I have been obsessed with airplanes ever since I can remember. As a kid, paper airplanes were a constant source of creative fun and a serious engineering challenge. Even after I had built radio controlled models and flown real airplanes, paper airplanes held an unwavering fascination for me. I first learned how aircraft control surfaces worked after experimenting with paper airplanes. Even though I didn't know the terminology at the time, I learned about center-of-gravity, aerodynamic stalls, airspeed and lift-vectors by messing around with paper airplanes. Mostly, though, I just built tons of different models for fun and spent hours flying them and tuning them in the various front yards of my youth. I decided to create this website as a small tribute to the cheap, endless entertainment of paper airplanes. It is kicking off with my favorite, folded paper airplane design, and hopefully more will follow later.
Have fun flying!
J.R. Hogarth "Hoagy" de la Plante
Oakland, California, 2010
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The Model A1 "Suzanne" is a design that I invented when I was somewhere around 7-8 years old. I'm sure that other people have stumbled on this design as well. It is an excellent flyer due to the densely folded paper in the nose section which allows it to be launched as hard as you can throw it. It is named after my mother, who encouraged me with reams of paper as a kid and setup my first, real flying lesson at the age of 10. Thanks, Mom! It remains, to this day, the best flying folded paper airplane I've ever seen. |
| Design submissions welcome! Email me at hogarthd@gmail.com |
A note about the models on this site - These are all folded paper airplanes. There are a lot of different schools of paper airplane design from simple, folded copy paper types up to the complicated laminated designs with dozens of parts. I decided to dedicate this site to the simplest folded paper models - they use regular copy paper and, for the most part, don't need any tape, glue, scissors or additional items.