[JoeF]

"5-ft packed" Let such imply packs that are such sized or smaller! E.g., the HG packed in subpacks that are, say, with a dimension 1 meter or less, etc.
The intent for the topic was actually something to be more defined. Not wanted is some pack that is a spherical ball of 5-ft (or less), as such a ball of goods would not fit through a bus' door and would not be welcome in the interior of bus or train or plane or car! So, some attention of limiting things may be good. How to avoid the big ball result? L,W, H? Let only L be at most 5 ft or say one meter, etc., while the W, and H be handily smaller.

Even pack "volume" is not a final descriptor of theme intent, as a spiky star might be of small volume, the disturbing space such star could require would deal such start pack out of the question.

Is the pack or set of packs handy and non-disturbing to other passengers of a bus, train, plane, or car? Is the deal pleasant? Is the tote experience very doable without damaging stresses?

[JoeF]

In this topic thread has been some sail notes involving zippers in the sail, especially when having the sail toted in sections. This present note regards a sail solution that has the sail in sections without using zippers.

Sail Sock Sections Avoiding Zippers
A HG having a sail sock on left wing and a sail sock on right wing is a two-section solution; but we may go further. Consider a six-section solution with three sections of sail sock on left and three sail-sock sections on the right wing. The tip socks close at the tip; the inner sections are cylinders with opening on inner end and opening on outer end. At assembly slip the near-keel sock cylinders onto the HG. Then slip the next cylinder sock sections in place. Then slip the tip socks on. Have the socks slightly overlap and provide an edge means that gives sufficient friction to have the socks set without gaps from a section to its neighbor section. Perhaps sparse hook and look might be used. Perhaps nubs could be used to stabilize the sections' seated position.

Having sections without zippers could save production efforts and costs. Having simple edges to sail-sock sections could perhaps keep tote volume low. Having sail-sock sections without zippers might allow easier modifications of sail tautness: pinch, slide, adjust, cut, patch, ...

If the sail-sock sections are kept snug, then the friction of the edge overlaps might be adequate for some conservation flight operations.

The six-section deal is the mentioned option. But an eight-section deal might be chosen; or a 10-section deal might be chosen.

[JoeF]

Tie-on ribbing?
Aiming to supplant rib or batten pocketing, flight-sessioned tie-on ribbing might serve.
Untie the ribs for packing and toting.

This sub-topic note is not about permanent tied-on ribs and not about vintage-aircraft rib stitching nor rib lacing.

Some optionals regarding "tie-on ribbing":
One-sided interior or lower
One-sided exterior or upper
Sandwich of two-parts to form a rib
Mixed options within a HG

= Ties may be set permanently in the sail ready to receiving a rib or batten.
= Learnings upon experiments may bring solution details not stated yet.
= Cousins to tie-on: hook-and-loop, fabric clips, snag-and-confine, ...

[dhmartens]

Another approach is to take something that already exists and tweak it slightly.
Just take the LittleHawk and set it up, then attach a few 6 foot segments and velcro or zipper on some additional fabric.
Augment the LittleHawk with parts from a Finsterwalder glider. This way you get a fast setup without having to assemble the whole glider from scratch.

[JoeF]

A coupler for holding a train of angle beams to obtain a wing spar:
Permaset a plug wall in the interior center of a circular-cross-section tube segment. Have the tube segment only as long as needed. At assembly simply set angle beams in a series. Kingpost-queenpost rigging converts flight forces into a compressing of the angle beams; the coupler simply holds things in place. No bolts or shear pins needed. ------------------+++-------------------+++--------------------+++------------------
The angle beams in tote may nest. The couplers may tote in various ways, perhaps worn by the trekking pilot.

PlugInCenterOfCylinder.jpg (2.57 KiB) Viewed 531 times

[JoeF]

Some designs moving toward the theme of this discussion thread may benefit from the following:

Two-spar wing with spreader beams to stay the distance from the two spars. The two spars may be made up of one-meter segments. The spreader-keeping beams may be one-meter in length. Couplers to capture the series of one-meters-spar beams may capture the compression occurring in the macro half-wing. Florets of knots at key points of the spar may be located upon the couplers. The knots would be part of a KP-QP rigging; lines would grab the knots. Wanting to leave the knot florets in place during tote, there could be a challenge when forming a DS cover over the two-spar-spreader assembly. A ready sock for the cover would face the florets of knots. One workaround is the topic of this present post.

Offer:
Have the half-HG-wing beam assembled with the knot florets; have already in place diagonal stay lines. Then have a flat cover that wraps 360 degrees around the two spars. The cover flat would have ready holes for giving access to he knot florets. The flat might have a spanwise elastic section. The wrap could close to a zipper or to a hook-and-loop line or threading or snapping or castellated-rod closing mechanism (many choices of closing the cover). The closing would stress the elastic section to maintain tautness and some aeroelatic "give" during flight.

[Chris McKeon]

I just watched the Video that Showed Bob and tim showing that Glider to a class of School Kids, I just wish that when i was a Kid going to School , a couple of Guys would have brought a Hang Glider to one of My Classes. This in My opinion is just so Cool.

A GLIDER THAT CAN BE SHORT PACKED.

