andy01842
Member
After a less than perfect take-off from a mountain in France my “sails” are now vertical instead of horizontal. I used to be a hang glider pilot. To fly a hang glider you need to know how a wing works. On old basic hang gliders the sail is a single surface raped around the leading edge not too dissimilar in profile to the sail on a sailing boat. On later more high performance gliders the sail is double surface and more “wing shape” i.e. it develops lift as much if not more from the fact that the air has further to travel over the top of the sail/wing than the bottom. So there is high pressure under the wing and low pressure on top of the wing. The blade profile on a wing generator is the same.
By this time you are probably ahead of me and know where I am going! Dose anyone wont to buy a cheap hang glider to cut in half and use as a sail on there boat! The problem is that a sail on a boat needs to work on both port and starboard tack this is not an impossible problem to solve. A hang glider sail has battens to hold its shape and stalls at an air speed of about 18mph. Are there rules to stop a racing boat using a wing as apposed to a single surface sail? I would be interested to hear any comments on my suggestion.
Andy
<hr width=100% size=1>
By this time you are probably ahead of me and know where I am going! Dose anyone wont to buy a cheap hang glider to cut in half and use as a sail on there boat! The problem is that a sail on a boat needs to work on both port and starboard tack this is not an impossible problem to solve. A hang glider sail has battens to hold its shape and stalls at an air speed of about 18mph. Are there rules to stop a racing boat using a wing as apposed to a single surface sail? I would be interested to hear any comments on my suggestion.
Andy
<hr width=100% size=1>
