Whoosh! wheels 2.0 for aerofoil section hang glider base tube
Whoosh! are sturdy wheels for hang glider base bars, with interchangeable hubs. They were developed by Raven Sky Sports in the USA seven years now, when aerofoil-section basetubes started to become more commonplace, and are available for round or aerofoil section, aluminium or carbon fibre basebars.
Recently they have released a version 2.0 of the wheels. The new design wheels are tougher and sturdier then the originals, but with very little increase in weight. There are five different hub designs to fit all the common basebars.
The hubs are machined from a single piece of white nylon, and wrap around the base bar “like a clam shell”, designed to not easily slide sideways. They are supplied with strong rubber bands to fit either side of them, to reinforce this.
Whoosh! wheels 2.0 in place on an aerofoil-section basebar
The wheels themselves are machined from a single piece of grey PVC plastic, and the two halves of each wheel attach to the hub with a pair of hand-tightening screws, no tools required. Some wheels have lightening holes and some do not, depending upon the application.
They are available in two diameters, 6.25” (16cm) or 8” (20cm) for both aluminium and carbon basebars. The hubs for carbon basebars are bigger than those for aluminium, because the carbon basebars have a greater front-to-back measurement than the aluminium airfoil basebars. The hubs also have a relatively generous width on the basetube (1.125” or 29mm). As an added benefit, this width is also expected to more evenly spread the load in case of a hard landing, where the relatively fragile carbon bar could otherwise get damaged. This does mean that wheels cannot be shared between a carbon-fibre basebar and an aluminium one..
The sets cost between $140 and $200, and are available from www.hanggliding.com
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