Nothing will ever replace Campbell Morris' Advanced Paper Aircraft Construction volumes 1-3 (or was it 4) for me, but this looks modern and ideal for young and aspiring ballistic cellulose aeronautical engineers.
Hi! I'm Kyle — the creator of Foldable Flight. No AI has been used to make the site. The "some reason" behind the doubled "intermediate" toggle was human error (mine) in the CMS input for one of the planes. It's fixed now!
Click on the first design, only way to learn how to fold is with a 10 minute YouTube video with plenty of the usual padding to get it to 10 minutes+ and "if you don't have the template" spread through out.
So basically just buy the $35 worth of books and templates they're selling if you actually want to do this instead of playing and pausing a YT video a hundred times to get through this.
I think I'll fire up Publisher '97 and relive my paper plane memories.
Come on! They're selling you books in the $20 range and using free (if slightly tedious) videos to promote said books in a polite and non-pushy way. I can't believe this upsets people!
Play the youtube video. You don't know what you're saying.
I used to spend a lot of time with origami books. They didn't have videos. You could consume the information as quickly as you wanted.
Unless, of course, you couldn't do that because the instructions were completely inscrutable. That happened a lot. More the rule than the exception, really.
Videos solve so many problems in this context. They would have saved me hours of confusion. Why would you complain that the free instructions are superior to the instructions you can pay for?
Hi! I'm Kyle — the creator behind FoldableFlight.com. I don't run any ads on my website. Are you saying you can't see content on FoldableFlight.com while running an ad blocker?
Have you looked at it? This is not AI slop. There are videos of the author (his hands at least), where he folds the paper airplanes as a demonstration. They even include an outdoors shot of the airplane in action.
Calling everything we don't like "AI slop" is what has to stop. Foldable Flight has a YouTube channel with hundreds of thousands of subs and content going back years.
That's a cool website. Is there a benchmark for these? I noticed some of these have scores ("Flies over x feet!") and some don't.
Mostly I'm just curious, how well does the standard crappy paper airplane fly, which every kid makes in school, how well does it fly relative to some of these world record winners? (Some of which have a lot more folds and measuring and tape than I was expecting!)
Hi! I'm Kyle — the creator of FoldableFlight.com and the designer of many of the paper airplanes on it. I'd estimate that the standard "classic dart" paper airplane flies about 20 to 30 feet (less than 10 meters). Many of the paper airplanes on my website (even some easy ones) can be thrown over 100 feet (30ish meters). The world record design for distance can fly over 300 feet, though it requires cutting and a bit of tape.
The instructions were just there and I was certain it was the best plane ever if I just had the right paper format. And that they failed had nothing to do with my folding skills.
Yeah, it is easy to try to correct the situation as an adult afterwards. This was just an account of my feelings then.
And as I mentioned below - maybe exactly this was in the way from making the best paper plane ever, that could fly all the way to my neighbour? What did I know?
I sort of had the same issue, eventually went to a small local printing company.
They had loads of scrap paper in all possible colours.
They were very nice to me (I was a kid so that helps I guess), and I got a load of scrap paper for free. They even cut a lot of it in square size.
This supply lasted me for many many years of folding pleasure.
Yes. Personal anecdote. I won the 1978 UCLA paper airplane contest by exactly this method.
There was a good design floating around (locally?) called a Pasquali [1]. In the couple of hours before the contest. I folded about a dozen of the design and tested them. The individual plane that flew best is the one that I flew in the contest.
(If you happen to know the UCLA campus, the plane was launched from the top of Boelter Hall -- about 3 floors up from memory. It flew all the way across the Engineering Quad to the raised courtyard between the Geology and Chemistry buildings.)
[1] If anybody here happens to know of this design, I've forgotten all of the details other than the name. I'd love to recover it! Sadly, the actual paper airplane is long lost.
