To clarify for some of the questions that viewers have asked: 1. Flying site is Round Valley Dome in Eagar, AZ, for the 2022 US Indoor Championship. 2. HVAC was shut down the entire time; it is not possible to fly these airplanes when the HVAC is on due to their fragile nature 3. The doors were all closed for the same reason as (2). 4. This airplane is made from thin balsa wood and 0.5 micron thick OS Film. Flying weight was about 500mg. It was built for rubber power and achieved several flights over 15 minutes with rubber power.

Back in the 70’s I had a go with my nephew’s foam wing throw glider. I had a few goes and flattened out the flaps and lifted one slightly so the plane went in a large circle. When I threw it the first circle was amazing and then it went in a second loop without touching the ground…. The third loop saw the plane climb and then it went over a big oak tree and bounced higher. It kept looping over that tree until it started moving away, leaving my young nephew in tears… after about 30 minutes of flight it was so high nobody in our family could see it… and the funny thing on the plane packet mentioned that they wanted to hear about any flights over 45 SECONDS (we never did though, sadly)… We never saw that cheap chuck glider again. Once it got in the thermal it was lost for good and nothing we could do would bring it back. We couldn’t even follow it because it was just a tiny dot in the sky. I doubt I could repeat it if I tried for a decade. I was only 14 at the time.

That’s a superb video, too many years ago I had a similar experience with a folded paper plane. I was ten years old, walking home from school on a hot afternoon I launched the plane on a street corner and this massive boomer of a thermal took it straight up to about forty feet where it went round in sort of stalling hiccups for something like two or three minutes, I was spellbound! I tried that street corner many times after that but never repeated the event. Your video brought back this wonderful memory, thank you 🙏🏻🙏🏻

As a paraglider, I found this video very intriguing and really exhibits how thermals work like rising columns of air which is how we fly our paragliders. We stay up for hours dancing thermal to thermal. Interesting that they can even happen indoors if there is access to sunlight and the right conditions. Great job!

That’s just amazing!! I was an airline pilot for many years, but I lost my medical. I love flying RC gliders. your video seems supernatural 😊

This has to be the most angelic airplane I have ever seen.

I think you can really feel how light it is by looking at the clip, gravity doesn't want to deal with it, it's Amazing

This is an art form, an elegant moving air sculpture

First time I have ever seen anything like it. I love the idea of building these and watching them Fly as a testament to your patience and love for your hobby

Super cool! This hobby is way more developed than I could’ve imagined. Thanks for posting

This is insane! Like magic! Indoor thermal finding.

Congratulations on the mention of this video on page 64 of the September 2022 issue of Model Aviation!

My dad was at a similar event back in the 1940s or possibly early 50s. One of the contestants caught a fly and glued it to the airplane. The fly propelled it around the indoor arena for quite a while!

Thank you for sharing this video. I have lost (2) model gliders during my lifetime to thermals taking them Out Of Sight...once, when I was about 10 yrs old tossing a small "Traveller" model from Aero Tern Models and the other was a dime store Guillows "Jetfire". Although it was sad to lose them, it was a thrill to watch them be taken up, up and away until I could no longer even see them.

Awesome video! About 30 years ago, we were wasting time in P.E. class because it was semester exam day, but there were no exams in that class. We were allowed to just hang out and mess around in the gym for the two hours as long as we behaved. A few of us decided to make some paper airplanes and see who could make the best one. I made one that was kind of a modified dart, and after some tuning, had a plane that performed really well with a gentle hand launch. After we'd flown each of ours several times, and decided that each of ours had its merits, I got this crazy idea to throw mine really hard towards the ceiling, just to see what I'd get. Well, it flew right up to just below the hanging lights, leveled off, rocked side to side a few times, then slowly glided to the other end of the gym. It hit the opposite wall about 8 ft. from the floor (a little over 90 ft. away from where I threw it). We stood there stunned for a few seconds, then cheered like we'd just won something. LOL We were able to get several more similar flights out of that plane that day, and it got the rest of the class' attention (even the coaches). It was awesome that it had such a shallow glide ratio, but was also able to withstand (and stay stable during) a fairly violent hand launch. I kept it (and may still have it), but it never again achieved the glory of that day in high-school. LOL

I've seen it rain in dirigible hangers but this blew my mind .. pretty cool stuff. Thanks Josh & wife great job thanks ..

This video is really impressive. I did not know of this class of indoor flying. I fly the larger Radio Control gliders, and am fascinated with thermal lift. Thanks for sharing, and congratulations to the young man who made/flew the glider....well done.

Of course, Ross pulls out a beater and bests a world record. Way to go, bro!!! Thanks for sharing this with us, Josh! I will sorely miss you guys at FF again this year!

I feel like I should get a free pocket protector for watching the whole video. Great job!

There are thermals anywhere the sunlight can reach the ground. That's so cool.

That is incredible! I have never seen anything like it!

