New toys: U-Turn Airwolf

Airwolf from the classic 80s TV show

Me on my
 U-Turn Airwolf.
Pic from a video
by Claudia

I received my new small U-Turn Airwolf paraglider about a week ago.  The color scheme is somewhat similar to that of its 80s TV show namesake. This is my first DHV 2/EN C paraglider, and I'm moving up from a U-Turn Obsession II (high end DHV 1-2/EN B).  So anyone considering a similar move up: I decided after 203 hours and 238 flights.

I've flown it for about two hours so far over five flights and kited it for about an hour.  The first thing I noticed is how easily it launches.  A little pull on the A's and it floats nicely above your head even in the lightest winds.  The cell openings and leading edge are defined using somewhat rigid plastic rods instead of mylar.  The wing seems to be built to last, which makes it heavier than the light wings from Gradient.

I pulled a few asymmetrical collapses at trim speed and the wing didn't do much.  Same with an induced frontal--- it recovered with ears in, which a gentle application of brake removed and it surged gently forward into normal flying again.  Entry into a spiral is controlled and the exit is also easy to control.  I could not get the wing to porpoise aggressively, it would just shoot forward from behind and park itself above me.  I'll update this with more information about the wing as I learn it.

I'll be taking this wing with me to Australia to fly Mt. Borah in Manilla in a couple weeks.  Here is an interesting video about a paraglider pilot who, while competing at this site, got sucked into a thunderstorm and catapulted to 30000ft and survived, as well as the story of another pilot who got hit by lightning in the same storm and died: Paragliding miracle/tragedy at Manilla 2007: Ewa Wisnierska and He Zhongpin.

My attempts to get flights with this new wing have been less than successful: once I drove for three hours for an 8 minute flight, and another time I drove five hours for a 7 minute flight.  That's the trigger for me to go to get in a plane and find some better weather.  To fly in Australia, I needed to get all my local paperwork out of the way, so I recently catapulted from being an unrated pilot (I'm too cool to be rated) to having an advanced rating.

EDIT: I've now flown it for 9.5 hours, still in only light conditions (thermals to +3.5m/sec).  I feel like it has much better performance than my Obsession II at trim and on bar.  I was able to keep up with a a pod-pilot on a Sol Torck on a very very light day, but most of the time he could climb slightly higher than me in the light thermals (they were sometimes averaging less than 1 m/sec, a day for patience!), but I didn't lose anything noticeable on glide.  Still finding it super easy to launch in low and high wind.

EDIT2: I've now flown it for 25 hours, in conditions up to about 4m/sec average thermal climb rate.

Having flown in the Canungra Cup, I can say the U-Turn Airwolf keeps up with all the high end DHV 2 / EN C gliders and the older 2/3 gliders in climbing and gliding. The presence or absence of a pod seems to matter most (I don't fly with a pod harness).  A small fraction of a point in glide really doesn't matter in reality --- it is what line you choose, how you optimize bar usage, etc. Climbing performance is, also, limited by the pilot, though in the really really light stuff the R10.2's seem to just float away... well they are the best pilots usually too. You'll be landing on XC due to bad decisions not wing limitations.

EDIT4: The Airwolf is super fun to throw around, but I haven't had a chance to do any real playing yet.  While flying in active air, it moves around a lot, even on bar requiring some active bar usage.  All collapses (only a few small asymmetricals) I've had have been non events, even the accelerated ones (though to be honest I was coming off bar the two times it went because I knew the wing was about to explode).  Even after 25 hours on this wing I'm still not keyed into it and am not reading the information from the wing well enough to prevent all collapses.  The Obsession II (high end DHV 1/2) I flew with before seemed to give more early warning, or I was just more in tune with it.

EDIT3: After 30 hours, finally did a full stall, nothing surprising.  Big wingovers and asymmetric spirals are as expected.  I'm very happy with the wing!  Still haven't flown in Big Stuff yet, but I'm feeling almost ready for it (now if the weather would just cooperate...)

EDIT4: After 43 hours.  Launching is still wonderfully easy --- I wonder if this is true of all the new gliders with plastic stick reinforcements in the leading edge.  I haven't gotten enough flying time to do any significant amount of acro, the few times I've tried I still am not getting wingovers dialed nicely in --- probably just because I keep flying XC instead of throwing the wing around. I finally feel tuned into the wing in terms of reading the input from it and preventing collapses and thermalling well with it. It really did take 30-40 hours for me to get there... I suppose the same was true of when I got the Obsession II.  Anyway, I'm quite happy with the glider.

EDIT5: After 50 hours. Did a few asym. spirals to loops and I still *heart* loops. If this wing doesn't last 200 hours you'll know why. I haven't figured out the SAT timing yet (only tried a couple times starting with late entry attempts), it's obvious the Airwolf has a smaller entry window than the super-easy-to-SAT Obsession II.  The few full stalls I've done have been non-events and easy to control recovery.  I don't get real collapses anymore (wing tip flutters at the edge of thermals only) despite conditions being stronger now.  I'd say my previous estimate of me taking 30-40 hours to get dialed in should be closer to 40-50 hours.  Still happy with the wing... bonus points because it looks cool!  Neophyte acro pilot that I am, I unintentionally spun a wingover (while trying to get it up to loop size) into an ugly MacTwist with bonus riser twist action (I blocked it before it went farther than a half riser twist)!

EDIT6: After 65 hours. I still *heart* looping. SATs work now after a couple more attempts (yes, it's not a late entry SAT-er... if you enter late you have to haul the breaks crazy hard to get it to finally break out of the resulting SAT-an spiral into a SAT). Still easy to launch. Thermaling is fine, but I can't seem to get fully in sync with the glider when I want to bank it up tightly.  It tends to get pushed around by every little bubble in the thermals. On glide it is also very pitch wobbly making flying on speedbar (even with my best effort at active speedbar flying) or even at trim inefficient as far as I can tell. Could be pilot inexperience... Have had a few collapses on full bar (it's stable enough at 1/4 and 1/2 bar, but at near full bar the wing seems, somewhat expectedly, prone to explode).  You can tell easily before it goes just because any change in air gets communicated by pitching or rolling (see my complaint above), so I was already releasing bar somewhat before it went all times and as a result the collapses were non-events... Anyway, not sure why I keep flying on full bar, maybe I've been flying in too much -3 m/sec sink while trying to go upwind, err translated: pilot idiocy.  I've done a few more full-stalls and it's still easy. The wing has lulled me into a probably false sense of security... it wants to be a tiger, but it's really a pussy-cat even during my semi-regular beginning-acro-failures.