Hi! I'm Kyle Boyer — the creator behind FoldableFlight.com and the associated YouTube channel. My website offers similar functionality to FoldNFly, but a completely different (and more extensive) library of planes, including the world record designs for distance and time aloft!
I think I owe you an apology, because my question was real, but worded in a way that wasn't very constructive. The answer is clearly that it's not a reskin. Thanks for taking the time to reply (and create an account).
Hi! I'm Kyle — the creator of the website. I'm not proficient in web design.
What would it require for the mail popup to be remembered on refresh so you don't have to keep clicking off of it? I'd be happy to update that feature.
My dad worked overtime in the evening a fair bit. He'd often bring me when I was a young teen. The building was several stories tall with a huge open central core, just a flight of stairs on one end.
I'd go to the top floor, take a bunch of paper from the printer room and fold planes, and send them out into the central space. Go back, tweak the design or try something new, launch again.
Don't think I came up with any good designs, but I had a lot of fun trying various ideas.
My son watched a ton of this at age ~8 or so. He built some really crazy stuff from memory and our house was full of great designs for like a year. Pretty great channel imo.
I have a story to share. In 1978 as a preteen, my mother made me take piano lessons. God bless her for trying. Anyway, while waiting for my class in the lobby of the music school, I would often make paper airplanes. One day, an older gentleman came over and said that he wanted to gift me something. What he gave me was his copy of "The great international paper airplane book". And remains one of my cherished books or really possessions. But I'm getting older now and feel that the time has come for me to find a 13-year-old worthy of this gift. But it's quite a leap of faith, for me anyway, to convey such a gift.
I was reminded of this book immediately! A savior for a boring afternoon. It was like knowing how to tie elaborate knots. You learned some killer designs that made you king of the paper airplane at school.
Yup. In 7th grade during recess we made airplanes. One day I made a Barnaby and threw it up in the air. It caught an updraft and just disappeared into the clouds. With that, I became a paper airplane legend at school.
In first grade, visible from my assigned lunch seat in the cafeteria, was a yellowing paper airplane on top of an exposed ventilation duct. It was there for a few years, too.
I have a similar story. I opened a drawer at my grandma's place and found an old copy of "The World Record Paper Airplane Book" that had been there for years. I folded airplanes for years and years. Even as a grown-up, I impressed some people by throwing a long-flighted plane into a stadium field while waiting for a concert.
"The Ultimate Paper Airplane: With Step-by Step Instructions for Seven Different Models" by Richard Kline and Floyd Fogleman are my goto book to show people.
Unfortunately needs a bit of tape usually for most of the models. But great book.
A friend of mine his uncle bought him a copy. We proceeded to make all of them. Came across a funny thing if you clip a clothspin on the tip of the one the cover it goes wildly further than it should. Even without it goes pretty far.
That paperclip might have more mass than the actual paper. You can stuff a lot more energy into that throw while adding negligible drag. And you are moving the center of mass to a position which favours more stable flight as well.
thats what we were thinking. we tried paperclips and it didnt really work and just nose dive. My theory is the clothspin turned it more into a dart than a airplane. Usually that particular plane would have a habit of nosing up and stalling. that could have played into it too.
The author, Felix Rosenthal, was a family friend. He had an incredible life, like something out of "The Third Man":
Born on January 12, 1917 in Munich, Felix emigrated from Germany in 1933, shortly after Hitler came to power, and settled with part of his family in his mother's native Florence; after obtaining his Italian high-school degree ("licenza liceale") he went on to study engineering at the Istituto Politecnico in Milan, but when the Fascists' anti-semitic laws of 1938 prohibited Jews from enrolling in public schools and universities, he settled in Paris, again with part of his family. At the outbreak of WWII in September 1939, Felix was in Switzerland and a return to France was impossible; in 1940 he emigrated to Chile before finally settling in Berkeley to join his brother Bernard in 1941, and enrolling in the engineering school of the University of California. From 1943 to 1946 he served in the US Army and became one of "The Ritchie Boys" - GIs of German origin who spoke German natively and were trained in Military Intelligence at Camp Ritchie, Maryland. He was discharged with the rank of Master Sergeant and returned to the University of California to study architecture; after having obtained his MA he became assistant to Eric Mendelsohn, the renowned architect who had recently joined Berkeley's Architecture Department.
