Build the Barnaby Paper Aeroplane

The barnaby flyer paper aeroplane was named after Capt. Ralph S. Barnaby (USN Ret.) (naturally). Paper aeroplanes are very cool and impressive, so impressive that there are international paper aeroplane flying contests.
The most poplular kind of paper aeroplane is the simple dart, practially everyone knows how to make these and they are probably the most simplest to launch and fine tune.

Step 1: Choose your construction material.

I would recommend strong paper with a decent thickness, the A4 printer paper in your office (if you work in one) is ideal, as it is the makings of small and sturdy paper aeroplanes that can do crazy stunts when launched and tuned properly.

Note: I tried using A3 size paper and they do not fly as well, the reason for this is if you consider the rc aeroplanes people fly can do much better stunts than their full size brothers, I cannot fully remember why this is but I presume it has to do with aerodynamics.

Comments

[Emsaid]

used to make these all the time! cept we called em diaper planes

[GEEK1]

I made these a few years ago. The teacher said no paper airplanes in class. I thought this would just fall on the floor. When I dropped it it flew up and over a book shelf and I got detention. Note that I dropped it not throw it. These plane are awsome. Great instructable

[Flumpkins]

Holy moly dats awesome!!!

[theHankster]

A lifetime ago, when I was 10, I had a book on paper airplanes. It was the first book that I found with the Barnaby plane in it. It also had a couple of small designs based on gliding birds. I traced the seagull (wingspan of about 1.25 inches. Once trimmed, it would slowly glide in circles from my ceiling to the floor taking seemingly forever. Thanks for reviving that memory! -Henry

[Visitor]

These are great. We used to make them in the office and see who could make the smallest properly flying plane. Thin newspaper paper was the best material for tiniest planes (about one inch wingspan), because it was cheap, easily available and very light. Just one note, put the folds in the leading edge under the wing. When you do this and then do the centerline fold, the paper forms a nice camber to the top of the wing profile. Creases on top of the wing also cause turbulance like in the drawing in step 3 decreasing the already small lift generated by the wing.

[Visitor]

I mean the drawing in step 2.

[Hugo.B]

My Ruler
Good Grief... couldn't you have used the other end of the jolly thing!?
My Rubber
...and my chewed up pencil.
You have really got a nerve!

H.B.

[coolflame]

yeah cool, worked great! didn't fold paper aeroplanes for a couple of years. nice idea for spare time. btw, i used a scalpel shaped cutting knife for the tail - more precise, faster, ... one question - where do you come from? you use a4-shaped paper, a staedler rubber (what indicates you come from an europe country) but you use a ruler with inch units ... also measurings are given in cm. so where do you come from? i have no problem with that - i'm from germany - and i'm interested if there are more european users of this site. plz let me know ;)

[Jezza Bear]

Llama13's profile says Ecosse which is French for Scotland. I was going to say they came from the United Kingdom because although the EU wanted us to go completely over to metric units we (the peoples of the UK) have resisted the move and still remain with imperial measurements. It appears the EU has agreed to us remaining with imperial measurements although we still use metric.

[ll.13]

Yeah! that's why we measure items in metres and inches, like for example 2metres and 5inches!

[coolflame]

ah, ok! could have used the profile - sorry i'm new to this site. but thx for the info.

[Jezza Bear]

rofl-Great instructable, I vaguely remember doing these as a kid and made then with a wingspan of 10 1/16 cm ;-)

[coolflame]

ok i didn't want to start a 'discussion' about meassurements - but that's the point when it get's nonsensical to me. a 1/16 cm is complete nonsense, even a 1/16 inch (does that exist ???) is counterintuitive.

[Jezza Bear]

Coolflame llama13 and I were joking. As we both use imperial measurements and metric we were mixing the two types....sorry British humour, hence my use my use ofthe ;-) emoticon :-p

[coolflame]

just to show you what i mean: 1 inch = 2,54 cm -> 1/16 inch = 0,15875 cm.

what should that be!? even a 1/16 cm ... argh ...

ok, stop! you got your's, i got mine. i'll have to improvise time by time

[crapflinger]

1/16 cm wouldn't make sense...because a cm isn't divided that way...you'd just give a mm measurement since the cm is already divisible into mm units...you get 16th of an inch because an inch has been divided as such (half an inch, quarter of an inch, eighth of an inch, 16th of an inch, 32nd of an inch, 64th of an inch(which would suck to try to mark out))