Well…the “I’m getting a neck ache” statement made me stop the video😂…lost it because I was getting one too, just watching you😂. Great flight guys…Congratulations!👍🏼

Few years back I was staying at the edgewater casino in Laughlin Nevada 18 stories high. I threw a paper airplane out of window it was pretty dark and lost sight of plane and actually forgot about it until 15 minutes later the plane comes back hovering outside window. There was a record broken somewhere that night

Fantastic video that brought back some memories - glad to hear that ‘Easy Bs’ still exist. Spent a year or two fooling around with indoor condenser and microfilm models but stayed outside with RC. Took up full scale soaring and raced them for 15 years. Built and fly an RV10 but have a handlaunch RC sitting in the hangar for ‘those moments’. Still remember catching my very first thermal with an AMA Delta Dart I think they were called. That first thermal is magical and addictive.

Amazing achievement, definitely top 3 coolest micro fliers I've ever seen.

That is very cool. I watched twice, even though there's not much action (and because it's clean and not violent)! Thanks for posting this.

That was strangely relaxing to watch, many thanks for posting

legend says its still up there!

Absolutely beautifully simple. Incredible engineering. 4 minutes, well done! Thanks for sharing.

Josh, when I was 14 I came up with the idea of finding ground thermals with a parachute made of a plastic laundry bag 3.5 sq. meters and 15 grams, with harness made of sewing thread and ballast of a paper clip. I just swung the chute using a breeze and when it appeared to loft it was released. Got a flyaway about once in twenty or thirty tries. BTW, that was in 1960! Really interesting vid and concept.

We used to see these "dust devils", which are really simple whirlwinds caused by differing pressures coming from opening and closing doors. We saw them in our Jr. High and High School gymnasiums we played basketball in. They DID become dust devils on the wood floors, since those floors were so smooth. The dust kicked up easily. The rubber floors didn't react the same way, as they seemed to attract heavier dirt.

This reminds me of a rubber-band powered helicopter I had around age 11 (early 1980's). My parents had enrolled me in a local "aerospace" class for kids one summer, which mostly consisted of building model planes and rockets. My final project was a rubber-band powered balsa-wood helicopter, with four big top blades and two small bottom blades. However, it was too heavy and never did much more than hovering for a few seconds. After the class ended, I continued tinkering with this helicopter, ultimately moving the four big blades to the bottom and removing two of them, and finally launched it one sunny afternoon. My tinkering paid off! The strange looking contraption climbed steadily to perhaps forty feet high, and then hovered there for about 30 seconds before slowly descending (probably with help from an updraft). All the neighbors who were outside were transfixed by the sight of the odd-looking, squeaking flying contraption, witnesses to my moment of glory. After that, the darned thing was never able to fly again, probably because the rubber-bands got over-stretched.

3:51 Launches 🚀 7:51 (*exactly* 4 minutes later) “I don’t know the timestamp in the video where you launched so, I’m just assuming we’re very close to four minutes now.” Cameraman is secretly Swiss with a very convincing American accent.

Incredible! If I had the time I'd try something like this. Very interesting. That guy knows his stuff!

holy cow that was amazing! thx for uploading

A few "incidences" later. ... ... WOW WOW WOW ... that was amazing and super inspiring

EPIC! It was amazing to see this amazing flight.

Wonderful! Well done young man.

Heat transfer and internal natural convection within domed enclosures create that "whirl wind" effect. Great flight!

Little does anyone know that Mitey Airlines has 230 of these models on order, and that there are 75 mites on this flight. The pilot is itching to run another test flight. An interesting fact about mites is that although we generally are not particularly fond of them, they can really grow on you. I mean, really.

Amazing plane. Great video. Thank you.

Really cool loved the video always been fascinated by the super light little aircraft such a delicate precise sport

Amazing. Never thought this would be possible!

Great flight and enjoyable commentary. Thank you.

In the late 1950's, I saw a record set under sort of similar circumstances in a hanger at the Lakehurst Navel Air Station. Peter Nashanian, a member of the Long Island Gas Monkeys, built balsa indoor hand launched gliders with 24 inch wingspans - very large for the time, not much altitude on the launch but slow descent. During the day, the officer of the blimp hanger in which we were flying would periodically open and close the hanger doors to let aircraft enter and exit. It was a very hot day and it was clear that when the hanger doors opened, hot air from the tarmac would come into the hanger. Nashanian set his record right after the door closed in the early afternoon and caught an excellent thermal. The best time he would ever make.

Gee a very light aircraft. Flies very nicely. Hey great looking flag over on the wall. Makes me feel at home. 👍🇦🇺

Nice, and very relaxing to watch.

stand inside the dust devil and the thermal will wick off your head, also try to stay on the front of the thermal, there is more turbulence there but way more lift. When near the back of a thermal(the down wind side) you get kicked out easier. The front of the thermal will kick you out to but the wind and the thermal will suck you back into the thermal if you stay on the front of it.

