Japanese paper airplane virtuoso Takuo Toda – has ever come close to breaking the 30-second barrier. On Sunday, he set a world record for a hand-launched plane made with only paper, but fell just short of the 30-second mark.
With a bend of the knees and an arch of the back, Toda, flying a 10-centimeter-long craft of his own design, made 10 attempts to break his own record of 27.9 seconds set earlier this year in Hiroshima but failed to best his previous mark, settling for a 26.1-second flight.
That was still the best ever recorded for a strictly paper-only craft. His 27.9 record was set with a plane that had tape on it.
The 30cm planes, made from heat-resistant paper treated with silicon, survived temperatures of 250C and wind speeds of mach 7 ‑ seven times the speed of sound ‑ during testing. But the attempt was postponed after the pair acknowledged it would be all but impossible to track them during their week-long journey to Earth, assuming any of them survived the searing descent.
"I felt a lot of pressure," he said after his paper airplane fly-off at a Japan Airlines hangar near Tokyo's Haneda Airport. "Everything is a factor – the moisture in the air, the temperature, the crowd."
Making a paper planes is called “kami hikoki” in Japanese. In the world of competitive paper airplane throwing, a 20-second flight is exceptional, 25 or better is world class. Thirty is the stuff that dreams are made of.
Toda, an engineer, is the head of the Japan Origami Airplane Association and is virtually unmatched in his ability to fold paper aircraft.
In keeping with traditional rules of the ancient Japanese art of origami, he uses only one sheet of paper, which he does not cut or paste.
Toda still not fully satisfied with his achievement. "I will get the 30-second record," he said. "It's just a matter of time."
Via - The Huffington Post , AP
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Record
1 comments:
Keep it going Toda. Don't give up. All the best.
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