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.
Edit: Tried making the flapping wings AeroDactyl but it didn't work out :( wasn't aerodynamic and didn't flap its wings just went straight to the ground
Edit 2: Tried making the Jetstream (another 1 minute plane) and it came out well! Mine is INCREDIBLY asymmetrical and still flies better than any other plane I've made other than the Mystic!
Edit 3: Tried making the Advanced Elanus and I made it! But it's a little shoddy and much tougher for sure. Looks cool but it doesn't glide anywhere near as good as in the video (I guess you really need to perfect it.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
I have a copy of this!! It is one of my favorite books on paper airplanes. Great designs, great layout… I’ve occasionally tried modifying some of them to be made out of balsa with various levels of success.
I just don't know if it would work well as a library book, since the pages are meant to be cut out and folded up into planes. Of course, a responsible child would refrain from doing so and just copy the designs onto their own sheets of paper.
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.
When I would visit my grandmother as a kid, my parents wouldn't let me bring a game console with me, and she lived in the middle of nowhere so I would get bored pretty easily.
One summer, I had brought a book on how to make different paper airplanes. My grandmother had this huge crate of dot matrix printer paper [1] that I was given freedom to use to my heart's content.
I made hundreds of planes, of varying quality. I even did quasi-scientific tests to see which ones would fly farther, and I used a rubber band extended to the same length each time to try and ensure I was applying roughly the same amount of force in each launch.
I look back at that time pretty fondly. It was the only time in my life that I actually had fun visiting my grandmother's house.
[1] Even at the time this was somewhat outdated; she had a normal inkjet printer at the time so the paper was basically useless as printer paper.
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.
This just unlocked a memory for me. Circa 1996 or so, when my family got our first household computer, there was a... Game, or app, some sort of software that taught me how to make paper airplanes. I loved that thing. I made a bunch of crappy paper airplanes and found I loved folding stuff. I later discovered origami, and later papercrafts.
I couldn’t use the website because closing the “sign up for our email list” does a full page refresh. Then it popped up again even though I had already dismissed it. When I tried dismissing it a second time the pate crashed.
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 :-)
In the late 1960s as a 3rd grader I was fascinated with the paper airplanes made by the older students during recess. At one point I came across an plane that had been left on the field and reverse engineered it. It was not until decades later that I actually saw the Nakamura Lock instructions in print. It has been a joy to show at least three generations of children how to make this plane. It flys well, is reasonably robust, and just a joy to make and play with. I recall my younger brother and I flying them at night at my parents house, just having a nice summer evening of simple play.
wow this is soo cool! Awesome work. When I was a kid I dreamed of selling such instructions and paper to others! Immediately bought your book so I can build some with my kids now. Thank you!
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.
My technique was always 1) fold along the line you want to cut (makes it straight—maybe parallel if you have a good eye), 2) use your tongue to wet the creased edge, 3) open and re-fold along the same crease but for the opposite side (valley becomes mountain fold), 4) wet the creased edge again… It was easy enough to tear along the fold at that point.
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.
Hi everyone! I'm Kyle — the creator behind Foldable Flight (the website linked in the original post). It's very fun to read these comments and to hear about your experience using the site and folding the planes featured on it! I've been designing paper airplanes since I was a child, and have shared many of my designs freely through my website and on YouTube. Foldable Flight also features planes from many other designers, including the world record planes for distance and time aloft.
Please comment with any feedback you have regarding the site. I hope to improve its existing features and to add additional features in the future.
I've always been more partial to the Ring Wing paper plane https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/resources/lesson-plan/the-ring-... Easy to make, has a stable flight profile, and is relatively hard to damage as the reinforced leading edge is the typical impact site.
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!
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.
Cool! I had "The World Record Paper Airplane Book" when I was a kid and loved it. Sorry to see so many on here had to deal with paper mismatches. Fortunately The World Record Paper Airplane Book came with colorful paper for each plane you could tear out of the back.
