Building and Flying the Paper Airplane Model

Remember the times of your childhood? Maybe you built and flew paper airplanes with your friends.

Your designs vary with them, as you want your paper airplane to be on edge against of those of your playmates.

Although a teenager or an adult already, you can still consider making paper airplane as a hobby. It is a good alternative from getting yourself a radio-controlled (RC) airplane-flying model. Usually, you only need one sheet of paper.

However, it is not just building and flying paper airplanes. It is creating a design that will make your paper airplane fly high. It is also a challenging task to develop your own paper airplane model.

Here are some of the popular paper airplane models you can try to experiment. From these, you may acquire some ideas that you can include in case that you are planning to create you own paper airplane model.

DC3 paper airplane model

It is one of the popular paper airplane model designs. It is different from the regular paper airplane that you do before; its flight resembles like a balsa wood airplane.

Here are some of the characteristics of DC3 paper airplane.

•     It has a long tail which gives it directional stability
•     It has upturned wingtips which prevent wingtip vortex
•     Its thick folds where the wing joins the fuselage prevents distortion during windy days, thus providing straight flight
•     Its multiple folds of paper on the head concentrates on the center of gravity, giving itself hang-glider stability

Basic Dart paper airplane model

It is one of the most well known paper airplanes in the world. It is because of its simplicity, easy-to-fold method, and flies fast and far. Though it has a high probability of nose-diving, but it can be corrected by bending the trail edges of the wings in an upward direction.

Hare are the following folding instructions in creating your Basic dart paper airplane.

•     You need to start with an ordinary sheet of 8 1/2” x 11” or 21.6 x 28 cm. (U.S. standard writing paper size). Then fold it lengthwise and run your thumbnail along the fold to crease it sharply.
•     Fold the top corners and the two edges towards the centerline.
•     Make a valley fold in half and create a wing crease that begins at the nose.
•     After which, form a 3-dimensional shape and bend up the tailing edge of the wings so that your Basic Dart paper airplane avoid nose-diving.


Delta Fighter paper airplane model

This plane has a pilot’s cockpit canopy, which gives it a real fighter jet look. It is just a simple variation of the Basic Dart, so the preliminary steps are similar to it.

•     Again, use a standard sheet of paper, then fold it lengthwise and run your thumbnail along the fold, just like what you did in the Basic Dart paper airplane.

•     Fold down the top corners and fold the two edges towards the centerline.

•     After doing those aforementioned steps, fold the left corner so that it meets a point along the right edge.

•     Fold back the right flap to the left using the existing center crease. In addition, do it to the left flap but fold it back on the right direction.

•     Fold the model in half, so that it hides the folds.

•     Fold the top down wing and the two cockpit directions down together. The top corner should meet the bottom edge.

•     Then fold the other wing to complete your Delta Wing paper airplane.

You can try other variations aside from the above-mentioned paper airplane models. Most importantly, follow these directions so that your paper airplane will fly high. You can also create your own models from these existing ones.

So get that piece of paper and start building the best paper airplane in the world.

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