[Bob Kuczewski]

Avian Hang Glider Development

https://www.avianonline.co.uk/
https://www.youtube.com/@avianhanggliders1985

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCmOcFQ-sYI

[Bob Kuczewski]

According to the video, the development work is open source and available at: https://gitlab.com/HG-dev.

For anyone not familiar with downloading from GitLab, I've attached a ZIP file below of the current version. To save space, this ZIP file contains only the current version (28.6 MB) and does not include the GIT history. The full version (with GIT history) is 95.8 MB, and can be downloaded from the GitLab repository mentioned above.

I am not familiar with the tools they are using, and I haven't looked closely at the data files yet. But I believe they are using open source tools that can be downloaded per their instructions. I've just done a quick scan and the required software seems to include:

• FreeCAD and sail-making macros
• OpenVSP with the API installed
• Jupyter Lab or Notebook with the VSP kernel accessible
• InfluxDB database
• Open Modelica

 

[Bob Kuczewski]

I dug through some of the files and found these airfoil cross-section files:

aerodynamic-modelling/data/aerofoils/ui1720reflex.csv
aerodynamic-modelling/data/aerofoils/ui1720mod.csv
aerodynamic-modelling/data/aerofoils/2R15section.csv
aerodynamic-modelling/data/aerofoils/tipsection.csv

I wrote a quick plotting program (in Python/TKinter) to display them:

ui1720reflex_2024-06-20_06-04-49.png (4.94 KiB) Viewed 8663 times

ui1720mod_2024-06-20_06-04-05.png (4.95 KiB) Viewed 8663 times

2R15section_2024-06-20_06-03-18.png (4.72 KiB) Viewed 8663 times

tipsection_2024-06-20_06-02-08.png (4.06 KiB) Viewed 8663 times

[Bob Kuczewski]

I just came across a recent Avian Hang Glider video (April 2025):

https://youtu.be/gvhW9JgZ1JQ

It's a bit technical, but very well done. My only slightly negative observation is that he was comparing the elliptical shape of airplane wings with the generally non-elliptical shape of hang glider wings without accounting for the tail needed on the airplane. A more appropriate comparison would need to include the airplane tail in the analysis so it's more of an "apples to apples" comparison.

Having said that, the video is extremely understandable, and I hope they continue their work on both videos and hang gliders.   

[Bob Kuczewski]

Here's another Avian video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gp_7w8sMjE