> The back of the wings can be adjusted to steer your paper airplane. Bend the wings up to make the airplane dive and bend the wings down to make the airplane climb.
If the elevator is behind the center of mass/lift they need to push the back down, so they need to point up to raise the nose of the aircraft (other side of cg/cl).
If the surfaces are in the front of cg/cl, they need to do the opposite. To pull the nose up, they would have to point downwards.
Exactly. The site calls them ailerons (presumably because they are on the wing and can roll the plane) but they are quite far back from the cg and so function more like elevators when used together.
Concorde worked this way [1], and called them 'elevons'. When I used to work on Tornados these were called 'tailerons'.
I’m so curious as to the answer here. My intuition says you’re right, but my second-questioning brain says “maybe the people who run a site about nothing but paper planes got it right the first time”.
Is there something about the aerodynamics of paper planes that I don’t understand? Probably!
You would think that the quasi-ailerons would deflect the air to change the direction of flight, but it changes the chord line and aerodynamic characteristics of the wing.
If the surfaces are in the front of cg/cl, they need to do the opposite. To pull the nose up, they would have to point downwards.