We believe that working together with the biggest companies is only the first step to build perfect paragliders. Also we only use the best materials available - even if they are more expensive.

Canvas

"The canvas dreams are made of" - these are the words some people often use to describe the fabrics which are used to build paragliders. But also very often the quality of the canvas was not that good as it should be... often the coating was dissolving and the porosity was reaching values making the canvas behaving like a sald sieve. It is clear that such a scenario does not meet the customers expectations. But how does TEAM5 select the canvases they use?

Silicone or Polyurethan – Gelvenor or Porcher Sport
Basically the fabrics of the most producers are mainly made from the same material - a ripstop fabric made of polyamid filament. Insofar the only difference is the technique of coating and its secret mix.
In the past years coating with silicon was very famous to the fabric-producers. But tightened ecological restraints forced Porcher Sport (formerly Porcher Marine) to find new methods to make the fabric airtight. Multiple criterias had to be attended to make the fabric not only UV-resistant but also tearproof, light and colour-fast at realistic prices.
Gelvenor is a producer from South-Africa who sells its legendary LCN 066 already for some years. But since this fabric was intruduced to the market it faced no evolution. Contrary to the fabrics of Porcher Sport this loweres the costs but also makes the material missing to fit actual expectations. The most important reasons why we don't use this fabrc is that at a weight of 50g/m² it is to heavy and also the values of elongation are out of our tolerances. Also we like to avoid using silicone due to its effect on health.
Porcher Sport produces nylon-fabrics dedicated to the requirements of paragliders. According to their weight they are named Skytex 27, 36, 40 and 45 again coated in four different ways (hard finish, classic, evolution and water repellent).

Hard finish
This fabric feels more reinforced. It has good values of elongation together with reduced porosity.

Classic
The classic is the standard allrounder with goods elongation values and a long life-circle.

Water repellent
An additional coating makes water tear off from this fabric more easy - a perfect behaviour for being used as canvas' top layer.

Evolution
This expensive fabric is currently the state-of-the-art-material. It has the best longevity and uv-resistance, elongation and stability and its weight is only slightly above that of the classic.

Lines

Also our line-producers are selected after evaluation of their quality. In the past years three companies established their position on the market: Edelrid, Liros and Cousin. By testing the lines from all of them we found out the special behaviours of each one. The advantage of lines made by Cousin was always the perfect value of elongation. Unfortunatly the colours were not so bright at all and were never delivered to us in that combination we had ordered them. When we started development at TEAM5 we sat together with Cousin to find a solution for this problem. Today we do the colorization by ourselves so we get them exactly in the design we need them.

In the beginning of the 90s the first experiments with Kevlar began, because the very high value of elongation of the Dyneema-lines was no more state of the art. This brought some possitive effect on performance but only in combination with some before undervalued dangers. The buckling sensitiveness was too high for our purposes and first cracks were the results. The avoid this, constructors further on used other materials like Aramid or Technora and the German DHV included the approval of break strength and cracking to his standards.

The Dyneema-line experiences a come-back in the last few years. A new mix of materials and also evoluted production procedures makes this line more resistent agains elogation and contraction.

We at TEAM5 use a mix of both linetypes. On the top level uncovered Dyneema-lines are used. Theese are built with very short length so they should not get in contact with the ground and so can used without cover. The lifting layer of the middle-lines are made of Aramid, Dyneema is used on C- and D-layer. The main-lines are the longest and would cause the max. effect on the angle of attack at 1% elongation, that is why we decided the usage of Aramid at that point.

It is not a secret that performance can be improved by reducing the line-drag. This can be achieved by reducing the overall length of used lines - or - by reducing the diameter. Todays gliders are usually equiped with only two main-lines on each side and layer. This reduces the overall length of lines but not the drag, because in this configuration the main-lines' diameter has to be chosen larger to allow each line to carry more weight. This has a negative effect on the drag, of course.

During development of our class 1-2 glider - the BLUE - we tested several prototypes with different line-geometries. Our experiences confirmed the the results of calculations and computer-simulations we did before: 2 main-lines have abt. 10-15% less overall line-length, but as a result of the larger diameter the drag is again enhanced by 10%.