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Swing / Astral 2 vs Advance/Omega 4 flight impressions (no measurements) by Jérôme Daoust. Tested 2000/5/6, revised 2000/5/9.

My friend Douglas was kind enough to let try his Swing/Astral 2 size 26 at Marshall/California in mid-day conditions, in strong conditions as reported by a local instructor that just top landed.

From the total flying weight range (80-105 kg) I was near the middle at 93 kg. I also flew with my friend's harness (brand/type ?) since my harness and accelerator lines are permanently fixed to my wing's risers. Ideally I should have tried the Astral 2 with my own harness to limit the variations in behavior to those from the wing. I am considering this wing as a replacement for my aging O4 (Advance/Omega 4), looking for a more collapse resistant wing for favorite flying site (Marshall) which has strong thermals, so I will make comparisons to it (the purpose of this review).

First thing I noticed while building a wall with the wing is that the span seemed much less than my O4, or at least that the aspect ratio is less. Sure, why not, I'm looking for a more stable wing anyway. I did not find any difficulty in inflating or kiting the wing.

After launch I noticed that the risers were much more far apart than I am used to but left it that way. In flight, the sink rate seemed comparable to my O4, or should I say that I didn't feel any immediate disadvantage, but I will leave this up to more serious magazines to come up with the numbers. One thing that I expected because of previous rumors, was for the wing to be slow to react to turn input and that it dampened wing-overs too much to be fun. I did not find this to be the case, the wing seemed to accelerate its turns more than my O4 and seemed to do wing-overs just as well (I did not bank more than 60 degrees though).

It was a thermal day (with sharp edges), and I followed 4-5 thermals up, gaining from 300 to 500 m (1000-1600') each time. The wing is much more dampened in pitch (nice) when entering a thermal (or turbulence) than my O4. I got a few collapses, the biggest one being a 30%, which re-opened with a sharp snap that left me with mixed emotion : My O4 re-opens slowly, so I wonder if such sharp re-openings are good for the lines or attachment points (does this make sense ?). I believe that under the same conditions I would have had more significant collapses with my O4, so I was please to feel the extra collapse resistance of the wing and purposefully placed it in harm's way a few times to test it, nice. The wing sent less feedback (feeling a side lifted more than the other) to indicate where the thermal was and which way to turn into it, compared to my O4, but was still sufficient to help me find the thermal's core. I am confident on my previous observation, because the harness during this test made the risers further apart than with my O4, and it seemed less cross-braced, which would tend to increase the feedback level. During my flight, I did not have a chance to thermal at the same time as another paraglider pilot to compare thermalling efficiency (I was typically higher but in different areas), but the wing seemed decent, although left me wondering about its turning efficiency.

I did 2 short transitions, and found that the Lift/Drag was good at trim speed, not constituting a big handicap compared to my O4. At half speed bar, the glide still felt good, but seemed to degrade noticeably when using full speed bar (Unlike my O4, I felt the plunge here).

I did a spiral dive to about -8 m/s (not too steep) and was surprised at the high sink rate obtained for what I though to be a moderate bank angle. Again this makes me think about the turn efficiency.

I was surprised with the strong sink rate achieved with "big ears" compared to my 04, but maybe I found sink at the same time, so its hard to say for sure. Like with my O4, the ears came out very slowly by themselves.

When top landing, I did a half turn to loose the final bit of altitude and head into the wind, to notice again that the wing lost rapidly altitude during the half turn. Nice for top landing, but make me wonder again about turning efficiency.

Summary (compared to an Omega 4):

No obvious disadvantage in sink rate, and glide up to half speed bar. Degradation of glide at full speed bar. More dampened in pitch and less tendency to collapse (that's what I'm looking for). At least as easy to turn, but probably less efficient during turns. Similar brake tension (not more tiring on the arms).