How to Make the Simple Starfighter Paper Airplane

Fast, long range and small, the Simple Starfighter is a nimble, less complex development of the Starfighter "drone fighter" paper airplane. The Simple Starfighter omits its ancestor's canards in favor of a semi-tailless design for greater simplicity in construction.

The development of the Simple Starfighter came about to address both the lack of semi-tailless designs in recent times (indeed, the last published was the Simple StarDragon in early 2013) and the lack of a very simple drone fighter. While I have continuously pushed simplicity in drone fighter designs lately, no other designs omitted canards or conventional tail surfaces. Thus, some complexity was allowed to remain in the construction of those designs. With the Simple Starfighter, I decided to use the proven wing design of its namesake but shorten the fuselage and delete its canards. In flight testing, the prototype flew well and proved itself a worthy aircraft. On that basis, I approved it for publication.

TAA USAF Designation: D380-1

Required:
1 Piece of 8 by 10.5 inch graph paper

Tape

Scissors

Ruler

Pencil

Stapler

Fold your paper in half so that half a box is at the crease line. Make two marks 8 boxes from one another and mark out the fuselage as shown. The counterweight should be made as a 2 by 3 rectangle with the vertical stabilizer two boxes behind it. Measure 1 box forward along the half box line and and make a mark; then make a solid horizontal line 5 boxes from it as shown. 2.5 boxes from either end of the solid horizontal line, make a vertical, perpendicular dotted line.

After the fuselage is made, take another sheet of paper that is folded in half along the lines of boxes. Mark out the wing as shown (1 boxes in length by 6 boxes in width, and a swept portion in front of this box of 3 boxes of span eliminated every 4 boxes of chord toward the front of the fuselage). Then cut the wing out.

Solid lines indicate places to cut. Dotted lines indicate fold lines.

Note: 1 box = 0.25 inches

Cut out your fuselage and fold its counterweights into place. Cut off the extra vertical fin. Once this is done, fold along the vertical dotted line and cut along the solid horizontal line. Once the cut has been made, undo the fold and tape where designated.

Cut out the wings, pull the wing through the slit in the fuselage, and then apply tape. Fold the winglets along the dotted lines. Flatten the wings and canards to where they have no anhedral deflection. Apply one staple in the area of the counterweight folds. This will complete your Simple Starfighter.

Due to its advanced semi-tailless design, the Simple Starfighter can be tricky for new origami aviators initially. With tuning and practice however, it can be mastered quite handily. Launches should be done at neutral or positive attitudes at medium to high speed. Launches can be done at a positive attitude, but launch speed should be increased (range may be reduced). Additional applicable surfaces include slats, flaps, flaperons, elevators, ailerons, elevons, spoilers, spoilerons, air brakes and a trimmable rudder. Enjoy!