Silken Paragliders
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Finally, let's check out the Silken Paragliders crowd from Shenyang Province in China that exclusively uses low-quality silk. Yup, a visit to this paragliding website will get you a package delivered to your door with canopy, lines, harness, everything in one lovely soft bundle. The only reason it's 'build own paraglider' is because you do have to attach the lines, risers etc yourself.
Takes nearly three hours to put together, it's quite fiddly. The instructions are terrible, they should fire their translator. On the other hand, some parts are hilarious. Found myself searching the Silken Paragliders Instruction Book for the funniest bits actually!
The whole package is only US$99. How is that possible, considering the entire paraglider + harness is pure silk?. Well, remember I said it was low-quality silk they use. I emailed the webmaster and he says that only rejected skeins of silk from some of the major silk factories in China are used.
Sometimes silk-worms have 'off days'. Funnily enough, if one starts going off they all do. And for people who know their silk, it's just so obvious in the finished product. So the factories can't afford to include any below-par stuff in their output of raw silk. They have to practically give it away. So it ends up in the mail-order paragliders from the sweatshops of this remote Chinese province.
If I were you, I'd order one of these beautiful hand-woven paragliders today. With the incredible growth which is occurring in the sport of paragliding, the limited supply of rejected silk is sure to prove insufficient before long. Prices will soar as the Silken Paragliders company struggles to keep up with demand.
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Last updated: 15 Mar 2007
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