I wanted to love PowerUp 3.0. After all, when I was a kid, I would design and try out dozens of paper airplanes, trying to find exactly the right combination to make it glide forever. The thing that I realized when it came down to really putting the PowerUp 3.0 through its paces, and the detail that I had omitted from my memory of the halcyon days, was that I absolutely stink at making paper airplanes. I had help from PowerUp’s master folders. I watched videos on proper techniques. I laboriously obsessed over every fold. They all still made it about a foot before crashing to the earth. Hard. As much as I wanted my airplanes to soar like those in the product videos, I was unable to achieve such rarified feats.
But here’s the cool thing, the one time it did work? The one time my little paper drone caught a favorable breeze and soared up and over my house? It made all the trial and error worth it. For a few minutes, I had what I always wanted when I was a kid, folding all those paper airplane designs, a plane that wouldn’t come down until I made it and that I could control.
If your child obsesses over wind charts and you catch them gazing up at the sky whenever they hear an engine, this is the drone you’ve been looking for. The propellor, shaft, and smart module are all amazingly durable (I know, because I crashed them often), it’s well under the price of a standard RC airplane, and since the body is a paper airplane, you’ll be able to try out all sorts of different designs.
But what if controlling a paper airplane isn’t enough? What if you wish you could ride on one too? PowerUp has teamed up with Parrot to offer the PowerUp FPV on Kickstarter. It’s a dual-propeller drone that has a streaming camera built in. Using a VR rig that you insert your phone into, you can experience your airplane’s ride in first person and control it with a tilt of your head. With Auto-Pilot assistance, it might be enough to give struggling pilots like me what they need to take flight. They’ve got 40 days to go and are already over $300,000. Hit up their Kickstarter page to get the Early Bird special!
If all of this sounds intriguing and you’re ready to take your first step into drone-powered paper airplanes, we’re giving away PowerUp 3.0 packages to one lucky reader! All you have to do is enter your info below, and we’ll choose someone on December 4, 2015. Good luck!
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Congrats, Philip W.! Your PowerUp drone will be in the mail soon! Happy flying!