How to Make a Gliding Stunt Paper Airplane

In this Instructable i'm going to walk you through how to successfully craft an awesome stunt paper airplane.

Lets get started!

For this project you will need:

• 11" x 8.5" printer paper
• A ruler
• Scissors
• A ball point pen to mark on the plane
• A rounded pen or marker to crease the folds
• Tape (optional)

Take the blank page in portrait view, grab the upper right corner and drag it down to the left until you get a point in the upper left. Use the rounded pen or marker and run it along the edge of the fold to form a crisp crease.

Take the upper left point of the paper and drag it down to the right until you get the center point as shown in the picture. Now is where the tape comes into play. Take a small piece of clear tape and fold it over the right point to hold the base closed.

In this step we will fold over the point in the paper to create the nose. This will come in 2 stages, an initial fold over and a second fold over. I recommend a 1" fold on each stage. This will create a nice weight in the front of the airplane so that it wont go nose up when you throw it.

After forming the nose, we will now fold over the wings. First we need to fold the paper in half, in the width direction (the 8.5" side of the paper) Now, measuring 1" from the fold we just created, we will create another fold. Doing this on either side will create the 1" grab fold that we will hold from when throwing the airplane. The paper should look somewhat like a paper airplane now.

For this step we will be creating the wing tip stabilizers. We will measure a 1/4 of an inch on each wing tip and make a mark. Then, take the ruler and use it as a guide to fold the paper over the straight edge. Then refold them along that line so they stand up 90 degrees to the flat of the wings.

For control of the airplane we will be adding some flaps to the end of the wings. We will be able to fold these flaps to control what direction the plane will turn in flight. To form these flaps we will measure and mark 1 inch from either end of each wing, not including the 1/4 inch for the stabilizers in the last step. Now, draw a straight line on each mark that is half an inch in length. These lines should be perpendicular to the back edge of the wing. Refer to the three pictures in this step to see exactly what this should look like prior to cutting. Finally, take the scissors and cut along the 2 lines on each wing to create the flaps.

Before you fly, by manipulating the flaps in different directions you can steer the airplane to have it do turns and even loops!

Explore the different combinations to discover different maneuvers.

Try different combinations of flap positions and throwing techniques to discover awesome tricks!

Thanks for following along and happy flying!