Flying papercraft

12/31/2024

The last two planes in the Nimbus series. That makes an even dozen!

So far, inside, they fly pretty well, but they really need less snow, drier days, and less wind. Or maybe I can use our new membership to the gym and basketball court to advantage!

12/29/2024

Porco’s plane!! Even flies great! Love the movie.

12/29/2024

Lots of planes!!! From a workshop at a high school a few years ago.

11/29/2024

Two more of the Nimbus planes. #6 is after the Scorpion, #7’s wings and tails are after a modern jetliner.

Both planes fly across a room ok, pretty steady before they hit the wall with a resounding smack, but we will have to wait for better weather and daylight for test flights outside. There’s wet snow out there right now. White and wet. Terrible for paper planes!

11/23/2024

Lately I have been revisiting the Nimbus series of planes. I have designed about a dozen in the series. The idea is to make the simplest planes I can think of, with no curves either bent or cut, and easy to build — oh, and tough. Well, and good flyers too, of course.

The first two pictures are the original four I built awhile ago, and they all fly great, though #3 has some issues. The other pictures are models I built I. The last week or so. #5 either flies great — or tumbles out of the sky. A touchy one. The other two are so new I haven’t had a chance to fly them outside. It has either been dark, or now it is raining for three days. Short flights in the house look promising, but we’ll see.

There are planes in between 5 and 10, I was just very curious to see how how 10 and 11 would work. All the planes up to 10 have one piece wings, but 11’s wings are made in two. Will it still work within the parameters? Is it easy to build and be strong enough? So far so good!

Number 10 is just a different configuration that I wanted to try.

08/24/2024

10/14/2023

Ready for test flights - as soon as the grass dries!

10/01/2023

An 36” RC jet that our son has designed and built over the summer, and the 10” model of it I’m building for “wind tunnel” tests - but really just going to fly it outside and see how well it works.

08/26/2023

The last in the series of engineering planes. The last picture is the whole fleet.