[matthewmcg]

If you liked paper airplanes as a kid and you're curious about the current state of the art for hand thrown aircraft, check out "discus launch" gliders (DLGs). These are radio-controlled models with a 1 or 1.5 meter wing span that are designed to be strong enough to be hand launched to almost 200ft but light and aerodynamic enough that they can be held aloft for a very long time by thermals.

There are some interesting design choices that have to be made between optimizing for maximum launch height and maximum glide performance.

Here's a video showing a recent model available in kit form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD0VXi_DBMM

[pmcollins]

Here's the page if you want to buy the one in the video or learn more about its structure http://f3j.in.ua/snipe-2.html

Get a load of those prices. :-)

Also, I love how the minimalism even extends to the domain name.

[matthewmcg]

Yep, hand-made carbon fiber parts for niche applications are unavoidably expensive. Flying one of these things is like tossing a decent spec Macbook into the air and hoping you don't get it stuck in a tree.

F3K and F3J refer to numbered sections within the competition rules[1] set by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI). FAI is the Geneva-based organization that tracks most "official" flight records for all kinds of aircraft. F3K is the hand-launched glider class and F3J is the thermal duration soaring class.

[1] https://www.fai.org/sites/default/files/documents/sc4_vol_f3...

The community has adopted these designations as a shorthand for the aircraft types, sort of like how in the U.S. people refer "401(k) accounts" or "501(c)(3) organizations."