As an environmental consultant, I had documented industrial projects with video since 1980, and one look at his F-14 Tomcat booklet made me think that video—rather than just folding diagrams—might be a better way to show how to fold it. Michael’s origami F-14 Tomcat was the first model we videotaped him folding. I mounted the camera over the workspace. In this way, Michael and the viewer would see the project in the same orientation on their tables. This also ensured that Michael’s verbal references to right, left, top or bottom would make perfect sense. In 1992 we self-published a video collection of his favorite designs, that we called “Planes for Brains.” It was a hit.
Michael LaFosse poses with his creations under the nose of a particularly fetching North American B-25J “Mitchell” at the Red Bull Hangar-7 “Masters of Origami” exhibition.
Then, in 1996, we were asked to develop a first-of-its-kind, beginner’s origami video kit for QVC—a popular cable TV shopping channel—and thousands of customers enjoyed folding one of Michael’s airplane designs from that set. The same year, we opened our Origamido Studio in the Boston area, and we taught an original LaFosse paper airplane to nearly every group of students that visited. Scouts, homeschoolers, and engineers from Boston’s high-tech firms kept coming back for more. Michael seemed to never run out of his own clever paper airplane designs to share with our customers. We held mini-contests by taking turns aligning our toes to the threshold at the hallway door, and sailing the freshly folded planes through the narrow corridor toward the lobby.
Through the years, Origamido Studio developed a whole series of video origami lessons (on DVD, cable TV, and on the Internet), and Tuttle Publishing has embraced origami video instruction by including our DVDs in our latest origami books and kits, including Money Origami, Trash Origami, and Story-gami. These have proved to be so effective and well-received that we now have several more books and kits with DVDs in development.
We also have a long history of holding paper airplane contests at local libraries and museums, such as the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts.
Our first contests began in the early 1990’s, and grew to attract hundreds of people for what became an annual family event. Some of the most recent winners (within the oldest age bracket—the “Adult” category) recalled having been winners in the early years of the event, when they were among the youngest contestants (in the “Age 7 and Younger” category).
We hope that your journey might also culminate in a day of fun at a paper airplane contest that you and your friends organize for a special cause or community need. When that smitten youngster comes up to admire (or even critique) a particular paper airplane design on display, we hope that this book and
Enjoy!
Richard Alexander, President
Origamido, Inc.
Paper Airplane Fun
By Richard Alexander
Finding an elegant origami design is a pleasure. Unlimited possibilities make for great fun!
We love to say that origami (paper folding) comes in many flavors, and every folder seems to have their favorite: greeting cards, animals, boxes, ornaments, jewelry, peace cranes, or dollar bill folds. There is one origami activity that rivals all of these in popularity: the folded paper airplane, perhaps the most satisfying origami flavor of all.
There are many reasons for this: Folding airplanes is fun for any age whether you explore folding alone, with a friend, in teams, or as a family. There is little cost and lots of action. For youngsters, it helps develop many skills and manual dexterity. There may be no better way for them to learn firsthand about cause and effect. Any number of ideas can be quickly conceived, folded, and flight-tested. Learning to apply the discipline of the scientific process can help a folder become more efficient with exploring new designs. Learning new designs challenges your memory. Folding and flying paper airplanes is a pastime you can enjoy for your entire lifetime. Best of all, it is one of the few origami activities that involve getting exercise and enjoying the great outdoors.
There are two major classes of paper airplanes: the largest group may involve some folding, but also includes assembly from cut-out or punched-out pieces of paper or card, often with slots and tabs, and many require attachments such as tape, glue, or other fasteners. This book is about having fun with the other major class: true origami airplanes folded from a single piece of paper with no cutting, tape, or appliances.
It’s a magical experience to transform a handy scrap of paper into a fully functional, soaring sculpture. Whether admired for their bold or graceful lines, superior performance, or amazing acrobatics, a few designs exude a personality of their own. Paper airplane enthusiasts love to share their favorite folding methods, critique each design’s looks, and prove the performance of their latest and greatest designs in friendly—but often intense—head-to-head contests.
Perhaps the most famous competition was the “First International Paper Airplane Competition” announced by the Scientific American magazine, in 1966. A young Michael LaFosse in Fitchburg, Massachusetts poured over his copy of the Simon and Schuster publication about the event, and, while initially excited by the brains and brouhaha surrounding the contest, he was largely surprised and disappointed by the relatively primitive level of folding technology. Given the state of the art in other origami publications by Randlett, Harbin and Honda, did these origami experts not know about the competition? Perhaps, he thought, there must have been many elegant purely origami entries that just did not fly well enough to qualify. He realized that his own paper airplane repertoire was rather mundane, and began to invest more time developing better origami airplane designs.
Since the early 1970s, Michael LaFosse has been hooked on designing pure origami models, and one of his goals soon became clear: To design interesting, elegant planes that flew well and had reliable landmarks for foolproof folding. The best of these have become his favorite designs, all of which are included in this book.
LaFosse published his first “Aero-gami F-14 Tomcat” design as a pamphlet in 1984, and he placed an ad in the back of the Popular Science magazine to sell copies. He also coined the term “Aero-gami” in 1984 for this origami F-14 venture, and he defined it to mean single-sheet, folding only. The origami F-14 Tomcat design quickly became a favorite on Air Force and Naval bases, as well as on engineering college campuses. It looked great, was fun to fold, and flew straight and fast. This design raised eyebrows, and even fighter pilots were impressed with the model and Michael’s unusual folding techniques. Similarly, his Art-Deco Wing was so unusual for its time that authors of other origami paper airplane books obtained his permission to publish his innovative designs in their publications—Wings & Th ings: Origami that Flies, by Stephen Weiss (1984, St. Martin’s Press); newsletters such as Fly Paper, by Charles Peck (1988) and in high tech magazines.
I was swept up in the ultralight aircraft mania of the early 1980’s, and fell in love with a one-person, fully retractable, amphibious, fiberglass composite kit called the Diehl Aero-Nautical XTC Cross Terrain Craft. I became a dealer, bought and sold some kits, and built one as an experimental aircraft. This gave me hundreds of hours with pilots, in and around cool warbirds and experimental airplanes at shows, fly-ins, and at several Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) chapter meetings.
I find folding from diagrams to be frustrating, and I am not alone. Even some