Somewhat off-topic, but this summer I was at a conference where Lufthansa was a vendor and had a contest: Whoever could take their brochure for working in their engineering group and turn it into an airplane that flys at least 10 meters got a Lufthansa plushie.
The person who got the farthest got some extra prize. I wish I'd know about this resource then!
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.
Love these types of businesses. Do one thing great, consistently, and be nearly obsessive. Deliver the primary value (the joy of exploring paper airplane designs through tutorial videos) for free, but make it super easy for people to buy the upgrade (a sweet book of paper airplanes with cool paper designs).
Hi! I'm Kyle — the creator of FoldableFlight.com and the designer of many of the paper airplanes in its database. Thanks for your kind words! Obsessive is certainly a fair description of me :-)
It would be nicer if the paper used in the videos were different color on each side. Maybe even checkered?
I folded the Vanguard (https://www.foldableflight.com/planes/vanguard), can attest that it’s relatively easy, looks great (kiddo loves it) and flies better than any plane I have previously folded.
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 throughout.
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!
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.
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 — 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.
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!
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.
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.
Edit: Tried making the flapping wings AeroDactyl but it didn't work out :( wasn't aerodynamic and didn't flap its wings just went straight to the ground
Edit 2: Tried making the Jetstream (another 1 minute plane) and it came out well! Mine is INCREDIBLY asymmetrical and still flies better than any other plane I've made other than the Mystic!
Edit 3: Tried making the Advanced Elanus and I made it! But it's a little shoddy and much tougher for sure. Looks cool but it doesn't glide anywhere near as good as in the video (I guess you really need to perfect it.)
Final edit: My planes :) https://i.imgur.com/xnMdzJv.jpeg
Kids' Shenanigans by Klutz?
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://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ocKG4Ymm5o
I guess the written instructions are included in the ebook sold on the same website.
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.
https://archive.org/details/greatinternation00jerr/mode/1up
Thanks for reminding me of it
One summer, I had brought a book on how to make different paper airplanes. My grandmother had this huge crate of dot matrix printer paper [1] that I was given freedom to use to my heart's content.
I made hundreds of planes, of varying quality. I even did quasi-scientific tests to see which ones would fly farther, and I used a rubber band extended to the same length each time to try and ensure I was applying roughly the same amount of force in each launch.
I look back at that time pretty fondly. It was the only time in my life that I actually had fun visiting my grandmother's house.
[1] Even at the time this was somewhat outdated; she had a normal inkjet printer at the time so the paper was basically useless as printer paper.
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.
Fun stuff :)
EDIT: this is the one for me https://www.myabandonware.com/game/the-greatest-paper-airpla...
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 :-)
Obviously the book was translated from US.
I don't remember how bad it was in practice but I remember it made me sad.
(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?
Interestingly, paper A4 wide (210mm?) by letter tall (11") is a thing in the TeX community.
That a4 x 11" document size prints correctly on A4 or letter without scaling or cropping (the margins just change)
My experience is that it is quite difficult to cut the sheet precisely enough if you just use a normal pair of scissors.
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.
Please comment with any feedback you have regarding the site. I hope to improve its existing features and to add additional features in the future.
Here's the revised and expanded edition: https://www.amazon.com/World-Record-Paper-Airplane-Airplanes...
And here's the original if you want a hit of nostalgia: https://paperace.com/ken-blackburn-four-times-world-record-h...
It flew so long in the same spot that Japanese tourists stopped and took pictures of it.
They really do take pictures of anything and everything hahah
The person who got the farthest got some extra prize. I wish I'd know about this resource then!
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!)
Wish every business was this simple.
I folded the Vanguard (https://www.foldableflight.com/planes/vanguard), can attest that it’s relatively easy, looks great (kiddo loves it) and flies better than any plane I have previously folded.
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.
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.
- Can't sort the airplanes
- Instructions are video only
Because they always fold under pressure.
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.
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
- 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.
The Greatest Paper Airplanes: https://archive.org/details/PAPERAIR