Wow, blast to the past, I had a Cirrus 3 and then a 5, those were the days.

Yes, that's true.

Actually if you have a wing on there and you didn't think it would break and it broke while you were testing it you could jump out and kiss the Earth and saying oh happy days because anybody can miss and that's a good way to miss right there hook to a test rig on a truck with a camera on it instead of somewhere else where you were flying and nobody knows what happened to you.

Glad you enjoyed it!

Thank you.

Now!! www.avianonline.co.uk/riot-p-2003.html

The crosstubes are 62x0.9mm 7075-T6. We added an internal sleeve (60x0.9mm 7075-T6). Yes centred on where it broke, which was also the middle of the tube (as you'd expect for a slender beam in compression). From memory, I think it was about 1m long sleeve. The main purpose of the sleeve is to add bending stiffness to prevent buckling. A very short sleeve will increase the stiffness in a short area, so will only increase the buckling load a little and it will fail at the end of the sleeve. As you increase the length of the sleeve, you increase the buckling load and move the location of failure further out until you reach a point where it will go back to failing in the middle of the tube and increasing the length of the sleeve will have very little effect (other than adding weight). So we were aiming for just before that point.

I'm not sure it's history, but I think there were two identical ones made originally, one for the US and one for the UK associations in the 90s. This one got upgraded datalogging and electronics in probably the mid 00's, I think there was a PhD student from Cranfield University involved in that.

@@avianhanggliders1985 correct, looks like the one used for the TRX, TR3, iirc. just wrote about the TRX 160 positive load test. Mark's rig when he was living in Tehachapi, working at Boss film was a 5.7l extra cab C2500 with a performance chip, Wills Wing bought it shortly after, added 500# free weights stacked on the driver's side front corner. The California City airport runway wasn't long enough to get 72mph target speed at 25º root stall angle, the rig was out of nitrous or pre- NOS system install. Mark set pitch at 5º+, accelerated to around 75mph IAS and raised the pitch with the dial control. As the glider pitched up to around 10º the pitch force overwhelmed the landing gear worm drive motor and went to the stop at +35º. Both front wheels came off the ground for a moment. Mark instantly let off the gas, got 3 seconds of over target speed , 72mph to qualify a higher than 49mph VNE. As the truck came to a stop at the end of the runway Mark said, " never doing that again" the data recorder showed >2400# peak total force

We completely strip it down. Discard all the wires as a matter of course, inspect every other component individually and rebuild it. I might keep this one for my own use and to lend out as a demo wing.

Thanks, yes, we were really lucky to have the drone with someone else to fly it for the first day, that made very good footage. There's so many things to keep track of, making sure that the datalogging equipment is all set up right and recording that remembering to set up cameras and get them running takes a bit of a back seat.

@@avianhanggliders1985 for sure, I'm currently doing EP training and not allowed to use a go pro as my instructor says it's too much of a distraction

A big bang! (although not quite as bad as I had imagined it might be, and the truck didn't wobble much).

Firstly, modern flexwings trace their roots back to Rogallos, but they're now very different aircraft. Secondly, this particular video is about a wing for sub-70 trike use, not a free flight hang glider. For a sub-70 type microlight then flexwings make a lot of sense, they're light, packable, quick to rig, I notice your profile picture is one such wing. Thirdly, as your comment seems more about free flying hang gliders then what you're basically describing is an AIR Atos. These do exist and they are indeed great aircraft. Many people fly and enjoy them. Also the I believe the Swift and possibly the Archaeopteryx are still available and although they are also great aircraft they are of limited appeal due to high cost and low practicality. However flexwing hang gliders are also great aircraft, they're a long way from a Rogallo. Many more people enjoy flying flexwing hang gliders than rigid wings or the 3 axis foot launched types. This doesn't mean there's no room for improvement though, they're still a long way from optimal and borrowing concepts from both rigid wings and paragliding wings to improve the flexwing concept still further. I'll be releasing further videos on what we're doing to further develop this.