Tips

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 :

wing tips up
weight on the nose
bend the back of the horizontal tail (the elevator) up a little.
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