The ten steps of paraglider design

Théo de Blic explains how a paraglider makes it from the designer’s laptop to your local launch

I have been working for paragliding companies for years now and I have a pretty good understanding and knowledge of how our wings are made. So here I will try to explain this process in 10 steps.

One

At the very beginning there are two options. The first is the most common: the brand has an existing glider, for example Nova’s Ion 6, and it needs to be updated. This is the easiest and the most complicated situation because you have a base to work on, you know what people liked, what people disliked and you want to improve your wing, whether it’s performance (most common) or safety, handling wise. 

So you create a new project with a clear idea of what you want. The difficulty then is that you need a definite improvement compared to the previous model and sometimes it can be hard to reach. Meanwhile you still...