Paper Planes now a Sport!

Did you know that paper planes are now a sport?

Red Bull just recently held the Red Bull Paper Wings com­pe­ti­tion in Aus­tria, a con­test to decide who would be crowned the paper plane world cham­pion of 2009.

A total of 253 “ath­letes” took part in the com­pe­ti­tion where they are judged based on the “longest air time”, “longest dis­tance” and “Acro­bat­ics”, using a piece of A4 sized paper to fold their planes.

The win­ners are Jovica Kozlica from Croa­tia for the longest dis­tance at a stag­ger­ing 54.5m, Leonard Ang from Brazil for the longest air time of 11.66 sec­onds, and the acro­bat­ics title went to Japan­ese com­peti­tor Kish­lura Kisshii.

Another inter­est­ing fact about paper planes..

Did you know that there is a Guin­ness World Record for time aloft for paper air­planes.. that is the “longest air time”.. Ken Black­burn from Lau­rel Hill, Florida first set the record in 1983 with an air time of 16.89 sec­onds. He then re-set the record twice, once in 1987 (17.2 sec­onds) and in 1996 (18.8 sec­onds), before los­ing it in 1997 and regain­ing it in 1998 with a stag­ger­ing 27.6 sec­onds. The records stands till today..

So start fold­ing till you find the right design and start doing some throw­ing exer­cises for Red Bull Paper Wings com­pe­ti­tion 2010.. Interested?

By the way.. Ken Black­burn, that record holder.. he was no stranger to planes.. he is an Aero­nau­ti­cal Engi­neer work­ing for Jacobs Engi­neer­ing at Eglin Air Force Base, doing research on small unmanned air vehicles.

source: 1,2

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Tagged as: Acrobatics, Aeronautical, Airtime, Austria, Brazil, Competition, Contest, Croatia, Distance, Engineer, Florida, Guinness, Japan, Paper, planes, Record, Red bull, Wings, world