Michael Weinstein

A lot of my pilot friends talk about building model airplanes before they were sufficiently aged to fly the Real McCoy. Being an Origami sensei at a very tender age I folded paper airplanes rather than build models. Indeed I wrote my first paper airplane book in High School. It had to wait over 30 years for publication, until computers democratized Origami publications.

I should explain, way back when to publish diagrams the lines had to be VERY even and professional. This took specialized drafting tools that weren’t widely available to anyone not in industries related to architecture and engineering. Once home computers became ubiquitous and computer assisted design (CAD) software came down in price just about anyone could write an Origami book, and I did just that, turning the rude drawings of my high school book into Stationery Flight. I still think the book is cool, and it is contains the only flyable Origami biplane of which I am aware.

I’ve never been one to sit on my laurels, and I started thinking about another design project. I had never made paper airplanes from squares, as they’re a short rectangle that isn’t so easy for airplane designs, where you usually want to shift weight to the front for weight and balance. One the other hand squares are bilaterally symmetric along the diagonal axis, allowing some design considerations not available in other airplanes. That, and Origami paper is square. I can’t imaging a better paper for airplanes, as Origami paper, or Kami as us Origami-types call it (Japanese for paper) is light, strong and comes in lots of colors and patterns allowing you to make really pretty airplanes. Moreover it’s now widely available in craft stores and on the internet.

Another important thing happened in my life before I started on my second book. I trained for an earned a pilot certificate, meaning I could fly real airplanes, something I do all the time (I actually won an airplane in a sweepstakes). I have flown myself and my spouse from Florida to Vermont, though I’ve only been as far West as Wisconsin. As of this writing I have around a thousand hours in the cockpit.

Whenever I write a book I want to write something that doesn’t exist in the world. Stationery Flight was the first Paper Airplane book to use sophisticated Origami (at least when it was written). The book that became On Folded Wings wasn’t the first to be made from squares, so that was out. So I decided to do something very different. I poured into it my knowledge of aviation and flying airplanes. I added wiki-style biographers of the most important aircraft designers you never heard of (e.g. Bleriot, who invented the stick and rudder system and was the first to cross the English channel in an airplane, Kelly Johnson, who took the famed SR71 from drawing to prototype in a year).

But I didn’t stop there. My airplanes were broken up into sections depending on the design (simpler aircraft at the beginning, canard airplanes all together, as well as the ones with structural tubes). I gave each section a science blurb about aviation, like how we measure airspeed, how airplane engines work, even how birds navigate.

Lastly, I added a selection of Origami airplane stands. My thinking was that the airplanes, while flyable, could also make nice static displays and included some stands to display them. Square airplane designs, biographies, science stuff and stands become On Folded Wings.

I can’t seem to leave it be. One day I got the idea to connect two different airplanes to make one big one. I was applying the dictums of Modular Origami, a branch of Origami where simple pieces are combined to make much larger elegant models. I have made many aircraft over the years that couldn’t fly due to weight and balance problems. When I combined these I got airplanes that flew just fine.

I should mention that I’ve never pursued aircraft that looked like modern jet fighters, what works on a jet really doesn't work well on a paper airplane. Moreover, none of these were crafted to win records of duration or distance. I have designs that can do that, but they’re wildly complex in their assembly and really don’t look like much. For me if the airplane flies smoothly across the room and looks cool I’m good with it.

I designed and assembled a set of ten front pieces and ten back pieces, and tested all the combinations to see what flew. I also found a set of three piece designs that flew nicely and assembled them into Modular Origami Airplanes.

I did something very new with Modular Origami Airplanes. In the past I used a small West Coast publisher called Cypress House Press. They were very nice and made me nice books, though it took forever for the publication. I decided to try and use the on-demand publication process on Amazon. I though that publication on demand made sense for this sort of work and I had the expertise to assemble a book and use it. Thus Modular Origami Airplanes is available on Amazon. Indeed I made a Kindle for it today.

I have another whole collection of modular aircraft that I’ll publish one of these days, indeed the second collection is compatible with the first one, so the two together will have hundreds and hundreds of possibilities.

And I’m not done yet…

One of the photos shows my aircraft, The Lucky Strike. She’s a 1962 Mooney M20c, goes 160 miles an hour burning about 9 gallons of gas an hour. And the tail isn’t on backwards, everyone else’s is. The tortoise is my boy President Roosevelt. I’ve always been a herper, and I’m settled on Redfoots. They’re really cool.

Michael Weinstein

December 28, 2021