Wings get punctures, boards get dings. How are parawings holding up so far?
Has anyone had one fail? If so, how did it fail?
Older ozones fray at material edges. So far I wouldn’t call it a “failure” - they still work fine.
I saw one with a seam that came undone at Airtime. They were going to resew the seam.
The leading edge battens can become deformed. You can tear the cloth the same as a wing, but it happens less because it’s not stretched taught in an inflatable leading edge.
This happened to my 1.9m Pocket Rocket v2 when foiling with gusts over 50mph. Not sure if it hit a foil tip or just blew apart on a gust. I didn’t see it happen and only noticed it was ripped when I was having trouble flying it through jibes and realized it was torn. I think it probably made contact with the foil but the gusts were crazy so who knows.
canopy material will eventually tear due to damage caused by sun exposure or excessive pulling
battens get deformed and it wont fly as well so those will require refurb/replacement
Most of what I’ve seen is manufacturing defects: tears, stitching fails, broken bars.
The only wear I’ve personally seen and experienced is canopies not resisting water as well as when new and damaged battens not holding the canopy shape as well.
luffing is the #1 dacron killer and PW don’t luff much by design!
I’ve seen one at a repair shop. Apparently a bridle got tangled in the foil, got pre-cut or seriously weakened, and it snapped once under proper load. Canopy fabric then got torn once not adequately supported by its bridles.
Main risk to a pw is to exist in the vicinity of the sharp bits of the foil. Like wings really.
I’ve repaired plenty of kites, less wings but only 2 parawings. One was some loose stitching and the other punctured by the foil tip.
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Of course you dont want to kill your own repairbusiness by handing out info how we can all repair our parawings, but on the other hand, if you have a youtube channel with lots of repairs then the channel might bring in some extra money.
Any home sewing machine can fix a parawing and due to the lightweight cloth probably do a better job than an industrial machine. You just need to use good polyester thread.
Most of the work is unpicking seams before fitting the patch, sewing around the patch and then sewing the seams.
Don’t get me started on double surface, I’ve done foil kite repairs that other sailmakers have refused. You just can’t charge enough to cover the labour to disassemble so a proper repair can be carried out. Even what looks like a simple ripped out attachment point can turn into several hours work. I would never buy a twin skin para due to this.
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Pretty well so far, without the inflatable parts I think no bagging issue will be present or at least will be minimal.
I did managed to tear a little 2 to 3cm hole on the canopy of my 3m power pack on a bigger wave, not precisely in the zone were para wings were designed for 
I have replaced my A line connector on my v1 Frigate. I wouldn’t call it a failure but the bury on the splice had started to poke out and that would cut in to my fingers while flying it as well I was worried about elongation.
F-One sent me a replacement (just a few days outside of 1 year after sale) without cost.
I haven’t flown the new pigtail yet but the kite was flying well with the old slightly longer one so I am a bit worried that the new one is about 1 cm shorter. I imagine it will stretch out a bit once I’ve flown it powered up. I do worry a bit that the B and C connectors might have stretched and since I only replaced the A it might be out of tune though.
