Today I was scanning my list of websites that need buildout trying to decide on the next task and my eyes fell upon Vintage Model Kits. A couple of days before, I had come across a folder containing a few personal relics and I figured researching for the website would give me a chance to value my old model airplanes while getting work done. I got right to work on the Vintage Model Aircraft section. I really wanted to find out more about my precious, vintage Whitewings gliders.
Old Whitewings Paper Airplanes
I received a kit of Whitewings paper glider models by Professor Yasuaki Ninomiya as a Christmas gift in 1983 and had a great time building and flying them. These were no ordinary paper airplanes! They flew so far that I had to take them to the college athletic fields to have room to fly them and I used a mountain bike to chase them down after each flight.
Impressed by the performance of the first few I built, I decided to take extra care in cutting out a couple of the high performance glider models so that I could later use the holes as a template to create a new plane. I figured that the F-15 Eagle and Spirit of St. Louis models would not fly particularly well, so I never built those, intending to use the blank back sides to trace and cut out new gliders. I lost interest in them, put them in a folder and have somehow kept them ever since, fully intending to laboriously recreate my own template and then make new gliders some day.
I need not have bothered. Although somewhat rare, these old Whitewings model airplane kits can be found on eBay for about ten to twenty dollars. Some of the newer ones have balsa fuselages and other parts, making them considerably lighter and stronger than the paper versions. I guess I should finally admit that 30 years have gone by and my treasured relics are really just trash and throw them away.
But I won’t.
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