Flights of fancy:

A trio of paper aircraft enthusiasts broke a Guinness World Record in South Korea when they sent a folded plane for a flight of 252 feet, 7 inches. The paper airplane was designed by Chee Yie Jian of Malaysia, folded by Shin Moo Joon of South Korea and thrown into the air by Kim Kyu Tae of South Korea. Kim threw the plane eight times, achieving a distance of 252 feet and 7 inches with his best throw. The video in the UPI link below is pretty impressive. This throw overcame the previous World Record for that was 226 feet and 10 inches in 2012. “My design coupled with Shin’s wing mods/adjustments and Kim’s ‘rocket arm’ is a winning combination, so I wasn’t worried,” Chee Yie Jian told Guinness. Chee formed the “Shin Kim Chee Team” after a 2019 attempt at breaking the world record fell short. “The paper airplane community is small yet global, in that everyone knows one another online,” Chee said. “I have known Shin close to a decade now and we’ve been constantly discussing new ways to fly higher, further, and longer via email and social media.”

Throwing paper planes is an extreme sport! Since 2006, Red Bull has hosted the Red Bull Paper Wings world paper plane championships. Three disciplines are contested: distance, hangtime and aerobatics. With normal aircraft, wings are shaped in such a way that air travels over the top of the wing at a higher speed than the air beneath. The faster air above the wing results in a drop in pressure compared with below the wing. The difference is what causes the wing to lift the aircraft. Paper planes – the bane of school teachers everywhere – are actually a good way to learn about aerodynamics. Some planes are designed for long flights and some for accuracy. Engineering students often use paper airplanes to learn the principles of flight and aerodynamics. That’s why students and employees of the Braunschweig Institute of Technology in Germany built the largest paper plane in 2013. It had a wing-span of 59 ft 9 in – as long as a bowling alley! Paper artists use a “bone folder” to keep their folds as sharp and as neat as possible. You probably don’t have a bone folder, but you can use a ruler or a credit card instead. There are some soaring paper airplane designs in the links below.

Soaring hobbies

I used to like origami as a hobby,
But I gave up as it was a lot of paperwork.

What was Dr. Frankenstein’s favorite hobby?
Bodybuilding…

To get in shape, I need to pick up a sport as a hobby…
I was thinking about competitive eating.

[First Date] Her: So what do you do for a hobby?
Him: I collect complete season DVDs of 90s sitcoms.
Her: Do you have any Friends?
Him: No.

May 20th Birthdays

1946 – Cher, 1982 – Sierra Boggess, 1993 – Caroline Zhang, 1981- Rachel Platten

1995 – Peyton Clark, 1918 – Jimmy  and 1971 – Tony Stewart, 2000 – George Jones

Morning Motivator:

Without challenge, adventure is impossible.”

World record paper airplane

Do it yourself