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By blindrodie
#379745
http://youtu.be/DNbCZkd9tX0

WOW that's the first time i have seen an idea that is possible TODAY for the design of a portable wing!

What am I missing?

8)
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By TjW
#379759
Not sure how that helps. It still seems to require a long rigid spar.
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By Lucky_Chevy
#379762
Consider the sail mated with a telescoping carbon fiber tube. Making the pole strong enough and with positive stops is an engineering challenge but not a difficult problem.

Making the entire assembly compact and light weight is a bigger challenge. In my opinion a 5' (1.5 m) pack length isn't valuable if the wing weigh over 100 lb (45 kg). My current 70 lb (32 kg) is barely manageable at times.

This is an interesting project. I hope some of the manufacturer's take note.



Dan
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By flyit
#379844
Im New to hang gliding and about to get my H2 rating. I will say to the idea of simplifying set up and break down, this is a worthy idea, but a bigger problem is directly related to very limited flying sites available. Making Flat land foot launch a regular part of this sport will change everything. It is a very very needed option to grow hang gliding in all areas of the world. see E help hang glider on youtube.
This is a very real opportunity. I know the sport is traditionally about soaring, but lets be honest, to far and few between mountain and pro aerotow launch sites will always be the limiting issue to growing the sport. One day soon I will launch out of a park in my home town with a power assist pod and people will come to see me and want to learn how they can get into the sport. Ill tell them go to hg school and then buy an e powered pod. My thoughts on growing the sport. Kindly Flyit..
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By raquo
#379851
Thanks for the SoftWing video, Lucky_Chevy!

Previous Sock glider designs that I've seen worked differently – you would take off the sail starting from the *root*, and you ended up with a bunch of sail in your hands by the time you got to the wingtip. Keeping the sail at the root on the other hand simplifies set up & breakdown a lot, and saves some weight since you don't need to connect the sails together at the root.

This technique is most impressive on a cantilever spar typical for rigids, but it could be used on flex wings too. Bowsprits most obviously, but maybe even on those with a crossbar. Non-cantilever rigids too.

---

Speaking of inflatables... I'm not sure I would trust a fully inflatable glider more than a modern PG. However, some components could still be inflatable, e.g. ribs. If those fail, they would probably fail independently of each other and a single failure would not cause an accident.

Or maybe some kind of rigid structure could be designed that holds up to +3G / -2G, and some inflatable component reinforces it to the common +6G / -4G. The point being, if the inflatable component fails, you still have a good chance of landing safely. I don't suppose putting an inflatable bladder inside a typical HG alum or carbon tube would reinforce it much? There could be other ways...
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By Stallpolicer
#390620
Let's aim for slightly less than 9 feet. That size can fit on a standard long-pallet and be shipped anywhere.
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By Johannez
#402649
Hi everyone,

I just stumbled upon this old sketch, and decided to see if anyone is looking into the same thing; a collapsable back-pack hang glider. So i ended up here :)

The ultimate idea is to make it collapsable with limited amount of (de-)construction time. a single inner spring could provide the tension, to unfold and fold it would only need to be applied or released.

I'm sure it would require some very expensive composite materials to make it sturdy and light enough, but i figured using big O-rings could relieve the joints of a lot of the major stress-loads. re-enforcing all the spars with a curved carbon structure could do the trick.

i think it should be possible..right? and it would look great too ;)
Attachments
sketch of a collapsable backpack hang glider
sketch of a collapsable backpack hang glider
backpack hangglider concept.jpg (584.01 KiB) Viewed 4294 times
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By red
#404367
Campers,

Not sure if my new (old) proposal would be 5' long when packed,but it may be less than 6'. There is an old design called the Crossbow that could easily be converted to a breakdown model, even more so than the original. Going from the root to the tips, the tubing would sleeve into the next smaller size tubing in several places, all the way out to the tips. The entire wing is made from a single spar, curved rearward. Some or most of the leading edge might be Carbon Fiber. This image is the only thing Google found that was even close. The Crossbow leading edge spar curved rearward only, though, with no interior crossbars. A triangle control bar, regular keel, and struts instead of sidewires would be all the airframe needed.

Image

A horizontal tailplane could be made with the same design as the wing, with fiberglass poles for the leading edges this time, curving rearward, and no other rigid parts.

I know the original Crossbow had control and handling issues, but I think we know enough now to overcome those problems. Anybody out there have any images of the original Crossbow design, that they can share?
.
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By raquo
#404398
Red, I think you're talking about Bill Brooks' Longbow hang glider with a bow leading edge. Matches your description including control problems (spiral instability). There are some materials and technical details about it online including on HG.org and ozreport, but sadly no photos. Like many other promising projects, this one was closed for lack of funds for further development.

It seems that Bill Brooks is still involved in HG R&D so maybe if someone asks nicely he could share some Longbow photos or information. I would LOVE to see some.
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By red
#404403
raquo wrote: Tue Aug 14, 2018 4:18 amRed, I think you're talking about Bill Brooks' Longbow hang glider with a bow leading edge. Matches your description including control problems (spiral instability). There are some materials and technical details about it online including on HG.org and ozreport, but sadly no photos.
Raquo,

I might have been mistaken on the name, or maybe I was given the wrong information there. I believe the glider/pilot was based in the SouthWest USA, though, not the UK. It may have been a copy of the work of somebody else, too. I believe the one I remember was tensioned with a ratchet-strap, then tension was held by strap buckles and a big (metal?) zipper. The overall sail tension was similar to modern HGs, but seemed radical at the time. I'd still like to see any pix of the Longbow (or Crossbow), if possible.

