Walter Neser has been flying since 1989, instructing since 1991, and worked as designer and test pilot of Paragliders for 8 years. With over 14 000 hours on Paragliders, there are few pilots with more experience.
When Gaynor found herself encountering a string of full frontals, Walter  offered to test fly the glider.  To read more about Walter and the SIV-Acro courses he conducts, go to  www.siv-acro.com

Walter Neser is a professional SIV and Acro instructor. He travels world wide, holds courses regularly in South Africa and on demand, in Australia.  He was also an APCO test pilot.

In testing my Swing Astral 6, Walter used all the same equipment including my harness, but did not carry water or extra clothing.  Walter's body weight is 72kg and so would have clipped in at around 86kg which is the middle of the weight range. (70-95kg)

Launch

Nice even launch in strong conditions
No tendency to hold back or overshoot

Big Ears

The wing tips stay in. They need to be pumped out and they are reluctant to pump out. Recommend pumping one ear out at a time.

Asymmetric Recovery

Spontaneous without dive or change in direction
Better than some gliders in its class

Wing tips in thermal

Turn Response

Turn response is good when turn has already been established. No tendency to dive in or roll out. Smooth in and out turning

Exiting Thermal

Glider hangs back or lags behind pilot when exiting a thermal or flying out of lift.  Does not dive forward like other gliders.  The negative is that when turning back into the thermal it is slow at that point, to turn.

Front Tuck Collapse on Speedbar or Trim

Front Tuck Collapse Recovery

SAT's

Dynamic enough for entry level acro

SAT's

Re-inforced tape between cascades

Excellent new addition.  Absent on some of the earlier Swing gliders

Swivels on brakes

Brake Pressure Progressive

Glide and Speed

Speedbar

Colour scheme

At this stage I have 13 flights and 25 hours on the Swing Astral 6, mostly over a period of two weeks.

My body weight is 76kg, I fly with a lightweight Sup-Air Alti-rando harness and my all up weight with water is around 93kgs.

I have been paragliding for 9 years. My passion is long distance flying.  I have always flown wings that made me feel as safe as possible.

Now I am stepping up a class from Intermediate to Sports and I still require a wing that makes me feel safe, but with increased performance.

Finding the balance is where I am at with the Swing Astral 6.  This wing demands active flying and that I lift my skill level to meets its capabilities.

It has not been an easy step up, but as I learn more about this wing, so I am growing to feel more capable of flying it safely.  It may take another 20 flights before I feel at One, so I am taking it easy, flying cautiously, nursing my confidence levels and giving myself the best chance of reaching synergy with the Swing Astral 6.

This is an unusual step for me.  If I get a fright on a wing I normally land and hand it back.  With the Swing Astral 6, there is something about it.  The Swing Astral 6 is exciting. It wants to fly with me to the horison and it will even take me to Goal on more than one occassion.

It says : ' I am more than your current level of flying, but not more than your potential. '

Come fly with me!

First Impressions - first flight

When Barry from Birdmen Paragliding first handed me the Swing Astral 6 I thought: Wow, this glide is light!  Weight 5.4kgs.

As I unwrapped the glider and picked up the risers, my next thought was: Yow, the risers are so thin!!!

Laying the glider out, I fell in love with the colour - white. I have never had a white glider before. Cloth was crinkly new and spunky.

The cells in the leading edge are stiff and stay open even when laying on the ground with no wind.  Will have to learn to concertina pack.

Launch in very light winds - so easy.  The rise is steady, even and responsive to the slightest brake input. I value a glider that ground handles well.

First 20 seconds in flight:  Oh my G*%, I have made a mistake.  This glider is too hot for me to handle. Hope I can land safely.

After 1 hour: Well, it has not collapsed yet, I will keep flying a little bit more.

After 2 hours: Hmm.. it flies into wind.  What a novel experience.

After 3 hours: Jeepers, this glider just keeps on flying! And what a low save!!  Excellent!

