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.
