The creator of the world's most efficient paper airplane, John Collins, has launched The New World Champion Paper Airplane Book, a guide that explains how to make his record-breaking design, which he named "Susanne" after his wife, and 23 other "masterpieces of precision and aerodynamics."
While “Susanne” was designed for distance by maximizing lift and glide, some of the other paper airplane designs in the book are made to stay aloft for prolonged periods, in some cases for several minutes.
The degree of difficulty in recreating Collins’ paper airplanes may vary, but he makes it as easy as possible for the reader to construct them by including step-by-step photographic explanations. And for those who are digitally challenged, there are 16 tear-out airplanes made of durable paper that the reader can start throwing around as soon as he or she can pull them out.
“Susanne” set a new Guinness World Record on February 26, 2012, when former California Golden Bears quarterback Joe Ayoob threw the paper airplane a distance of 226 feet and 10 inches inside a hangar at McClellan Air Force Base near Sacramento, California. The space restriction of the hangar shortened the run-up-to-throw distance, but regardless of the limitation, Ayoob’s throw broke the standing record by nearly 20 feet. This is the first time a paper airplane record has been broken by a thrower/designer team. “Susanne” is also the first paper airplane design to use changing airspeed to enhance performance.
Watch the world record throw here.
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