IFrom ARocket.
Worth a read by anyone interested in paper aerioplanes or in 
interesting things.

80 miles glide from just under 20 miles high release point 
is not bad.

And falling fast enough to end up sticking vertically into a 
"packed dirt road" is interesting.



        Russell


_____________________


> On Wed, Jan 30, 2008 at 05:36:06PM +0000, Ian Woollard 
> wrote:
> I don't know whether everyone saw this; the japanese space 
> agency
> intend to launch a paper aeroplane from orbit, and they 
> expect it to
> reach the ground intact.
>
> http://www.discoverychannel.ca/reports/article.aspx?aid=6514
>
> If it sounds a bit daft; they already tested it at Mach 7!
>
> Locating the plane after reentry could be a bit of a 
> challenge ;-)

Very interesting.  The best I'd previously heard of for a 
paper plane
was a suspected Mach 1.  It was a pretty effective way to 
inspire school
kids though.

I was a participant with JP Aerospace back in March 2002, 
when we were
invited to participate in the dedication ceremony for the 
Oklahoma
Spaceport.  That was basically the point where they had 
passed the
legislation to get started on turning the Clinton-Sherman 
Airport into
the OK Spaceport.  I have pics at 
http://ian.kluft.com/pics/jpa-dss3-ok/

We flew a weather balloon to 95,000' which carried 550 paper 
airplanes
made by Oklahoma school kids.  We recovered about 200 paper 
planes in the
same field where the balloon landed (some still in the 
balloon basket),
about 10 miles north of El Reno OK and 80 miles ENE of the 
launch site at
the OK Spaceport/KCSM Airport.  So the planes around there 
were obviously
not trimmed for level flight, and probably got out late in 
the descent.
One streamlined paper plane was found sticking straight down 
in a
packed-dirt road - we thought some of the streamlined ones 
might have
gone supersonic early in their descent.  (But they'd have 
all slowed
significantly in the lower atmosphere.)

Here's the part that ties back into the URL you posted, how 
to track them...
The balloon had redundant Amateur Radio APRS tracking 
devices.  So we knew
where the release point was - where the balloon popped and 
started dumping
overboard the basket's contents.  But the paper planes, of 
course, were
not equipped with any telemetry or avionics. ;-)

Remarkably, one plane was found on the other side of the 
Oklahoma City
metro area, about 80 miles beyond the release point.  So 
that one was
trimmed for level flight.  The planes all had stickers on 
them saying
something like, "You've found an Oklahoma Spaceplane!  Enter 
code xxxxx
at http://web.site.address/ and the child who made it will 
be notified
where it was found."  I can hardly imagine how pleased the 
child or
children who made that one must have been.

I figured they'd be lucky if 10% of the 350 that were not 
found near the
balloon landing site were found at all.  They slightly beat 
that guess.
The count was something in the upper 30's.  The statewide 
media coverage
and participation from most schools in the state probably 
helped with
awareness to look for them in fields.

It turned out to be a popular technical and educational 
exercise.  After
we returned home to California, Oklahoma residents 
reproduced the event
successfully at least a few times over the next year.  This 
kind of thing
can be done anywhere in the world that you can arrange to 
fly and track
a weather balloon.  But it helps to have some population in 
the downrange
area that you scatter the paper planes over.
_______________________________________________
aRocket@exrocketry.net
http://exrocketry.net/mailman/listinfo/arocket 

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