I believe that I have Mentioned this before. But it bears My having another thought. I really can see how being able to Short Pack My Predator and then strap the A Short Packed Glider to My Back. Would make the task of my being able to pack My Glider out of No Man's Land. For the Day May come when I finally Sink out say in the Hot Desert while Flying an XC Route. If I ever do the terrible Four Letter Word, yes if I do Sink out. Being able to short Pack My Predator may make Packing the Glider let Me say that suppose I have landed Five Miles from a road. This could very well turn a Back Breaking ordeal into a Hike.

[dhmartens]

Due to cost cutting constraints we are forced to think outside of the box.
I noticed these kites have pitch authority but no roll authority.
By just adding a jump rope from wingtip to wingtip underneth the two feet could allow raising and lowering of the wing tips.
A rigid hula hoop installed the same way would allow the pilot to run like a hamster to either side and control roll.
These wings are also too small with too high of wing loading but using light weigh people could give good results.
Just think Midgits, Jockies, 8 year olds or trained spider monkeys.
Once we get our foot in the door it could take off with more researchers helping out.

[JoeF]

Yes, there will be a turning point someday in hang gliding when easy tiny packing removes the need for having to have a car or truck or van or racks atop the same.
==================================================================

The immediate present note hereon regards a wing stuffer: a cylinder of Mylar heavy film or light plate or the like. As wing stuffer, the cylinder could give airfoil camber inside a DS HG wing. Now some notes about tiny packing such a deal:
Consider having the cylinder be segmented to 1 meter-or-so lengths, or about 3 feet; further have the segments be precisely telescopic to each other. Then, say have five segments telescopic to each other for the left wing and five segments telescopic to each other for the right wing. Let the collapsed five segments of the left wing act in tote as the case to hold other HG parts. End up then with a left-wing toted case and a right-wing toted case. Inside the left-wing case have the left-wing sail, left-wing spar couplers, and left-wing line sets. Then similarly for the right-wing parts. The two cylinders with parts could be vertically stacked to be one luggage hold. The beam segments of the HG could gather to a single pack of 5-ft long with low cross-section diameter. Thus, the tote would be of two packs. For off-bus carting, consider travois and ablating Teflon or polycarbonate plate or wheels or carry-and-backpack.

A note on the stuffer cylinder: consider string-spoking to stay shape while flying. String spoking might be accomplished by precise elastic string with poke-through rotatable tee tips to the elastic segments; one end of a string could be perma-flanged; the other end would have the rotatable tee-tip; have the flanged end be sail-interfacing; the sheath of the spoke could be inelastic. Or allowing temporary cylinder deformation, the string might not need to be elastic. Much to explore here!

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Rigging note when using the above stuffer:
Say a LE spar is integrated with the above wing stuffer via a string-tie system. Say there are rigging lines to KP and QP from couplers on the LE spar. It may occur that KP rigging landing or neg-G lines will want to traverse through the sail and wing stuffer. To accomplish such traverse, holes in the stuffer cylinder may be needed; alignment of the holes could be achieved. Weave the rigging line stub from the spar through the cylinder and the wrapping sail; later in assembly complete the rigging by connecting remainder lines to the KP and QP as needed. Consider soft rigging lines.

Wrapping sail is not shown. A hole in the sail would allow line stub to go through the sail during assembly.

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[JoeF]

Note regarding segmented stuffer just mentioned. The string spokes may be judiciously lengthed and placed to stay a non-circular cross-section to help form desired airfoil potion.

Note: Consider applique at LE before wrapping DS sail: compressible foam. In tote segments of foam applique can squeeze down to low volume. Or the segments of compressible foam applique could be worn by the pilot during trek to th e flight sight. The foam coordinates with the spar, spoke-shaping stuffer, and sail to obtain desired airfoil shaping.

Note: Have beam spreaders every 30 inches. Have spar couplers at the 5-ft spar-segment ends. Have the wing spreaders overlap the spar beam (angles) and firmly bolt-joined or hard lashed or the like to give anti-twist to the spar segments. Have the 5-ft spreaders be joined by the spars at the 1-ft-from-TE and LE point; this will efficiently use the angle-leg height and reduce the unpinned beam length of the spreaders to 4-ft, with 1 ft aft of aft spar. SS or DS HG hereabouts.
Spreaders may be good candidates for "double tapering" design to obtain least mass for the HG; opportunity for one-part spreader or two-part spreaders; two-part spreader might give opportunity for wing chord to exceed 5-ft, if wanted. Thus 6+6=12 spreaders in addition to the keel that also spreads the two parallel spars. Spars: angles (with some casing set at assembly at site.). Eight (8) couplers for sparing: 4+4.

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Note: Toted angle beams at assembly might receive some casing, full or partial. Casing could be sacrificial tape or hook-and-loop wrap or sock case, or the like; this can be explored to counter beam's angle's leg spreading during compression of spars from flight loads in a KP-QP rigging affair. Tolerate the draggy rigging.

Consider a TE bar set on the TE tips of the spreaders. Rectangular. Receives wrapping sail and firms the TE shape. Bar can be in tote segments of 5-ft or less. Bars will pack well.

Add central SS sail areas filling the keel aft end to 10-ft out on side wing, say 5-ft by 10 ft legged triangle, not right as sweep puts the triangle not right. But approximately 40 square feet is added to the HG. Rough area of HG: 190 sq. ft. 5,5,5,5,5,5 by chord 5; plus aft special area. Rough: 5x30+40=190 rough.