Big paper plane lets imaginations soar for Tama teens

By Dave Rasdal
The Gazette

People laughed at the Wright Brothers. So, why should Ryan Kratoska and Nick Clancy be any different as they set about to fly their approximately 7-foot-long paper airplane?

“It took two of us to hold it at the right level and throw it,” says Ryan.

“One, two, three,” counted the 16-year-old sophomores at South Tama County High School. “Go!”

The airplane fluttered 60 feet behind the school.

They wanted more. So off to the Toledo airport they went.

“We just did it for something to do,” Nick says.

“As we did it, it got more interesting,” Ryan says.

The lifelong friends were just being boys in their prep-hour class. Making paper airplanes fascinated them.

“In study hall we kept making small ones,” Ryan says. “We kept getting detention.”

They were not deterred.

“We ran experiments,” Nick says. “We made a bigger one and a bigger one and then this huge one.”

One sheet of paper wasn’t enough. Their imaginations soared.

What, they thought, would happen if they taped sheets of paper together to make it bigger?

Using 8-1/2-by-11-inch sheets of recycled paper and cellophane tape, they simply multiplied length, width and thickness.

Their 3-by-3 airplane used 27 sheets of paper. It flew OK.

Their 4-by-4 plane used 64 sheets and plastic straws for support. It flew better.

Their 7-by-7 plane used 512 sheets of paper, 50 wooden rulers, four rolls of tape and two sticks of staples. Would it fly the best?

Dissatisfied with launching by hand, the boys drove Nick’s 1997 Sunbird to the airport, tied a 30-foot rope to its rear spoiler and connected the other end to the nose of their plane.

With Ryan holding the paper airplane, Nick climbed behind the wheel and floored it. As the rope ran out, Ryan tossed the plane in the air.

Up. Down. Plop.

Undeterred, even as police showed up to make sure they had permission to use the airport, the boys recruited classmates Dustin Horne and Kyle Lux among friends watching the feat.

Dustin followed Nick in his SUV, while Kyle stood through the SUV’s sunroof, holding the paper airplane up for launch.

Racing down the airstrip at maybe 35 mph, Kyle launched the plane.

Up. Down. Plop.

Oh, no. The big paper airplane, its 512 sheets of paper, its 4 1/2 hours of build time, somersaulted down the runway.

“It wouldn’t fly, so we just messed around with it,” Nick chuckles. “When we got done with it, it was demolished.”

“I think our math was a little off,” Ryan laughs.

“We probably didn’t need to use as many thicknesses of paper,” Nick adds.

Still, they hope to challenge the world record, whether that’s the 30-foot-6-inch one made in the early 1990s by Virginia high school kids with help from NASA scientists or one even larger.

“We’re probably going to make a bigger one this summer, figure out how to make it stronger,” Ryan says. “We want to beat the record.”