage. Now staple the nose together, and put a small piece of scotch tape on the top layer of the wings (the diagonal part) to keep them together. Go over all the creases with your fingernail or a coin to make them sharper. You can use a large paper clip on the fuselage to balance it, and don't be afraid to curl the backs of the wings a little. I also like to staple the very back of the fuselage to help balance the weight of the front staple and keep the plane together.

I've had good success with this plane (it's gone over 150' from a straight, ground-level, standing throw before). Once you get it going straight it flies until it runs out of room or altitude. Maybe tomorrow I can get a picture of it. (It's also great for throwing outside because it generally doesn't get caught up in trees.) The stabilizers help keep it on a straight path, and generally stop it from going into a tail spin if it stalls. (This gives the wings a chance to get some life back and possibly recover from the stall.) I've found it works as well as planes folded from big paper, which generally start getting floppy and unstable, or use up all their forward momentum, stop, and nose-dive to the ground.

Alternately, you can use fairly large paper like legal or A4 or even a desk calendar page. I haven't tried any of those but in theory it should work. Just make sure the wings are stable. (Floppy wings != good.)

Oh, if your plane has taken a few too many nose-dives but the wings are tuned just right, cut a strip of thin cardboard (like a cereal box) and stick it in the fuselage. I've salvaged a couple prototype gliders I forgot how I made this way. (But once those get really banged up I take them apart and reverse-engineer them.)

Can you tell I used to make a lot of these?

EDIT: You can make the front end last more crashes if you cut the front tip of the fuselage at an angle and put a few layers of tape over it. The flat area distributes the crash force better, and tends to make the plane skip forward on smoother surfaces like gym floors and pavement, further reducing the impact's blow.)

EDIT 2: Also, feel free to add paper clips to the fuselage to add weight. Sometimes you need to add weight to this plane so it doesn't stall and flutter or nosedive to the ground.

[Kurt_]

http://www.google.ca/search?client=fire ... gle+Search

It is a distance champion, having won two consecutive paper airplane contests in the early 1970's. Up until now, I have been very careful in guarding the design and construction details of the OmniWing. Only a couple of trusted friends have ever had access to the design. But the secrecy is over. I do not want to go to my grave without passing on this exquisite design.

http://www.omniwing.com/

[ShockSlayer]

I'll do both!

SS