I love your vids man. I know that you are putting yourself out there with these explanations and there will always be folks you will say "you did all of this wrong!" .. But please don't stop... These are fantastic. Your weight shift in this case was the key I think - excellent job and very very helpful vids.
I didn't see an explanation of why you flew in to sinking air, only the fact that you did!!!... It is no accident, first comes the thermal, taking off too quickly after it passes or right at the end of the cycle before calmer air comes through is the culprit. It is better to time thermal cycles, its easy and noticeable, and fly off at the start or a minute or so before the start; no sinking air and likely lift directly after launch :-) You can be unlucky and the thermal is off to one side, and the sink is overspill - but this is rare, as most launch sites get their thermals directly up them :-)
There's a lot of armchair piloting going on in these comments by people who sound like they don't fly paragliders in turbulent air or understand what they are looking at/ talking about
Great analysis! I'm flying Swing's wings with RAST last 5 years and I'm amazed by it! It was Nyos Rs for 3 years and now I'm flying Agera Rs for 2 years. I'm considering switching to Libra RS. What are your overall impressions? Compared to 3 liner, is it a huge change? How hard is it to handle?
I only took the Libra RS for a few XC flights as a test wing. The 2-liner wings generally require more active piloting in turbulence than the 3-liner wings, but after 2 seasons on a 3-liner EN-C, you should be able to manage the Libra RS (if you can handle its quite impressive aspect ratio) . I can't compare it to the Agera and other Swing gliders, I haven't tried them. For my taste, the Libra RS is a bit too "soft" (moves and wobbles a lot), and the brakes feel like a rubber band. But that's my personal impression, you should get your own.
This is not due to the high aspect ratio (there are wings with even higher aspect ratio that are much stiffer), but due to the lightweight design with few and short reinforcement wires. No handling problems, just not my type of wing.
The Libra RS is much more "soft" compared to Artik R, from my experience. It moves more in the air and is more agile despite having a larger aspect ratio. I didn't really like the "spongy" feeling on the brakes though, I prefer more firm and direct brake control.
@dymanoid thanks for answering, when you say soft compared to artik, what do you mean? less feel on the breaks, or the wings feels less pressurised, in terms of more likely to collapse. I imagine it to move more due to the light weight design. and surprised to hear it is more agile. never flown a niviuk, but must admit I like the look of the Artic 6 and now Artic R.
It's hard to explain. On Libra RS, only the wing front has rigid foils, so the wing feels softer than the Artik R having the reinforcements all over the chord. It is definitely more prune to collapses, but not much. The collapses should feel less violent though, with less cravat risk as well. The feel on the brakes is indeed different too.
Somebody already asked this question in another video's comments. I cannot really explain how I feel it. It's a combination of brake pressure, feeling on the risers, overall glider movements, and even wind noise. I believe this feeling comes from many hours of flying, you just start understanding your wing. Still, there are some rare cases where collapses happen completely unexpectedly, without any "precautions" from your glider. The air can be tricky!
it's like a muscle memory when you fly enough, it's a combination of a lot of things but what I usually feel is the loss of pressure on the riser before the collapse happens so you almost automatically pump that brake, but like he said sometimes it collapses without much of a warning.
Thanks for sharing - it looks to me like you stalled that right wing tip by pulling too much brake. The wing was inflated and you dug in deep right brake in what looks like a reaction to the preceding sharp jab of right brake which pitched the right wing back and forward You can see the deep angle of attack with the trailing edge curled down and puckered with the right wing tip then going into stall as a result. The wing re-inflated when you put your right hand back up. Putting your right hand up is the correct stall recovery of a stalled right tip, not applying brake. Stalls occur due to excessive angle of attack to the relative airflow. Brake increases angle of attack. Not a criticism, but perhaps worth reflection.
Thanks for your comment. I see your point, but it is not what happened. Take a look at 0:47 - it is a typical collapse, not a stall. A one sided stall is called spin, and the wing configuration looks completely different in such cases. You can show this video to any paragliding instructor of your choice to confirm the right wing side wasn't stalled. The reason I opened the right brake completely is exactly what you say - after a deep jab trying to prevent the collapse (which didn't help), the right side lost a lot of speed. To not accidentally stall it, I wanted it first to gain the speed again before I do the second jab to open the collapse which revealed to be not necessary 'cause the RAST system opened it for me.
@@dymanoid to me the brake looked excessive for the relative small pitch forward, but perhaps that’s due to the wide camera angle not representing the attitude well. A stalled tip will collapse due to the turbulent air over the top, but you were there so I’ll default to your account of what happened. I just wanted to give some polite input for reflection. Again, thanks for sharing. These are valuable clips.
@@FatParamotorGuy The deep brake input wasn't to catch pitch forward, it was a reaction to loss of pressure in the right side of the glider. When you feel a collapse developing, the correct input is to pull as much brake as necessary, briefly, to increase the AOA and prevent the LE from folding over. As in this case, it doesn't always work and sometimes the collapse happens anyway. Even if you fail to prevent the collapse, the deep input as the wing is folding likely minimizes the size of the collapse. If he had stalled the tip (spin) the wing would have peeled backwards, not folded over forwards.
you pulled the break even when the wing reopened already , ...so, the reaction bevor the collapse was too late, and after the collapse too late as well....? is it a swing glider?
Thanks for commenting. I pulled my brakes many times on both sides for various reasons. To prevent the collapse, to control the course, to stop the dive. If you watch carefully, you will notice that I was not too late - at 1:57, I pull the brake to prevent the collapse *before* the wing starts collapsing. After the collapse opened by itself, I pulled the brake to stop the surge, because I flew into sinking air with the right wing tip (which actually caused the collapse) - so it wasn't "too late" too.
@@dymanoid really a great video to think about root causes into more detail - thanks for shareing! Still, I second the opinion of PiT... - at this scene 1:57 it really looks like the wing is moving forward and your pull destroyed the wing tip's flow. anyways, we might have different conclusions ... ;-)
Can you please explain what "destroy the flow" means? I only know something called "flow separation" which causes a stall - the opposite of a collapse. Are you talking about reducing the reflex profiling and thus indirectly causing a ballooning effect leading to a negative angle of attack?
