Aeronautical Salvage

A soda-bottle flyer with flapping wings? Golly, challenge enthusiastically accepted! I crawled out from under the bench hangar and marched straight over to the blue recycling bin beside the porch rail. Peeking through the slatted crate, I spotted the holy grail of lightweight fuselage materials: an empty, translucent plastic soda bottle! I braced both feet against a weathered timber post and hauled the bottle horizontally onto the deck planks. Next came the airfoil dilemma. Right in the gutter seam lay two flat, flexible clear plastic fruit punnet lids. Using a sturdy metal paperclip picked from my pocket, I punched pivot perforations along the bottle's lateral ridges and slotted the plastic wings right in. One downward pull on my test cord, and the wings flexed upward with magnificent, springy aerodynamic potential!