We had the original book when I was a kid. My wife gave me a copy (off of AbeBooks or somewhere) a few years ago and I was a bit overcome with emotion at seeing it again.
Started watching the video not planning on actually making it, saw that it is done with A4 paper and grabbed a random sheet at my desk to follow along. The pocket felt like a nice "a-ha!" moment. As someone who only knew the "naive" way to make paper airplanes from A4 paper, this is the best performing and prettiest paper airplane I've made in my life! It almost feels like it's not real how smoothly it stays straight in the air compared to all my paper airplanes in childhood.
I've been making the original version of this, the Nakamura Lock, since seeing it in a book as a child. I messed with tons of "world record distance" designs as a kid but this design just always came out the most consistent and had great performance. My favorite part is just the simplicity of it.
This has been my go-to design since the 1980s but I never knew what it was called. Easy to build, consistently good flight characteristics. And you can slightly bend the "elevons" to get different flight patterns.
The Nakamura Lock - thank you for the name! - that's the one I learned when I was a child in Russia in early 1990's - I thought this was the default way to make an paper airplane.
Sadly I don’t remember the title. It was a red boarder around white in a paperback book. I had it for awhile as an adult but I’m not sure if it survived my last move.
How do you find the exact dimensions for your Nakamura Lock? I have to estimate some of the critical dimensions, so it's always a surprise whether each plane will pitch too far upwards or downwards.
> I messed with tons of "world record distance" designs as a kid
In seventh or right grade we had a paper airplane contest. I literally walked up to the throwing line holding an unfolded piece of paper. At the line I crumbled it up, it flew straighter and faster then any other airplane thrown that day, and I think only one or two airplanes beat it for distance. My appeal at being disqualified was rejected, though I broke no rules.
I’ve pulled that trick multiple times, normally successfully; some people appreciate such shenanigans.
A similar anecdote. There was once a bridge-building competition, with provided materials, and scores for it bearing different weight toy cars, for height and for length. Nowhere was it said the bridge had to bear any of the cars. Our group’s 15-metre long roll of tape bridge with four-pop-stick-A-frame supports, which scored three times as much as the next (… and we could have doubled its length), was unceremoniously disqualified for unspecified grounds, as I had expected. I pressed for a few days for the grounds (even suggesting the couple of not-unreasonable grounds I had thought of, such as that our team had schismed into two over the creative direction), but was not given them.
The unwritten rules about spirit can be applied capriciously.
I think ours was still the most popular bridge. And honestly one of the more realistic, just scaled for much smaller vehicles, a consistent 1:500 where most were an inconsistent 1:25 to 1:50. They were really good supports.
When my daughter and niece were 11 and 9, we had a paper airplane folding afternoon. We went through the handful of designs I remembered from middle school with some level of success. All along, I was teasing them about a super plane I knew how to make.I eventually made it and it flew so much better than all the other ones… but they hated me for it.
It turned out that they wanted paper planes that conformed to their idea of a paper plane, not paper-based engineering marvels.
For half of the video I was thinking this was the airplane I learned to do in my childhood but later on I saw the nice final tweaks, its very nice given the time you put.
My parents subscribed to several magazines when I was a kid and any time a new one arrived I would shake out the subscription signup mail cards and make paper airplanes. They were small but something about the thickness of the paper made it very satisfying to fold and the planes fly very well.
I guess those cards must still exist but it has been ages since I have read a real magazine. I had a couple of dumb subscriptions in college but do not think I have ever had any since. Should consider it for our kids and to get me off my phone.
Adding my own story: Foldable Flight, the YouTube channel, is what allowed me to cope with Covid lockdowns with a five year old; every day we would sit together for at least an hour and fold increasingly sophisticated paper aeroplanes together.
