Airplane Tuneup and Flying
It isn’t too hard to fly these laminated paper planes, but here are some tips that can make it work better.
First, look at the plane straight-on from the front, back, and top. Make sure all the pieces are straight and lined up. Bend them gently if they aren’t.
Ok, ready for your first flights. Best to do this on a dry day with no wind. Grip the plane under the wings and throw it straight ahead (not up or down). Ideally it should fly straight ahead in a nice smooth glide.
If it turns left or right look at the plane and try to figure out why. Is one wing warped differently than the other? Is the rudder (the back edge of the vertical part of the tail) straight? If you don’t see anything obvious just bend the rudder a little to the left or right, or bend the trailing edge of one wing down and the other one up.
If the plane pitches up, then drops its nose, then pitches up again, bend the trailing edge of the horizontal part of tail down. If the plane noses down too quickly, bend the trailing edge up. You want the plane to follow a nice smooth glide, almost but not quite pitching up.
For really long flights, you want to adjust the plane so it turns to the left. Then throw it straight up. If everything goes right it should climb almost straight up, then roll out and start a slow spiral back down to the ground.
March 25th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
[...] Zovirl Industries Mark Ivey’s weblog « Timezone 0.0.3 Airplane Tuneup and Flying » [...]
May 9th, 2006 at 6:47 am
Thanx a bunch i am doing a project on aerodynamics of paper aeroplanes and yours works really well
May 9th, 2006 at 7:47 am
Glad it was helpful. I have one other design that is decent, with a higher aspect ratio and polyhedral wings. I never posted it because I hadn’t taken the time to write proper directions for constructing it, but If you think it might me useful let me know and I’ll post it.
October 10th, 2006 at 6:31 am
Thanls a lot for the G-1 I tested here in Argentina and is a perfect Outodoor Plane, even flies better than Some others, Hope in the future I can send you mine, it´s undergoing several tests and modifications.
Best regards,
June 18th, 2007 at 6:54 am
Hello!
Love your design, and I am going to feature it in my newsletter this week. I have also backed up your design online in case people have trouble getting it from your site.
You were mentioning that you have another design, and if you don’t mind, I would like to post it, so that others can enjoy it too!
http://www.theonlinepaperairplanemuseum.com/WebsiteReviews/G1/G-1Review.html
Here is my page with a review of your design, Hope to hear from you soon!
thanks,
uncle dean
August 29th, 2007 at 10:57 am
Still haven’t heard from ya, but if anyone wants to see more paper airplane designs, check out my site at
http://www.theonlinepaperairplanemuseum.com
Over 800 FREE paper airplane designs!
Happy Flying!
Uncle Dean
November 20th, 2008 at 1:11 am
[...] often goes over the fence into the neighbor’s yard. An empty softball field works well. Check here for tips on tuning and flying your [...]