Foldable Flight's Firefly 5 Can Throw a Paper Airplane Over 300 Feet
Fold Epic Paper Airplanes
Foldable Flight is a library of 109 paper airplane designs, each with step-by-step folding tutorials and speed, glide, and accuracy ratings. Standouts include the Firefly 5, a world-record prototype that flies over 300 feet, and Unite, which holds the record for time aloft at 31.2 seconds. Some designs come from origami names like Michael LaFosse, and the Arrowhead's tutorials have drawn over 100 million views.
This World Record prototype can fly over 300 feet!!!
- literallyanythi
Scrolled down the page, saw this "Very Easy" 1 minute plane
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
- HelloUsername
Related: "https://www.foldnfly.com/"
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- intrasight
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.
- tombert
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.
- abustamam
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.
Fun stuff :)
- magicalhippo
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.
- dano
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.
- FoldableFlight
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.