Zovirl Industries

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.

I’ve played around with laminated paper airplanes some and now that I have a webpage I can finally post some of my designs for download. This is a pretty cheap hobby. The plans are free and you just cut them out and glue them together. The only thing most people won’t already have around the house is heavy paper.

This isn’t the kind of airplane we all used to fold in school. It is made from heavy cardstock, using many laminated layers for strength. Properly adjusted and thrown it can fly a long ways. I would suggest going to a large open space, like a park, to test it out. When I flew it from my driveway I ended up retrieving it from my neighbor’s yards most of the time.

Materials you will need:

• Heavy card stock. This is a thick paper, like 3×5 index cards. You can buy it at office supply stores.
• Scissors
• Glue. Plain white glue works well. I apply it using a small paintbrush.
• Something to score the paper with before folding. A ball-point pen will work, but will leave marks. I use the tip of the nailfile on my pocketknife. To score the paper carefully run your scoring tool along the fold line while pushing down. This will push a line into the paper and help it fold where you want. Use a ruler to get straight lines.
• A heavy stack of books to put the pieces under as the glue sets. Put apiece of paper above and below the pieces so excess glue doesn’t get on the books

Download G-1 plans (rev. 2):

• PDF format
• OpenOffice format

Once you have downloaded the plans print them out on heavy paper. Follow the directions to construct the plane. Once the plane is finished let it dry overnight. Then look here to see how to tune and fly your plane.

If you are interested in this sort of thing you might want to check out some of the Whitewings kits. That’s where I got my start from. Their designs are much more elegant than mine, and at least the kit I have came with a very nice booklet containing construction and flying tips.