How would this be fake?

My first take was "I so want one of them" see ya 100LL

If it is real, sign me up. I live between a 4500 fot hill, and a 600 yard grass field. I can't buss my house for fear I will hit a hang glider or para-glider. It is huge in my town. The more I see them, the more I want to do it.

D.

Very cool, but if it doesn't have a throttle I'm not interested!

Yes it is real..... Heard about that glider a while back..... It is Swiss made, but at $82,441.11 US I don't think we are going to see one around here any time soon. ( I converted the base cost from Swiss Franks as advertised on the web site )

Brian.

Yes Rob it is definitely real. There are several ultralight sailplanes, and the line between hang gliders and sailplanes has now been erased with this Archaeopetryx and the SWIFT from Bright Star. The one in the video is the first truly foot launchable high performance glider with a fuselage and tail... foot launch has long been one of the areas where flying wings shine the brightest.

Very, very , cool!!

I got to fly a Swift twice in Issaquah, before deciding it was too expensive for me ($12k at the time, might as well fly sailplanes).

Hang gliding was a great way to spend about a decade, but in the Rockies, it's often more about 'hang waiting' than 'hang gliding'.

The Swift was a lot of fun to fly- around 18:1 or better, around 230 fpm sink...I think the second time I flew it, I went 25 miles with a quarter of the effort I had to put in the day before (with better conditions) with my UP TRX (flex wing) to go 10 miles. It was a joy to fly, except the visibility was pretty much gone compared to a conventional glider, which is half the fun.

And in Europe - they have these things called Telepheriques - cable cars that haul you up and down 10,000 feet at a time. Here in the US you need something with a throttle, or else you have to depend upon good old "pat and charley" to get you up the hill.

'Greg

Great lookin bird! Note however they didn't show how they get it up the hill/how it transports.... the para gliders are the best at that. As an ex hang glider pilot {72-79, lived and breathed it) I am now spoiled: no hang waiting, d7rivers or 4x4's required just really a lot more freedom! GREAT BIRD THOUGH!

Brian - Steve's Aircraft wrote:Yes it is real.....$82,441.11 US Brian.

82 Grand...

courierguy wrote:Note however they didn't show how they get it up the hill/how it transports.... the para gliders are the best at that.

That's one thing that always really appealed to me about paragliding...the packability aspect. I used to love paragliding, but I got spooked after a tow launch crash.

Yup, for that much, you can get an awfully nice mid-90's self-launch racing ship that goes farther, faster, higher, more reliably, .... I don't get it.

I miss my hang gliding days. That is, the days I got to *fly* at all. I think I batted .350 or so over the roughly 10 years I devoted nearly every other weekend of the summer to it. It's a big cause of divorce for those who manage to get hitched at all while suffering the addiction.

Here's someone at my old stomping ground. It makes my blood boil wanting to do it again:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP3s30n6P_U[/youtube]

I did PG for several years too, and even briefly got my other half to briefly enjoy it. It's great for the coasts and smoother air in Europe and elsewhere- easy to learn, light to pack, etc. When things are smooth, it's incredible. I used to share thermals with kids who were perhaps 11-14 years old flying completely alone, and they'd regularly kick my ass in a declared goal.

I used to fly from the Spanish side for hours over the top of the Pyrenees to the French side, eat sturdy Languedoc cooking for lunch, catch a bus back to Spain in time for beer and tapas, and do it all again in the morning, and repeat it every weekend as long as the weather held out. PG's require too much respect for mortality to launch into the mid-day Colorado rockies air. It will never be able to touch hang gliding for safety in the mountains.

And, regrettably, hang gliding will never touch planes or sailplanes for safety anywhere.

I think most of us old washed up soaring types will agree that self-launch is the only viable future. The hang glider people will agree that a van full of boisterous and laughing guys driving up the hill was always fun and lots of camaraderie, but it became the de facto limit of how often you flew. The sailplane guys like me will agree that although an aero-tow is more efficient because yo are not carrying an engine around when you're soaring... the cost and headache and diminishing number of towplanes and gliderports is part of what is killing the sport.

Not to mention that there are a lot of flat land places where hang gliding and ultralight sailplanes are now prospering, where there is no mountain launch site or traditional gliderport. Scooter tows and car tows are very inexpensive but then soaring is still a sport requiring two people and only one is flying. All of these problems are solved by self-launch.

There's always this... viewtopic.php?f=15&t=6244

Hey Rob,

Is this a case of when afoot is as good as a Maule?

GR

Looks like something Fred Flintstone would fly.

If you fly it in the back country do you have to wear bigger shoes?

If you fly it in the winter do you have to wear snow shoes?

If you land it on the water do you have to wear water wings ?