paper airplane enthusiasts are quite young, and not yet skilled at using technical diagrams, so for them, most origami models are much easier to fold from video instructions. In 1992, we recorded Michael folding his F-14 Tomcat and gave the clip to a neighbor. By using the pause and replay buttons on his video deck, the eight-year-old successfully folded and flew his F-14. This encouraged us to record more of Michael’s designs, which allowed us to self-publish a video, “Planes for Brains.” A few years later, we followed up with more of his airplanes folded from rectangular office bond (8½ by 11-inch US letter paper) on our video called “Aerogami.” We made many of these video lessons available to the public through a pay-per-view website, and then took them to cable TV on Comcast’s On Demand “Activity TV” series, as well as on the Internet (www.activityTV.com).
Michael has been sharing his designs with many people over the years, and we enjoy meeting them at paper airplane contests and origami conventions. In August, 1999, Michael and I had the opportunity to drive across the USA—from Boston to Seattle—to attend the Origami Regional Conference of America, or “ORCA.” One of the younger attendees, named Simon Berry, saw that I was recording video footage of folders explaining their creations, and he volunteered to show me a special, “hybrid” paper airplane he had created. It looked somewhat familiar, and so I asked him how he designed it. Come to find out, a good friend of ours had loaned him Michael LaFosse’s first paper airplane video, and Simon had combined elements of Michael’s Chuck Finn (see page 26), and the Art-Deco Wing (see page 30). I asked, “What do you call it?” “Simon’s Plane!” was his proud reply!
If you love paper airplanes, fold your way through this book, try some of your own modifications, or inject some of Michael’s ideas into your original designs. Buy some copies for your friends, and then invite them over for a paper airplane contest cookout in your backyard to see what they’ve discovered. These friendly competitions increase design expectations and raise the bar for performance. Be prepared for more awesome designs at each subsequent meeting. Friendly competition might even spread to your friends’ friends, and can even inspire an entire community.
Now, strap yourself in, because here we go!
A sleek Nifty Fifty awaits its maiden voyage.
CHAPTER 1
Selecting and Preparing Your Paper
First, a word about the basic origami folding essentials: having fun folding paper airplanes doesn’t require much. All you need is:
• A few sheets of suitable paper.
• A clean, hard, folding surface.
• Good lighting.
• Something to trim your paper to size.
• Something to help you make sharp, accurate creases.
The last two items are not essential. We can easily trim paper without tools by creasing and tearing, but the last item is worth a little discussion. Great planes have properly-placed, sharp creases. Generally, the back of your thumbnail works fine for installing creases, but some folders prefer to use their favorite “folding tool,” a handy device that comes in a variety of shapes and lengths, available in craft stores. They may be plastic, or fashioned of wood, stone or bone (bone folders), but there are plenty of no-cost substitutes: Young children with tiny fingers, and teens sporting fashionable fingernail artistry, can still make sharp creases using the bottom of a spoon. Beginners can define a crease line by folding the paper up against a straight edge, but soon you will easily use several fingers to roll the paper between two points before you press down on the curl to commit to the crease placement.
Paper airplanes demand precise placement of the creases, so don’t skip the introductory Symbols Key and folding tips presented in the next chapter, even if you have other paper folding experience. If the models you fold do not fly well, go back and master the simple, but critical folding techniques. In a short amount of time you will learn a lot about paper, develop fundamental folding skills, understand the symbols in an origami diagram, and learn what makes these paper airplane designs so neat.
Paper Selection
Paper selection for competition may be important, but for practice paper, just look in your recycle bin. You can find suitable paper for airplanes nearly everywhere. The designs presented in this book work well with the most widely available paper types: letter-size, 20-pound bond, and common sizes of square “origami paper.” Printer and copy paper is fine for any project in this book. If more types are available, use the heavier papers for simpler designs, and save the larger, lighter-weight papers for the more complex designs.
Paper is often supplied at a paper airplane competition (which simplifies the judging) but sometimes you will be given a choice. For competition, first select the best airplane design for the category (e.g., greatest distance, greatest time aloft, best aerobatic, best target accuracy, coolest design, etc.) and then select the paper for that design that works best for you. When you have a choice of papers, consider:
• Paper format
• Squareness
• Weight
• Thickness
• Foldability
• Rigidity
• Aesthetics (color, finish, graphics)
This photo shows an assortment of common paper rectangle types: square, 8 ½ by 11-inch US office paper and A4 letter paper.
Paper Formats
Most published origami paper airplanes have been designed to be folded from one of these three common, handy rectangles: square origami paper; 8½ by 11-inch office paper used in North America; or A4 letter paper used most everywhere else.
We have included designs for all three formats. We have also included instructions on how to produce these three rectangles from stock so that you may enjoy folding all of the designs, no matter what format of paper is handy. For practical purposes, rectangular papers can be expressed in terms of absolute measurements, aspect ratio and diagonal angle measurements. Understanding these expressions will allow you to scale rectangles into larger or smaller sizes as needed.
Avoid performance-affecting inconsistencies, such as the one shown in this illustration, by taking care to use only accurately, cut rectangles.
Rotate part of a stack of paper 180 degrees, square one end, and then check the other end for squareness.
You can also inspect squareness by folding a piece of paper in half to make sure that the loose corners line up on both sides.
Squareness
Many folders blame themselves if their folding seems off, without ever considering that the paper may not be cut properly. When you open a package of square origami paper, remove a few sheets from the center of the stack, rotate it 90 degrees, and align the ream with one edge of the stack on the
