Wingfoiling? Video

[headmount]

This is a wing and a foil is involved.  But the medium is air.  I promise this one will be entertaining.  Best HG footage ever IMO.  Drone footage capturing loops and spins.  This is a great double surface glider and is 'topless' (no top wires so less drag)   I flew a topless glider in 1979 but it had struts. No struts on this one.   Don't ask me how.  I've been out of the sport for 42 years.  The pilot is obviously fearless.  The max pushed out spins certainly blew my mind.  I saw spins when I flew but never this controlled.  I nevah.  Guys were occasionally flipping upside down back then, their bodies landing into the frame of aluminum tubing.   Just imagining it made me freaked and prevented me from even thinking about it.  I knew some great aerobatic pilots but being a Maui pilot,  my focus was always thermaling.   To me, aerobatics were for places with untold lift, like money to burn.

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rULtQlmf_Zg

[Dwight (DW)]

Great camera angles.

We flew in the same era. What we lived through back then, is super relevant to where wing ding design is today.

Roy Haggered invented the tight canopy with the UP Comet and changed the sport forever. Prior to figuring out “how” to make a tight canopy, all kinds of failed ideas did not add performance. Like double surfaces and topless. We needed tight canopies first. Then other ideas would work.

Right after that Bob Trampneau invented in-flight variable geometry (in flight canopy tension changes).

Looking at winging, I see so many brands that have yet to figure out how to make tight canopies. My guess, we’ll need models with less tight canopies for the entry level.

Not sure where tip reflex with end up in winging. Best guess, we’ll have some form of load induced twisting like a windsurf sail, while maintaining that tight canopy tension needed to keep the L/D.

Exciting times.

There is a lot of junk in the marketplace to this old hang glider guy who lived through it.

[Dwight (DW)]

Check out the UP Mosquito in these photos. https://hghistory.org/hang-gliding-2/hg78-79pt2/

I owned the Mosquito. Perfect example of dumb features that did nothing because the canopy was not tight. The Comet was released by UP right after the Mosquito with a tight canopy (by preloading the cross bars) and made it obsolete instantly.

[headmount]

Great camera angles.

We flew in the same era. What we lived through back then, is super relevant to where wing ding design is today.

Roy Haggered invented the tight canopy with the UP Comet and changed the sport forever. Prior to figuring out “how” to make a tight canopy, all kinds of failed ideas did not add performance. Like double surfaces and topless. We needed tight canopies first. Then other ideas would work.

Right after that Bob Trampneau invented in-flight variable geometry (in flight canopy tension changes).

Looking at winging, I see so many brands that have yet to figure out how to make tight canopies. My guess, we’ll need models with less tight canopies for the entry level.

Not sure where tip reflex with end up in winging. Best guess, we’ll have some form of load induced twisting like a windsurf sail, while maintaining that tight canopy tension needed to keep the L/D.

Exciting times.

There is a lot of junk in the marketplace to this old hang glider guy who lived through it.

Bob Trampenau built my glider frame in S.B.  when I went up to the Owens Valley in 1979, which featured possibly the first carbon leading edges, or rather carbon wrapped on aluminum.    But if I got inverted, like I had read how some pilots had done, I didn't want to fold up and the carbon wrap would give the aluminum tubing that compression strength.  I did go 'over the falls' once but managed not to flip over, just about barfing with the terror of losing 3-4 grand real fast.  That's why tempting fate with aerobatics, like the pilot does in this video, never really turned me on.  I agree with you about the relevance to foil design for us now.  Washout or twist is certainly being used.  I love it all.  I know there was and probably still is some Hang gliding parks where you are in Florida.  Great thermaling from what I heard and tow planes to take you up to altitude and hook into the development .

[Dwight (DW)]

I grew up in NY flying. Winter flying is my fondest memories. In the second photo I’m soaring over a sailplane at Harris Hill. Home of the soaring museum and home of Bob Trampenau’s dad.

Small world!

Jacky is behind the camera. We met hang gliding.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-anZUtj6ji/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=