A group of students from the Shenzhen Zhili Middle School, led by Zhu Junjie, a student from Class 16 of Grade 1, spent almost six months putting together a gigantic yet perfectly functional RC paper plane. Featuring a wingspan of 6.06 meters and a fuselage length of 5.06 meters, the world’s largest RC paper plane was successfully tested earlier this month, staying in the air for about 15 minutes before successfully landing on the ground.
“We just wanted to use the most basic paper airplane principles, combined with engineering technology, to create a stable, extra-large model,” Zhu Junjie, the project’s chief designer and pilot, told reporters about his initial motivation.
Last October, Zhu and his team won the championship and broke the national record at the China International Aircraft Design Challenge, which gave them the confidence to tackle an even bigger project, such as setting a new Guinness World Record. After researching and confirming that the 6-meter size was yet unattained in the field of unmanned remote-controlled paper airplanes at the time, they set a new goal for themselves – to create “the largest remote-controlled paper airplane to date!”
“The biggest challenge of this project is precisely its ‘extra-large’ nature,” Zou Guoyun, the instructor of the school’s model aircraft club, told reporters, adding that in ultra-large aircraft, every 1-degree adjustment of the wing surface and every 1-centimeter shift in the center of gravity directly affects lift and stability.
Although the core team members have an average age of only 16, they overcame engineering challenges that could be considered difficult even for adult professionals in the field of aeronautics. In terms of materials, they chose lightweight KT board as the main material, but despite its advantage, it also meant that the larger the area it covered, the more obvious the deformation. The team innovatively introduced carbon fiber strips to reinforce key parts, finding a delicate balance between “lightweight” and “high strength.”
In terms of design, they abandoned the initial idea of simply scaling up a standard 1-meter model to a 1:6 scale. After three generations of model iterations, they finally determined a layout with a fuselage length of over 5 meters and a wingspan of over 6 meters to reduce the difficulty of operation.
“We want this project to become a symbol of scientific and technological innovation for Chinese youth, showcasing our wisdom and independent innovation capabilities to the world,” Zhu Junjie reportedly said about the team’s achievement.
