Perfecting the Paper Airplane

When I came back from Indiana, I had a memo on my desk about a paper airplane contest. Since it was the week of the fiscal year, I had better things to do than make paper airplanes. When my boss asked for my airplane on Monday, I was still recovering from year end so I quickly folded an airplane. It turns out that the actual competition wasn’t going to be until Thursday.

The original paper airplane

Since it was a slow week, a co-worker and I tried to perfect the paper airplane. I found a website that gave various designs of paper airplanes. I learned I am not very good at making paper airplanes and I still have no clue what an accordion fold is when it comes to a paper airplane – I know how to do a regular accordion fold but not one that is triangular. I did manage to try to fold several different styles of paper airplanes. Some worked by than others. My co-worker helped when I got stuck. By the end of the first day, I amassed a small air field on my desk and we were chasing airplanes all over our row and neighboring rows. It was good exercise.

By the time Thursday rolled around, I was confident in my first design and decided not to change it to a different one. Prizes were awarded for the design as well as distance. Because it was still slow, we kept practicing with our airplanes. At the last minute, I decided to change out my design. I should have stuck with the original. I think it would have gone farther. Oh well.

My final airplane

During a team meeting earlier in the day, someone asked the person in charge of the contest how they were going to measure the distance. I jokingly said my team could do it. Later, when the person in charges hands me two tape measurers and a ball of yarn, I guess he took me seriously. The contest was to take place outside on the patio. To save time, we marked off every ten feet using painters’ tape. We figured we could measure from the closest 10 feet and just add up as we go.

Yellow team flying their planes

Each team was allowed 3 pilots to fly the planes off the balcony. When the first team went, we tried to get exact measurements but they didn’t wait for us to measure before sending the next one into flight. Some of them went into the bushes while a few went over the fence. Someone said why not just guesstimate the distance. So that’s what we did for the other teams. Since each patio block was 2 feet, it really helped. I could use the 10 foot markers and then count blocks to figure out distance. I ran around and got a lot of steps in by doing this.

My team came in 2nd overall distance despite having the fewest participants. We came in first for average distance. One day we will get dilly bars I was told.

It was a fun team building/get to know other people activity. I got a lot of steps while perfecting my airplane. I still really can’t make a paper airplane but I had fun trying and practicing.