My next candidate for the 5' backpack glider would be JD's White-Tailed-Dart (or anything similar to the bowsprit Aeolus). That Aeolus design needed development, sure, but i think they were definitely on the right track, if only for reasons of pilot safety (isn't that enough?). I believe that our keels got 'way too short to be safe in the 1980s, and that modern bowsprit designs (with tailfeathers) could reduce injuries while increasing performance. All IMHO, of course.
.
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By KevinB
#404490
It seems to me an inflatable hang glider might work ok for hike and fly. There's a Woopy glider that is inflatable and maybe on the right track for something like this.
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By red
#404495
KevinB wrote: Thu Aug 16, 2018 3:47 pmIt seems to me an inflatable hang glider might work ok for hike and fly. There's a Woopy glider that is inflatable and maybe on the right track for something like this.
KevinB,

Yeah, I have posted many times in past years about the Woopy-Fly. Crude as it may be, for now, it seems to deliver surprisingly good performance. I'd really like to develop a similar idea. Even the powered Woopy is reasonably transportable. As said by Maxwell Smart, "They missed it by THAT much" (while showing a pinching gesture). 8)
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By USHPA7
#412805
I've seen several inflatable wings on the internet. A thing required for any inflatable wing is a continuous air supply (blower) to maintain the same internal pressure with altitude changes. Since continuous operation of the air pressure supply is critical to pilot's safety it has to at least be completely redundant, maybe even triple.

Alpacka Raft, in Mancos CO, makes amazing backable inflated river rafts that can carry a big person and gear for multiple days and weigh less than 10 pounds (I can lift my big boat with one index finger). The materials are extremely strong, and light.

I have had a long, close, friendship with the owner/designer and a close relationship with the company in general. I have tried unsuccessfully to get her/them interested in inflatable hang gliders. The liability factor is something they don't want to take on, since they are very successful with their boats.

I visit them once each year and have broached the subject several times, because they would have the capability to fabricate the sealed fabric parts of any inflatable wing design that someone comes up with.
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By TjW
#412807
In 1976, I worked for Jim Bede on an inflatable hang glider. Not the helium-filled one. This one was basically bounce house technology, with a battery and a centrifugal blower. Bede had flown it powered, on a four wheeled twin boomed fuselage. My job was to make a hang glider. Structurally, sticking a control bar on it wasn't that hard. Neither was rigging a swing seat to actuate the inflatable rudder. Kind of like a Seagull V, if you've ever seen pictures of those.
There were two problems with it.
If there was any wind it would beat itself to death on the ground setting it up. When partially inflated, it was flexible enough for the wing to lift. That would pinch off a segment of the wing, which reduced the volume/raised the pressure enough that the outboard section was pretty darn rigid, so then it would pivot up, over, bounce, and slam back down on the ground. I spent a lot of time patching. It was pretty rigid once inflated, though.
The second was theoretical, and I never flew it high enough to see if it happened in practice: the blower had pretty low pressure differential and also pretty low volume because it was battery powered . In theory, you could get into sink that would change pressure quickly enough that the blower couldn't quite keep up. This would make the wing less rigid, which would increase the sink rate, which... you can see the feedback mechanism.

So when I pointed out these issues, the project ended and I was out of a job.
By Roadrunner
#412808
Pardon Me for My ignorance regarding Short Packing, well in My Case, Would like to get a better idea as to How that I would deal with the Spars of My Predator. Could the long tubes somehow be Modified so as to enable them to be handled Better?
By cheesehead
#413214
If SOMETHING can be created that can fit INSIDE a car and easily be taken on a plane, that doesn’t weigh 70 pounds and doesn’t take an hour to set-up, the designer is going to make good money.

The #1 reason so few PGs have an interest in HG is the convenience. They see what we go through to transport, carry, and set-up our wings. PG pilots have such a false sense of security because they’ve never experienced flying anything more solid, speedy, and stable. I don’t see the HG population ever growing if we don’t have equipment that makes HG both more convenient and easier/faster to learn. Wings like the Alpha (light, very fast setup) along with scooter-tow training (or a training hill situation that involves the ability to drive the student and the set-up wing back up the hill) make HG so much less painful than it used to be. But short of being offered a free lesson, PG’s will continue to shun HGing if we don’t make it look more simple and easy.

I’m biwingual, learned to PG 11 years after HG. I prefer flying the HG, but learning to PG is SO easy for an HG pilot, and man, there have been plenty of days I’ve ended up PGing just because I didn’t have the time, energy, and patience to deal with the HG. In PG, the direct and immediate feel of that canopy above you that’s transmitted through the lines is weird and unsettling at first. It all feels SO wobbly and unstable and slow compared to HGing, but until you put some time in an HG, you don’t experience its advantages. You don’t know how solid and confidence-inspiring it is; you don’t know what you’re missing. PGs are so prone to the delusion that what they’re flying is as safe or safer than an HG. If we could get some of them to get a good taste of HG, many of them will see the advantages of adding an HG to their quivers.