How To Make Advanced Paper Airplanes

How advanced can be the paper aircraft and is it hard to make one yourself?

Or continue reading to learn more... In the introductory article about paper airplanes written few months before this one we discussed geting into the fun world of making paper airplanes. I gave some samples of more interesting and more advanced airplane designs. The builder's imagination is unlimited and you will see that there are models which go even further than what is shown there.

But how can you create really advanced paper airplanes yourself? Keep reading and you will understand.

Find And Download Plans

Of course you could go by your own plan and that's a nice thing to do if you are going to build a simple aircraft. But for more advanced models you'd better research the Web and find downloadable plans which are specially designed for paper airplanes. Best of all, usually these plans are completely free.

To save you some time, I have collected a couple of the best resources about free paper airplane plans. Check out The Online Paper Airplane Museum which has a collection with literally thousands of designs.

Several easy and quick designs are available on Alex's Paper Airplanes. They are not exactly advanced but I would call some of them quite interesting.

As some readers expressed interest in the airplane from the picture above, plans for it are available in this forum discussion.

Pick Your Paper

When starting to make paper airplanes I would recommend you take a sheet of used paper - for example something printed that you will not need anymore. A sheet in Letter format (or A4 here in Europe) will do the work. If having something on the paper confuses you and you need a white sheet, at least use recycled paper.

When you stop experimenting and want to create a real paper airplane that flies and looks cool, it's time to think about the paper quality. Use paper that isn't very heavy - the weight of the aircraft is one of the most important factors which determines how long will they fly.

At the same time the paper should be robust enough so it doesn't get torn on the first flight. Preferably it would be also sustainable to little amounts of water.

Origami Airplanes And Joint Aircraft

When choosing plans to download, have in mind the following:

Most simple paper airplanes are built following the rules of the art Origami - by folding a single sheet of paper. No cutting or sticking is used. Some Origami masters are able to create quite advanced models this way. The origami model airplanes often can fly very well.

The really advanced paper airplanes and especially the paper helicopters / autogyros can't be made by a single sheet. They usually involve using different parts, cutting and sticking them. Building such model aircraft requires more preciseness and patience.

Improving The Design Of Your Paper Airplane And More Tips

If you want your model to fly well, you could do some improvements to the design. Putting more weight in the nose, keeping the model symmetrical and trimming the problematic places can help your plane fly better and longer.

The tail is one of the most important components for the flight, so feel free to experiment with it even if that makes it different than shown in the original plan.

Make sure that your aircraft model is held together and balanced around its center.

A Great Video

This video shows how to make the OmniWing paper airplane. Note it's only the first part, make sure to check also parts 2, 3 and 4:

Books On Paper Aircraft

If you want to master the skill of making advanced paper airplanes, invest some time and few bucks in reading one of the following books:

The Gliding Flight: 20 Excellent Fold and fly Paper Airplanes

This is one of the bestseller books in model aviation. Contains 20 original paper airplane designs and offers a refreshing approach to making them.

The Klutz Book of Paper Airplanes

A really big book with 40 designs of paper airplanes, some fairly advanced. It comes with sheets of flight-tested, ready-to-fold paper, printed on both sides. And excellent item.

When you build your first advanced paper airplane, feel free to let us know and show us pictures! I'll enjoy to see your progress and even publish it.

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Post Your Comment  

User comments:

Deborah at Jul, 21 '09 20:59
This is the most terific airplane in the whole universe. I would like to know how to make one
Reply to this comment

Bob at Oct, 14 '09 19:14
Hi Deborah, do you mean the one on the picture?
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Tom Greene at Nov, 22 '09 03:47
There's a website that teaches you how to make 50 exotic paper airplanes. Here's the URL:

http://www.paperairplaneshq.com
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Jonah at Nov, 24 '09 00:38
I made a really cool paper airplane from some plans easily downloaded. Popular Science offers a way to put a motor in it. the popsci article is here:

http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2007-05/supercharge-paper-airplane

the plans that are made to be printed are found here:
page one: http://www.popsci.com/files/eat-6-1.pdf

page two: http://www.popsci.com/files/eat-6-2.pdf
good luck everybody!

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Bastian at Jul, 27 '10 14:47
yes, the one on the pic is awesome *clap* how is it done?
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Bob at Aug, 09 '10 18:45
Sorry for the late reply, Bastian. The plans are available here:

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=723890
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Dan at Dec, 13 '11 16:02
Nice article! I never thought of standard paper airplanes as being related to Oragami!
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