On Oct 30, 7:03 pm, Bob Kuykendall wrote:
On Oct 29, 4:03 pm, rlovinggood wrote:

...
2,040 lbs total. Tongue weight is 180 lbs.
...

Wow, that's incredible. No wonder you guys buy such big cars.

For comparison, my HP-11 had an empty weight of about 450 lbs with O2
and battery, and its enclosed trailer (which Steve Smith originally
built for his PIK-20) weighed about 350 lbs. With assembly gear and
dollies I don't think the whole rig ever saw the high side of 900 lbs.
It towed quite sweetly across the Sierra behind Volvo 740 and 240,
Mazda B2000 pickup, and even 1.8 liter Subaru Brat.

From deconstructing several glider trailers, what I've found is that

the greatest single weight contributor (next to the glider) is often
the plywood flooring. On a typical 15m trailer with 26'x4' of floor
area, the floor takes almost 80 lbs of 1/4" plywood, about 117 lbs of
3/8" plywood, or 156 lbs of 1/2" plywood. And I've seen two-seater
trailers that used upwards of 300 lbs of 3/4" plywood flooring.

The lighter trailers tend to have very thin floors, supported by many
lateral underfloor elements. The aforementioned HP-11 trailer had non-
structural fiberglass floor sheeting; you had to be careful to step
only on the longerons or dolly rails lest your feet go all the way
through to the ground. Sure, that made it a somewhat suboptimal
conveyance. But it beat the hell out of buying a huge ol' tow car.

Bob K.

To further Bob's point, the floor in a Cobra trailer is a light-weight
sandwich. They offer a heavier (and much cheaper) floor, but
nobody buys it. Other trailers cost less but weigh more...