Sailwing
The Sailwing , invented by David Barish in 1965, is the paraglider that is considered to be the first "real" paraglider . It is a five-arch further development of the three-arched rectangular single-wing parachute patented by him in 1964 as part of research work by NASA and was specifically developed by him in order to perform gliding flights after taking off from the mountain. The first flights carried out by Barish in September 1965 in the Cat Hills of Mt. Hunter in Bel Air, New York State , are therefore the first "paragliding flights" in history.
In 1966, Barish and his son propagated his idea of "slope soaring" as a new sport and tourist attraction that could help ski lifts to become a summer business by means of public demonstrations in ski areas. The 1966/68 “paragliding flights” carried out by Barish together with Dan Poynter in Catamont and Lake Placid at the ski jumps there also served promotional purposes . But the time was probably not yet ripe, as Dave himself says in retrospect: "Back then we only pushed the sport as a new, fun way of downhill." In addition, nobody thought back then that longer flights might be possible in thermals or dynamic uphill slopes . Everyone thought it was just a "fun sport" as they would say today, and the overall response has remained modest. When NASA then discontinued the parachute research programs in the late 1960s, the further development of the Sailwing died with it.
Today's parachutes are therefore no direct descendants of the single-surface "Ur-glider", but of the same age, in 1964 filed a patent double-face parafoil of Jalbert, who also for paragliders was suitable, with a first mountain flight actually but not executed until 1967 by Neumark.
Newer products
Today there are products under the name “Sailwing” which look like wings and have a certain resemblance to a hang glider . They can only carry a person over a short distance and are handled in a similar way to a kite .
Web links
- Pictures of the three-arched Sailwing parachute forerunner (in the report probably misleadingly also referred to as Sailwing)
- Flight with Sailwing 1965
