Paper airplane designs

[alexander]

So, just wondering if any of you guys ever get bored and decide to come up with paper airplane designs... if you do, i would like to see what you have come up with, and i will share some of my creations, hey, maybe something really neat can come out of this

Now, i use the following rules for all of my designs:
1 Letter-size sheet of paper
3 inches of 1 inch wide tape

allowed use of scissors, but you must use the whole sheet of paper.

hope you guys enjoy this challenge when you are bored as much as i do, and you don't have to be a kid, this is not simple try and error, for me, it's a challenge to put what i read about avionics, into possible designs that sometimes fly pretty well (some fail, infact most do, sometimes pretty badly )

[CraigD]

Here’s one from a single sheet of standard letter size printer paper, torn by hand, no tools or tape used.

All dimensions by guess. 1 test flight to set trim, another showing the need for the small vertical stabilizers on the main wingtips. Trail flew once just now, wind under 2 m/s and random-ish, from a height of about 2.5 m, released at about normal flying speed. Flew straight, about 19 m (all the way to into the street), for a glide ratio of about 7.6:1

My favorite paper airplanes look much like full size ones. This one has a canard (main wing to the rear) wing configuration, with a relatively large canard and a moderately low aspect ratio main wing, a configuration that lends itself to stability. A high aspect ratio (long and narrow) main wing with the smallest possible canard can have a better glide ratio (I’ve managed over 20:1) but are less stable, especially in gusty outdoor conditions.

Tape, or course, improves their performance. White glue, including a coating sanded and wax polished, improves it even more, but begins to border on the silly, as with that much work, you might as well forgo paper and use wood, foam, glass and carbon fiber and epoxy resin coats.

Apologies for the awful lighting of my hasty cellphone cam shot.

[alexander]

Very cool, yes, i tend to make paper planes that look closer to gliders, though i have a huge problem with exactness, since i am only making test models (i've made quite a few), i find them hard to fly past one-two tests, and sometimes something that looks pretty promissing can turn out to be something that does not work at all. my biggest problem is that my planes seem to generate too much vertical lift or the trim is out of wack they end up going straight, then sharply turning up, then running out of speed and yeah plummeting down or doing a loop, stalling, crashing, either way...

i was playing with a 2-winged design yesterday, it did not seem to work all that well though, unless it was a big wing in the front and a much smaller wing in the back.

my planes suffer 2 major problems i am working out:
ballancing, it is important to have enough weight in front of the wing apparently, and this limits my designs by either having to have two big wings in front and back, or making my plane in a way that will make the center of the wing, the center of ballance of the plane
control, it seems that without striding to make a precise plane, having control over it is crucial, so yes, i will have to figure better control

here is one of my later designs, yet another one that's going in the trash for now

[alexander]

actually, talking about more realistic stuff, this is so far the better flying design i have

uses about an inch and a half of tape btw (mostly to affix the wing)

[alexander]

first seemingly successful canard design for me here, this one glides pretty well, at least in my short-range shots, though i have not long range tested it yet, hopefully the picture here provides enough info for you to build one and try it, please notice the slanted fold of the front wings here, it does seem to make a difference in the way it flies (everything eye balled but yes i did use scissors and since the 2 inside folds of the front wings did not hold all that well, i taped them on the inside of the center fold, to the center (very little tape needed)

[alexander]

seems to have problems with higher speeds... gotta solve that, modifying design a bit...

[Techstuf]

Check 'em out, guys.......hope you like what you see:

Search 'Metaninja' in the channels tab on metacafe and check out my paper planes.

Peace,


TS

[alexander]

quite excellent videos, i might give a couple of those a go, i am currently working on a reverse swept wing design myself. I dont get them to the perfection those vids show but i am the experimenting around type of guy myself

[Techstuf]

Glad you like them.....I'm curious to see how any paper plane can be made to fly with stability using a reverse swept wing!


TS

[nuker2guy]

here is my design, I got ideas from the best paper airplaine as well as many others. It suprisingly flies very well. I will probably post a vid soon.
its at photobucket dot com and slash nuker2guy