wing

[Guest]

a friend of mine tried selling his free flying wing on ebay and a couple of people asked if the wing had been used with a paamotor and if it had then they wasnt interested? why is this he had two similar questions basically sayin if the wing had been flown with a paramotor then they didnt wanna buy it ? any thoughts or reasons on this?

[Guest]

Many people fly a wing at or over the placarded weight limit. This can place more strain on the fabric and lines than if it had been used for paragliding, where you would want to be at the middle to bottom of the weight range. Flying heavy increases speed and also internal wing pressure. This make the wing more resistant to collapse.

Some paraglider pilots may feel that a wing flown like this will be more heavily "used" than otherwise. I am not ertain of this but it is a suggestion.

[irm750]

It might be because the tree huggers, er, I mean paraglider pilots don't trust no motorised gizmo of satan and don't want anything to do with a wing which has been used to pollute the environment. They probably fear that the wing will stink of petrol which will make the bunnies cry and offend the buzzards who will no longer want to fly with them!

I would have thought that most wings used for paramotoring would have less stressed brakes. We don't constantly fly back and forth, back and forth along the same bit of hillside all day!

Just kidding - I thoroughly enjoyed my EP course on the hill!

Best regards,

Ian.

[Phil_P]

Francis' reason sounds the most likely, however, the most likely 'victim' of the high loading would probably be porosity of the fabric, so a trip to one of the service centres for a check might be worth having in terms of cost and saleability.

Although paramotors tend to fly overweight, we are only talking about by perhaps ten to twenty kilograms. However, most of us tend to fly much lower 'g' manoeuvre's than paragliders, as, for instance, we don't have to circle tightly to stay in a thermal. If a paraglider flies only a 1.5g turn with a 75 kg pilot, then you are already increasing the load on the glider to 112 kg.

I would therefore suggest that the concerns (if the above is in fact the reason) are a little exaggerated.

There might be a grain of truth in the comment about 'smelly' petrol, as paramotor wings are much likely to have been in close proximity to petrol/oil and therefore the chances of damaging contamination are relatively quite high, even though we all take great care of our wings.

[Guest]

Very good point about the petrol "smell".

Storing the wing in an atmosphere containing evaporated solvents, and transfering albeit tiny amounts of petroil from engine to hand to wing/lines , might seem petty but many paraglidists are extremely cautious about these issues. I think they may have a point even if we are a little unsure if the risk is real, they would say "why take it with so many wings for sale out there?"

Again I'm only guessing.

[Guest]

some good answers on that and funny ones lol if some of these are true reasons then there are some strange paraglider pilot out there