After 3hrs46 mins:  Whew, that was a fast backwards landing into wind!  What an amazing glider.  I want one!!!

Link to some of Flygirl's flights on Leonardo

Below is a collection of impressions regarding specific aspects I encountered flying this glider.

Launch/Take-Off

Smooth, easy, even rise in all conditions.

In light wind conditions the glider rises steadily and evenly. It is very light and easy to pull up.

Cross light wind launch - an easy pull-up with responsive control.

Light wind cliff launch - the glider pulls up in almost nill wind to climb steadily into upper light wind.  As I step quickly backwards the glider comes overhead without a tendency to hang back or overshoot. Glider maintains shape as I turn and run the short distance to the cliff edge.  Here I slow, almost pause as I do not feel much pressure in the glider even though it is flying.  I realise that my momentum is going to carry me over the edge for a tumble anyway and so commit to trusting the glider and going over.  In all this the glider holds its shape, is responsive to brake pressure and flies cleanly away from the mountain without diving or collapsing. Don't try this at home!

Steady medium strength wind on very gentle slope.  Easy, steady rise, no hang back, no tendency to overshoot, responsive to brake input, super easy ground handling.

STRONG WIND CLIFF LAUNCH conditions illustrated below, courtesy of Norman Collins

Big Ears

These ears/wing tips stay in and require deep pumping to get them inflated.

Front Tuck/Collapse

For the first ten hours of flying the wing I never experienced any collapses at all on trim or 1/4 to 1/2 speedbar.  And then I had a massive collapse on 3/4 speedbar and for the next few days a series of big frontal collapses on and off speedbar.  The conditions were strong summer thermic Porterville.  Having never had such a big collapse before without immediate recovery, I thought the glider had gone into a full stall. The wings had folded back as the glider disappeared behind me and even the pilot behind me thought I had purposefully induced a full stall.  Recovery was aggravated by me putting on too much brake - I held the brakes just below the karabiners concerned that a big dive was going to follow.  There were a series of cascades as the glider tried to fly but was being held back from doing so by too much brake.  Things got wild as the glider dived forward, backwards and sideways and I made the decision to full stall the glider properly. As the glider came overhead, I went hands up and the glider slipped into forward motion without a major dive as if to say,' what was the commotion all about? You should have just put your hands up.'

Cause of involuntary Front Tuck - I suspect I was not flying actively enough, even though I thought I was.  In trying to fly the glider fast I had almost no brake pressure on, my hands were right up at the pulleys, arms straight and often I was pushing speedbar to 3/4.  Having come from a diet of docile and very well behaved DHV 1-2 type gliders, I was not sensitive enough to this gliders feedback.  

To stop the front collapses, I presently fly with a lot of brake, about 15 - 20 cm, enough to crease the first part of the trailing edge.  This allows me to feel when the glider is preparing to unload and to pressure that part of the wing with varying brake input according to needs. As I tune into the glider I will start to ease off some of that brake pressure.

Recovery - Don't complicate it. Hands up and the glider 'slips' into normal flying mode without an obvious dive.  However, I am always ready to brake should it become necessary.

Inner A's front tuck. What I did find interesting was that when I took the inner A's only, pulled down and held them in, I had a very comfortable and calm descent - much like a B-line stall. The glider did not rosette but rather held a very stable 'halfmoon bite' in an other wise normal looking leading edge.  Releasing these inner 'A's the glider recovered without a dive or change in direction.

B-Line Stall

I could not induce a B-Line Stall.  The risers have short strips of webbing at the end where the lines attach. The A, B, C's are bound close together at the lower end of the short webbing stubs.  I found it difficult to get my gloved hand in between the risers to grip the B-Line stub and roll my wrist in order to 'crack' the pressure on the lines and glider. Not successful.

Leading Edge / Cells

There are 57 cells with 12 cells closed (6 cells on either side of the wing).  The openings are incredible stiff and the gliders leading edge remains open on the ground.  I am learning to concertina pack - thanks to Barry and Candice from Birdmen Paragliding who sponsored me one of their special concertina bags. This bag will help preserve the gliders leading edge for longer .