I think we'll be seeing a bit more of that young man in the future in whatever he chooses to spend his time on.

Great video, looks like an awesome science/physics project.

That's amazing. I had an outdoor rubber model fly away once in a thermal. I chased it for a quarter mile and gave up. I'll never forget it because it circled at about 10 feet, free wheeling during a trim session then it shot upward and out of sight.

Never knew this kind of efficiency was even possible, insane!!!

This is astonishing - my own high performance engineered paper gliders will sometimes catch a thermal, but to see this being done indoors with a microfilm model is breathtaking...

I hear terms like 'sink rate' but in planes & gliders, the usual measure is called 'glide ratio'. That plane doesn't achieve lift from air moving over an airfoil via forward motion. It's more like a plane-shaped parachute? Very neat regardless.

That's prettty badass, Josh!

Have no idea why I am here but that is just Amazing ! And a no go for building something so ultralight with my giant thumbs

That was amazing! Thank you.

Never knew they have so much fun up in Eager....lol. cograts from the city folks down in the valley. Very cool display of thermodynamics.

Unbelievable Josh!

As an Aussie, It's nice to see the Australian flag in the background.

It's great you got it on video! Would have been hard to believe.

So delicate. Wonderful.

'Light like a butterfly, wing like a bee' Fantastic creation and effort!

Awesome, deserves way more views.

My father made these in the 60’s. He would fly them in the dirigible hanger in Irvine on the air force base. Powered by rubber bands they would fly in slow motion...

Loved your experience; had a similar experience whilst living in the Netherlands as a then 13 year old. Launched a paper plane on the corner of the street and an air vortex developed which took the creation up and away to the roof tops only to descend to where the vortex of air was still functioning . This was repeated a couple of times whilst my young eyes were bulging with excitement ( and aeronautical pride). One turn of the plane was too wide and descended gently at my feet. Been trying to repeat the experiment in Australia, but now I buy a ticket to get aloft.

Wow, that's beautiful!

About 30 years ago I happened to be in West Baden, Indiana and there were a bunch of people flying these planes in the atrium there. Some would fly seemingly forever.

Makes me wonder exactly what generated the thermal. Quite possibly just the sun shining through the upper glass windows on to the floor. Flew a hang glider back in the late 70s and the early 80s, so was always looking for thermal generators. Learned how to fine tune hand launched balsa and foam wing gliders, and made a bunch of my own. Lost many to the thermal gods.... I would think that maybe one of the halogen lamps would generate a considerable thermal. Maybe a group of 10 or more people could do the same thing, especially if the building was cool, like in the 60s. That lapse rate is huge in generating thermals. I was up on a hill once, waiting for conditions to be right for flying. Saw a basketball sized base of a dust devil in the grass. Launched a properly tuned slip through wing type of balsa glider into it and in 3 revolutions, it was over 500 feet above the launch point. Great flying day that one...

An engineer could go crazy trying to explain the air current, given the structures curved walls and ventilation systems. Still looks like fun.

They had those film planes for indoor flying when I was a kid but they were rubber powered and they lubed the rubber bands to unwind slowly. They would take off and fly for a very long time in a gymnasium if they were trimmed to turn wide circles.

That’s awesome. Never seen that before

Incredible! Thermal hunting indoors...wow

The hall is so big there is even a dust devil. There are currents of air probably from the a/c or the door or whatever. That glider is awesome.

Astonishing, fantastic.

just wowwew. Fantastic bro

Amazing flight

Mesmerizing!

I've SOO wanted to go up to Eagar for that contest for years. It's a few hours from me, one way, so it's a little bit of a commitment to spectate.

This was cool. Thanks.

When I was in 5th grade (1973) my friend Dick Gilbert tossed a paper plane he had made that got caught in a swirling updraft. It flew from the elementary school playground up up and away and over the Jr. High school and disappeared into the redwood forest behind the school. We were the only two witnesses to the amazing flight. I can't estimate the time of the flight, but it must have flown over a quarter of a mile.

Fascinating!

Pretty cool guys!!

Awesome!

I'm giving it all I can captin'. That's amazing.

실내이지만 자연채광이나 강한 조명에 의해서 대류가 발생하고 그로인해서 상승기류가 발생할 수 있죠. 먼지가 떠오르는게 상승기류가 있음을 보여주는 증거죠.

Well done. We launched a large styrofoam glider in Marana AZ into some thermal up lifts, dust devils it went thousands of feet high. We lost site of it and it was gone.

Indoor tornadoes got to be taken advantage of! Excellent!

amazing! That take off!

That's amazing.

Impressive 👍👏

I am in Awe!!!

Very very impressive 👍👍

Taint natural ! Superb

Superb, just superb.

Thanks!

That's crazy.....I think the heat from his body gets it started....once started the very clever design keeps it going ......it almost seems to seek out thermal currents.

congrats🎉

Incredible

While thats nerdy as all get out it's also really cool!!!!