My son is now 11 and he still folds, has mastered advanced origami skills, and also has organised four yearly paper aeroplane competitions. All down to Kyle Boyer and his Foldable Flight channel.
This is Kyle! Thanks for your kind words! I just discovered this website because my website (Foldable Flight) has been getting an insane amount of traffic today because of this post. I hope you and your son continue to love paper airplanes and explore creativity together :-)
160 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 33.7 ms ] threadSo basically just buy the $35 worth of books and templates they're selling if you actually want to do this instead of playing and pausing a YT video a hundred times to get through this.
I think I'll fire up Publisher '97 and relive my paper plane memories.
I used to spend a lot of time with origami books. They didn't have videos. You could consume the information as quickly as you wanted.
Unless, of course, you couldn't do that because the instructions were completely inscrutable. That happened a lot. More the rule than the exception, really.
Videos solve so many problems in this context. They would have saved me hours of confusion. Why would you complain that the free instructions are superior to the instructions you can pay for?
If you're interested the link to the other related site has more step by step instructions: https://www.foldnfly.com/#/1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-2-1
21.jul.2023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36784032 25 comments
26.may.2023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36087442 76 comments
18.jul.2022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32134691 96 comments
06.dec.2021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29466325 8 comments
16.jun.2020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23545860 8 comments
18.oct.2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18249755 206 comments
They both have adblockers enabled: no clue if that is the root cause though.
Mostly I'm just curious, how well does the standard crappy paper airplane fly, which every kid makes in school, how well does it fly relative to some of these world record winners? (Some of which have a lot more folds and measuring and tape than I was expecting!)
Obviously the book was translated from US.
I don't remember how bad it was in practice but I remember it made me sad.
Interestingly, paper A4 wide (210mm?) by letter tall (11") is a thing in the TeX community.
The instructions were just there and I was certain it was the best plane ever if I just had the right paper format. And that they failed had nothing to do with my folding skills.
(It's okay, I learned immediately how to rectify, uh, squarify, the situation.)
And as I mentioned below - maybe exactly this was in the way from making the best paper plane ever, that could fly all the way to my neighbour? What did I know?
My mom was a secretary and so brought home typing paper for me.
When I was older, dumpster diving netted me 4 or 5 reams of typing paper (with a letterhead on one side—oh well).
There was a good design floating around (locally?) called a Pasquali [1]. In the couple of hours before the contest. I folded about a dozen of the design and tested them. The individual plane that flew best is the one that I flew in the contest.
(If you happen to know the UCLA campus, the plane was launched from the top of Boelter Hall -- about 3 floors up from memory. It flew all the way across the Engineering Quad to the raised courtyard between the Geology and Chemistry buildings.)
[1] If anybody here happens to know of this design, I've forgotten all of the details other than the name. I'd love to recover it! Sadly, the actual paper airplane is long lost.
- Every action takes 3-10 seconds, including pressing on regular ass links
- There's a big yellow button "Fold planes" on main page that redirects you to the main page?
- Login is a blue text on blue background
- You have to click on the image of the plane to get to it's page, clicking on text doesn't work (small thing, but very unintuitive)
Is there something wrong with my browser, or it's a website?
What would it require for the mail popup to be remembered on refresh so you don't have to keep clicking off of it? I'd be happy to update that feature.
I'd go to the top floor, take a bunch of paper from the printer room and fold planes, and send them out into the central space. Go back, tweak the design or try something new, launch again.
Don't think I came up with any good designs, but I had a lot of fun trying various ideas.
https://archive.org/details/greatinternation00jerr/mode/1up
Thanks for reminding me of it
Unfortunately needs a bit of tape usually for most of the models. But great book.
A friend of mine his uncle bought him a copy. We proceeded to make all of them. Came across a funny thing if you clip a clothspin on the tip of the one the cover it goes wildly further than it should. Even without it goes pretty far.