Asymmetric Collapses

Roland De Vries kindly piloted the Swing Astral 6 so I could take photographs.

When Flygirl induced an Asymmetric collapse, there was no change in direction at all, very stable flight.

Had to hold the Asymmetric in for two seconds to get a reluctant 30 degree turn before I consciously counterweight shifted and applied some counter brake pressure.

Pumping out Asyms/wing tucks takes a bit of effort.

They like to stay tucked

Yaw and Pitch

The Astral 6 has a fair amount of yaw and pitch overhead. It moves around a lot. I found that stepping on a bit of speedbar makes the glider feel more solid and settles it down.  

Wing tips

Tend to 'flick' - very tiny tuck activity.

Spiral

Oh my, what a thing of BEAUTY!!! No wing overs required, we entered the spiral with no effort at all and it was sweet all the way in, slipping through the air as if it did not exist.  Exist was smooth and controlled.   I get the impression that there is more outward horizontal force in the spiral as opposed to loss in altitude.  Will have to practice more to see what this is about :-)

Brake pressure

Brake pressure is progressive / even.  Stall point is very deep and low.   I presently fly with a lot of brake, about 15 - 20 cm, just enough to crease the first part of the trailing edge.  This allows me to feel when the glider is preparing to unload and to pressure that part of the wing with varying brake input according to needs. As I tune into the glider I will start to ease off some of that brake pressure.

Brakes and Swivels

On previous gliders I was always unwinding my brake lines on the ground and in the air, so this is a good feature.  It does however make my usual two fingers grip on the lines awkward as I struggle to hold above swivel with my hands still in the brakes.

I find the hard straight 'stick' in the handle uncomfortable, preferring softer flexible webbing or neoprene comfort as with big loop acro handles.  The Swing website states that this 'stick' is flexible to four positions of curve.  Not sure what they mean, because I have really bent those sticks and they straighten out, not holding their shape.  They will take some getting used to.

UPDATE:

After receiving two emails from Flygirl Readers flying their own Swing Astral 6 gliders, I have taken their advice and removed the 'sticks' from the handles.

I am much more comfortable now - thank you Stefan H and Huseyin!

Speedbar System on Risers

VERY IMPORTANT

The speedbar line is too thin or perhaps the pulleys on the risers are too flexible and a gap opens up.

Glide and Speed

Flying into wind and staying flying is a new experience. This gliders amazing speedbar and glide performance showed me that this was possible and during the recent Winelands Paragliding Open, I had some success, not only in flying upwind over the flats to collect a waypoint, but also into strong and turbulent Level 2 conditions on the Porterville ridge for 5 km in order to make a difficult start. This latter achievement was a major turning point for me as it really boosted my confidence in the wing and my potential.

Flying this wing

In light broken thermals, I find I have to be very sensitive with brakes and weight shifting. Any sharp movements and I lose altitude sharply. I am struggling to get the best out of the Astral 6 in light conditions.  I clip in at the maximum weight of 95kg and find I am outclimbed and battle to top up that last little bit of thermal lift to cloudbase.

Strong narrow thermals - core it.  This glider loves to bank hence it is a sweet little spiral artist. Very active behaviour.

Further information:

Swing website page for the Astral 6

My Swing Astral 6 is size 24 (small, 70 - 95kgs)
DHV Classification: C

Cloth

The cloth is 'coated cloth 40 g/m2 for the top sail and 35 g/m2 for the bottom sail.'
What cloth Swing is using is still classified, but not NCV Porcher Marine.

Lines

'The diameters of the A's are 1.6mm/1.5mm (main lines, sheathed), 1.3mm (intermediate lines, sheathed) and 0.8mm/0.6mm (top lines, unsheathed)

Interesting the difference in these two test reports.  I definitely do NOT agree with the  DHV EN test report

The DHV LTF Test Report is closer to my experiences.