Book Review: The Gliding Flight

I saw a video of one of John Collin's world-record-winning planes and the article talked about how he had a few books that showed how to make some really cool planes. So I put this on the library request list and when it arrived, I pulled out some copy paper and got to work. The book starts with information about aerodynamics and then moves in to the best kinds of paper for making paper airplanes. I skipped over all that - let's fold some planes.

I probably shouldn't have skipped all that. Some of these planes were really complicated. As you can see, I didn't end up folding that many. I did make a lot of Crumple Ball Specials. For some complicated folds that are used regularly, there are flipbook-style animations built into the borders of the book. Even still, I had trouble figuring out some of the folds. I probably could have gone online to figure them out, but that just felt like too much work.

Not pictured - additional crumpled balls

In the end, I folded quite a few over December and when I'd throw a bunch of them at family gatherings at our house, the children were impressed at how far the planes flew and would run to fetch them so that I could throw them over and over again.

Someone with sufficient time and patience will create some really neat looking planes that fly amazingly well using the guides in this book.


The Gliding Flight by John Collins (Amazon.com)