Balsa aeroplanes

July 4, 2012 11:44 PM

I remember seeing a very pretty video of model planes made out of clingfilm and balsa wood, and driven by rubber bands, flying around in an indoor hall for as long as 30 minutes. My search-fu fails me, though. I can find some videos of these "indoor duration" planes, but what I'm looking for is a particular one with fairly high production values. Anyone remember this?
posted by Zarkonnen to MetaFilter-Related at 11:44 PM (12 comments total)

Is it this?
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:24 AM on July 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

Or this? This is the kickstarter project.
posted by DarthDuckie at 5:53 AM on July 5, 2012 [8 favorites]

Oh man, that Float thing looks amazing. Or at least the planes do. They stay up for half an hour? I thought they were playing the film in slo-mo, but then the guy reaches up and grabs it in real time. Holy crap.
posted by DU at 5:59 AM on July 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

More info here, I think.
posted by DU at 6:04 AM on July 5, 2012

DarthDuckie: It was indeed the Float documentary trailer. Thank you! I did search Vimeo but clearly used the wrong terms.
posted by Zarkonnen at 6:24 AM on July 5, 2012

The filmmaker came and spoke at our office. We had to turn off all the air conditioning in our auditorium, since the floor vents and would interfere with the plane flights. Apparently they take hours to build and the competitors hoard certain batches of rubber bands that have superior torque. The level of detail is just insane. Blazecock Pileon's video is gorgeous too.
posted by DarthDuckie at 6:38 AM on July 5, 2012

Here's a really old post I made on a similar topic...

(Also, I'm pretty sure clingfilm is only really useful for wrapping up Ray Orbison.)
posted by kaibutsu at 7:37 AM on July 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

You're not alone on that one.
posted by MuffinMan at 7:40 AM on July 5, 2012

You can google around the terms indoor flight or slow flight if you want to look for more resources, it is a rabbit hole. I swear they did a segment on it once on Mr. Rogers or Sesame Street or one of those but I can't find it. Big resource page here. Thanks for pointing out that movie.
posted by nanojath at 9:49 AM on July 5, 2012

I think they make industrial robots. The incredibly cool blue sky floaty stuff is basically for PR.
posted by iotic at 1:49 PM on July 5, 2012

So how many of you contributed to the kickstarter? It got funded yesterday.
posted by Ayn Rand and God at 8:43 PM on July 5, 2012

Might be relevant for sheer fun
posted by infini at 7:48 AM on July 6, 2012