Almost 20 years ago in Denver I began approaching my life-long love of making paper airplanes with a purposeful focus...I wanted them to be much more aerodynamically correct, plus look WAY cool. An early breaththrough was creating additional folds in the wings that created a true airfoil cross section, and another was cutting and folding the back of the planes to create trailing edge camber vs. high drag flaps to keep the nose up. I have a video of one of my 27 inch long Stealth planes flying for 1 1/2 minutes in the foothills west of Boulder. I sold many many hundreds of my smaller AEROGAMI planes at festivals at The Denver Botanivc Gardens, and some of larger ones at a gallery in Vail.
A few years ago I decided to briefly revisit AEROGAMI to be sure I do not lose the memory of how to make them, including the true "flying wings" that took six months to master. Here are some photos of those efforts. I plan on taking up AEROGAMI again in earnest this year and hopefully sell them to augment my income hurt by the loss of two gardening columns due to one newspaper closing, and another here in Florida on its last leg. I have not made a "flying wing" in years, but kept my very best ones for reference...it will be especially fun revisiting them!
I use heavy gauge paper to make them, and use steel paper binders inside the leading edge of the wings of the 27 inch long Stealth planes for structural rigidity. The small planes have a super jumbo drinking straw slipped into the fuselage, which adds a surprising amount of stiffness and almost no weight....the big big planes have in their fuselages either a section of mini-blind folded lengthwise, or a strip of foam core. After each plane is made, but before painting, I hold the wings against the edge of my glass work table and use my finger nails to add creases whose main purpose is to add strength.....an added bonus is that they make my AEROGAMIS look cool!
enjoy, John
John
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