Or how I learned to relax and love my wing.

DISCLAIMER: This is just the opinion of a low air time (~40h) paraglider. Please take it with a grain of salt.

Wing Used: Skywalk Tequila 2. Size: S (75-95kG). Wing Loading: ~90kg

Event #1:

Location: Hjartdal. Second day (?) of Norges Cup

Time: Take off around 11:45AM, total flight time 22mins

Weather: Spring Conditions in Norway. Very strong punchy thermals. Slightly gusty side wind right after take off.

Description:

There is a little bit of side wind right after take off, thermals are going off once in a while. I have to take off before the launch window opens for the competition pilots. I had watched other pilots go fly, a few have ear tuck after launch but they fly off. I decide to launch at the next thermal release. Everything goes fine even though I have a 30% collapse on the right side. The wing recovered. I flew out because i was sinking and did not like the look of the trees below me.

Finally find some lift but its scrappy and a bit turbulent. I try to scratch. Other Pilots who took off before me are close by. I kept getting thrown out of the core and decided it was too much for me.

The usual warning about ‘strong language’ in the video.

I head for the landing and its sink almost all the way. I decide to loose the last bit of height over landing doing ‘S’s.

About 20m over the landing I have a 50% collapse. The recovery is quick. i applied left brake as soon as i felt lost pressure on the right. I landed safe.

Here is the video of the just the collapse part 3x slowed down.

Event #2:

Location: Ardal. Western Norway.

Time: Take off around 2:30PM, total flight time 30mins, landed mostly because i wanted to practice toplanding.

Weather: Beautiful day to soar. about 3m/s wind straight into ridge. small bubbles releasing all the time.

Description:

Goal for the day was to practice toplanding and keep scratching to see how high i could go.

I am scratching on the edge of a field when this happened. I could feel the wing softening before the collapse, as you can hear in the video.

Only the collapse part of the video 3x slower

Analysis:

All estimation of percentage of wing collapses are from what I heard from people flying close to me or at landing.

Cause: In my opinion both the collapses occurred when dealing with turbulent thermic air close to terrain. In both the collapses i am on the right edge of very dark fields which are more likely to be releasing strongest on on my left and thus the asymmetric collapses happen on the right.

Wing recovery time: For event #1 the time from start of the collapse to the time it took to recover fully was about 2s. I estimated it by counting the frames. For event #2 the time from start of the collapse to the time it took to recover fully was about 1.5s.

In my opinion , these figures provide a very good sense of security.

Course change during collapse: None. As the following screenshots before and after the collapse show, there isn’t any appreciable change in heading.

In the first event I think I even turned a bit to the left because i was trying to head into the wind.

In the second event the change in heading in negligible.

There is no appreciable loss in height either. Well none other than the usual associated with pitching motions.

Conclusion:

I love how quickly my wing recovers and how safe it still feels even when half of it is gone. I also think my instinctive response has improved quite a bit. I had the opposite brakes engaged when i felt the collapse and i tried to ‘pump’ (one big brake pull) out the collapse. I also found in the video that I kinda knew when the collapse was coming up in the second event. I didn’t even remember doing that until I watched the video.

One thing I need to be very careful of is my tendency to want to grab the riser when the wing goes soft. Maybe I could have avoided both the collapses if i had just kept the hands hanging on the brakes. I will have to work on that. I also need to be careful of the terrain when its thermic. It can be a bit rough so more active flying is necessary.

I was thinking of buying a new wing a few months back, but I am glad I didn’t. I am getting much more ‘comfortable’ with my wing and flying is much more ‘fun’ now. I am still learning and trying out new things; while learning is much more fun when you know you are safe in your wing. I learn quicker when i am flying with the wing and feeling the air through it and can just focus on the task at hand and not have to worry about the wing all the time.