Gareth Branwyn is a freelance writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture. He is currently a contributor to Boing Boing, Wink Books, and Wink Fun. And he has a new best-of writing collection and “lazy man’s memoir,” called Borg Like Me.
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This Sunday, tomorrow, paper airplane wizard and Maker Faire presenter, John Collins will be attempting to set a new world record for paper flight. The world record attempt will happen at 9:45am PST. The throws will take place at McClellan Air Force Base (3028 Peacekeeper Way, McClellan, CA) in a hangar. The aircraft is designed by John and will be thrown by Joe Ayoob.
You can listen to a radio interview with John from earlier in the week here. And you can see the entire event, streamed live, tomorrow.
Things are looking great in practice flights. John writes:
The plane flew more than 230 feet yesterday. The best throw of the day was just a bit more than 233. For our practice purposes, that was a test throw and so didn’t count as one of our selected ten throws of the day. The best of the 10 were 227 and 225. In all, we beat the record 5 times with 3 planes on January 29th. We’re definitely on track to re-write the distance record on February 26th. Stephen Kreiger’s world record stands at 207 feet and 4 inches. It’s all just talk until we officially attempt to break it February 26th.
Godspeed, John Collins!
More:
Maker Faire Bay Area: The Paper Airplane Guy Interview
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Gareth Branwyn is a freelance writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture. He is currently a contributor to Boing Boing, Wink Books, and Wink Fun. And he has a new best-of writing collection and “lazy man’s memoir,” called Borg Like Me.
View more articles by Gareth Branwyn
Incredibly cool. Allow myself to repeat myself, incredibly cool!
Go John Go! Looking forward to seeing you at Maker Faire Bay Area this year too!
Hey, what’s this pushing a plane with a non-physically-touching piece of cardboard? Cheating. `~- Nehmo
So what happened? The Ustream was so laggy it was unwatchable and his website has no updates.
Yes, it was so sad that the Ustream was so horrible and unwatchable.
But finally- Here’s the youtube video!
http://youtu.be/wedcZp07raE
Congrats to a national treasure, Mr. John Collins, paper airplane *God*.