Make Paper Airplane Tips

Would you like to design and make paper airplane yourself ? Here are some essential and useful tips about designing and making your own paper airplane.



Tips for Straight and Stable Flight
1.

Design the paper plane to be heavier at the nose.

This helps to ensure forward Center of Gravity (CG) to prevent the paper plane from stalling in the air.

This can be done using the following techniques : Make multiple folds at the front of the paper airplane.

This technique was used by Ken Blackburn in his world record paper airplane.

Clip the nose of the airplane with a paper clip.


2.

If your airplane tend to nose-dive due to heavy nose, bend the edge of the wing upwards slightly.


3.

Design the paper airplane with rudders at the wing tips.

This is a common feature in many paper airplane designs.

Having the rudders will help to reduce airplane yaw and thus prevent it from flying in circles and helps the airplane to fly straight.


4.

Add more creases to the wings to provide greater stability and lift.


5.

Design your paper airplane with sufficient dihedral.

Dihedral is the angle formed by the wings across the top of the fuselage.

The airplane flies best with its wings horizontal in flight.

This is general achieved when the dihedral forms a small V-shape as you hold the fuselage in ready-to-throw position.

So when your paper airplane does not fly well, adjusting the dihedral can help to enhance the performance dramatically.

When holding the paper airplane, the dihedral should look like the image below (viewed from the front).



Tips for Speed and Distance
1.

If you like your paper airplane to fly (or glide) slowly and further, design the paper airplane with longer wings span but smaller wing area.

This concept is widely used to design gliders planes.


2.

On the other hand, if you want to make a paper airplane fly faster, make the wing shorter relative to the fuselage length (this is called low aspect ratio) and design a sharp and thin nose (do you know why?) An example of such design is the conventional dart.



Few Tips from Ken Blackburn
1.

Aircraft stability (all airplanes) is improved when weight is added to the front of the plane.


2.

Generally the farthest flying paper airplanes are the standard pointed 'dart' types.

For extra distance try adding weight to the nose, such as a paper clip, or rolled or folded paper.


3.

Wing span is the thing that really improves gliding distance (this is why sailplanes have long wings, but they have very narrow wings to try to reduce their wing area).


4.

Remember the key to a good flying plane are the small adjustments :
5.

There are 3 main principles in making a good flying paper airplane: make sure there is sufficient weight on the nose of the plane.

use some up elevator trim.

use plenty of dihedral
6.

Almost any type of paper will work - for my planes I prefer regular copier paper (20 to 24 pound thickness usually).


7.

Perhaps the best paper airplane to use for speed, distance, and ease of construction is the Eagle design.

The Basic Dart is also good, and should be familiar to many of your viewers, as it is my version of an old favorite.

One "secret" to a fast, accurate, and long distance paper airplane is to add weight, such as a paper clip, to the nose of the plane.


8.

Theoretically, increasing wing area should make glide distance a little worse.

Wing span is the thing that really improves gliding distance

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