Born on January 12, 1917 in Munich, Felix emigrated from Germany in 1933, shortly after Hitler came to power, and settled with part of his family in his mother's native Florence; after obtaining his Italian high-school degree ("licenza liceale") he went on to study engineering at the Istituto Politecnico in Milan, but when the Fascists' anti-semitic laws of 1938 prohibited Jews from enrolling in public schools and universities, he settled in Paris, again with part of his family. At the outbreak of WWII in September 1939, Felix was in Switzerland and a return to France was impossible; in 1940 he emigrated to Chile before finally settling in Berkeley to join his brother Bernard in 1941, and enrolling in the engineering school of the University of California. From 1943 to 1946 he served in the US Army and became one of "The Ritchie Boys" - GIs of German origin who spoke German natively and were trained in Military Intelligence at Camp Ritchie, Maryland. He was discharged with the rank of Master Sergeant and returned to the University of California to study architecture; after having obtained his MA he became assistant to Eric Mendelsohn, the renowned architect who had recently joined Berkeley's Architecture Department.
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/legacyremembers/felix-r...
We had the original book when I was a kid. My wife gave me a copy (off of AbeBooks or somewhere) a few years ago and I was a bit overcome with emotion at seeing it again.
I occasionally add a comment when we do this, in the hope that people will learn about it and send us nominations! https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- Can't sort the airplanes
- Instructions are video only
https://www.foldableflight.com/planes/mystic
Started watching the video not planning on actually making it, saw that it is done with A4 paper and grabbed a random sheet at my desk to follow along. The pocket felt like a nice "a-ha!" moment. As someone who only knew the "naive" way to make paper airplanes from A4 paper, this is the best performing and prettiest paper airplane I've made in my life! It almost feels like it's not real how smoothly it stays straight in the air compared to all my paper airplanes in childhood.
Kids' Shenanigans by Klutz?
A similar anecdote. There was once a bridge-building competition, with provided materials, and scores for it bearing different weight toy cars, for height and for length. Nowhere was it said the bridge had to bear any of the cars. Our group’s 15-metre long roll of tape bridge with four-pop-stick-A-frame supports, which scored three times as much as the next (… and we could have doubled its length), was unceremoniously disqualified for unspecified grounds, as I had expected. I pressed for a few days for the grounds (even suggesting the couple of not-unreasonable grounds I had thought of, such as that our team had schismed into two over the creative direction), but was not given them.
The unwritten rules about spirit can be applied capriciously.
I think ours was still the most popular bridge. And honestly one of the more realistic, just scaled for much smaller vehicles, a consistent 1:500 where most were an inconsistent 1:25 to 1:50. They were really good supports.
It turned out that they wanted paper planes that conformed to their idea of a paper plane, not paper-based engineering marvels.
Apparently, that design is called "two loops".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ocKG4Ymm5o
I guess the written instructions are included in the ebook sold on the same website.
I haven't made a plane in a long time, so I don't have much frame of reference.
But for comparison I tried making another one, a "naive" plane the way I used to, and it just "reverse nosedived" straight into the ceiling.
For half of the video I was thinking this was the airplane I learned to do in my childhood but later on I saw the nice final tweaks, its very nice given the time you put.
https://papersizes.io/compare/a-a4-vs-us-letter
I've been making this version since I was a kid, but never folded the nose.
Is it to help keep the spine together?
I guess those cards must still exist but it has been ages since I have read a real magazine. I had a couple of dumb subscriptions in college but do not think I have ever had any since. Should consider it for our kids and to get me off my phone.
My son is now 11 and he still folds, has mastered advanced origami skills, and also has organised four yearly paper aeroplane competitions. All down to Kyle Boyer and his Foldable Flight channel.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you Kyle!
This is Kyle! Thanks for your kind words! I just discovered this website because my website (Foldable Flight) has been getting an insane amount of traffic today because of this post. I hope you and your son continue to love paper airplanes and explore creativity together :-)