TUTTLE Publishing
Tokyo | Rutland, Vermont | Singapore
Contents
Why Planes Fly…or Don’t!
Animals that Fly
Creating Lift
Streamlining
Balance and Stability
Forces in Equilibrium
Controlling the Airplane
How I Got Hooked ... and You Will Too
All Kinds of Paper Airplanes
Folding Techniques
A Word About Paper
Test Flying
Higher and Farther
The Planes
Games and Contests
Organizing a Contest
Using the Runway
The Planes
Belly Button
Decapod
Hammerhead
Flying Wing
Fireball
Chevron
Spade
Delta Jet
Ring Wraith
Space Cruiser
Raptor
Iceberg
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http://www.tuttlepublishing.com/ultimate-paper-airplanes-for-kids-downloadable-cd-content
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When I was a kid...
... I made paper airplanes constantly. I occasionally bought some balsa wood and tissue, a propeller, and a bit of rubber, and then spent several weekends turning these items into a model airplane. I knew from magazines that it should fly great, if I had the patience to build and trim it properly. What I really wanted to do was get out flying right away. Several days of building were too much for me. My balsa planes didn’t fly.
But if I used paper instead of balsa, I found I could fold and test, refold and retest, come up with a decent model in a few hours, and be out on the lawn flying in no time. (And paper didn’t require trips to a distant shop to buy special supplies!)
Even now that I’m a big kid, that sense of exhilaration I feel when a new airplane goes clear across the room and hits the far wall keeps me excited about folding new models.
The planes in this book are the ultimate expression of that desire for interesting planes that can be folded quickly but still have amazing performance. By carefully following the instructions and numbered lines on the paper, these planes can be assembled and trimmed in little more than a minute. Yet they fly for a surprisingly long time—probably longer than any origami airplane you’ve folded before! Models like the Delta Jet might even fly clear across the park!
Paper airplanes can glide a long way, down a long straight line, before hitting the ground. Or they can catch thermals and soar higher and higher, until finally they’re gone from sight altogether.
It seems like magic, but it’s not. With not much more than a piece of paper, you can make gliders that zip across the room or waft into the sky. This book will tell you how.
Why Planes Fly…or Don’t!
There are lots of ways that things can fly They can be lighter than air, like a party balloon, and float on the breeze. They can be picked up by the wind, like a kite, or a spider, or a dandelion seed. They can rise on a jet of hot air or gas, like a rocket. They can flap their wings, like hummingbird sand bees. They can be pushed or pulled by an engine, like a jumbo jet. Or they can glide on wide-spread wings, like sailplanes, eagles, and paper airplanes.
But what do we mean when we talk about flying?
To be flying, an object has to stay in the air and not fall down. Some people might tell you that the best paper airplane, the one that goes farthest of all, is a tight wad of paper. But that isn’t flying. The wad is falling from the moment it leaves your hand. To be flying, it has to keep going steadily, and not slowdown or dive to the ground. Paper airplanes can’t stay up forever, but they can glide a long way, down a long straight line, before hitting the ground.
This section will tell you how those wings of paper really fly.
Animals that Fly
Only four kinds of animals have ever learned how to truly fly: insects, birds, bats, and pterosaurs.
Insects are the oldest fliers. They have been flitting about for 300 million years or more. They flap specialized wings to get around. Pterosaurs, birds,