It’s just plane paper

Ryan Naccarato is taking the family tradition of building model airplanes to new heights.

A third-year student at UC Davis, he competed in the Red Bull Paper Wings competition in Austria in April and won third place in the aerobatics category with his paper airplanes.

The 19-year-old learned all about aeronautics from hanging around his dad’s hobby shop, Tony and Addie Hobby Lobby, a Burbank mainstay for 60 years. His father, Tony Naccarato Jr., took over the business from his father and mother. The shop closed three years ago.

Ryan Naccarato qualified for the Austrian competition at a preliminary contest on his campus, he said. He won two first-places in longest distance in aerobatics and received four lift tickets for ski resorts in Northern California.

“In two or three weeks they got back to me and told me I qualified for the trip to Austria,” he said. “They paid everything — the flight, hotel, food, busing, sighting and parties.”

Participants were all of college age and from all over the world, he said.

In his division, Japan took first place and Poland second, said a spokeswoman for Red Bull. There were 150 college students that qualified during local competitions. Of those, 15 were chosen to go to Austria.

It was a unique opportunity for the Burbanker who is majoring in anesthesiology.

“It was really cool just meeting these people from different countries,” he said. “I’ve never been in such a situation before.”

Except for trips to Baja, Mexico, Ryan Naccarato has never traveled out of the United States, he said.

“So, this was really special,” he added.

Ryan Naccarato learned about aeronautics at his dad’s hobby shop, he said, and his dad taught him how to make his first paper airplane.

The John Burroughs graduate has also learned origami, the art of paper folding, and had a design published in Origami USA, a national magazine.

He designed a 20-point star that takes 30 papers folded the same way when he was in sixth or seventh grade. It was included in a book that was a compilation of many designs from origami artists, he said.

For the Austrian paper airplane contest, competition was in three disciplines — aerobatics, flight time and distance.

He used four or five airplanes in his judging performance and had one minute to impress the judges, he said.

“Some flew back to me, one flew like a helicopter, others did loops,” he said. “I had one airplane controlled by strings about 10 feet from the plane, and I could control it to go up and down.”

It was especially nice to have his dad there to see him compete, he said.

“He took video footage of the competition,” Ryan Naccarato said. His son learned at a very young age how airplanes fly, Tony Naccarato said.

“When he was just a little kid I taught him to make paper airplanes and he used to make so many that it used to drive mommy crazy,” he said.

They had a 40- to 50-foot flight pattern that went the length of the hallway to the bedroom.

“I showed him with balsa [wood] airplanes how to do tricks and he adopted the adjustments for balsa airplanes to the paper airplanes to do aerobatics,” he said.

But nothing has been as exciting as watching his son compete in Austria, he added.

“As his dad, I got to see how he matured,” he said.

“He’s such a gentleman. I’m really proud of him.”

His son took the time to show others how to make the paper airplanes, Tony Naccarato said.

“They all got along with each other,” he said. “Just to see him interact with people from many nations was such a great thing. It was a great unity of people.”

What really tugged at dad’s heart strings, he said, was what his son wore during competition — his dad’s flight suit and jacket from when he served in the U.S. Navy flying Lockheed P-3A Orions over Vietnam.

“Those planes were built right here in Burbank up the street,” Tony Naccarato said.