Reviewing

REVIEWING NEW wings is a thankless task, but one we rise to with all the professionalism expected of any quality paragliding publication.

Here at Pie we are unencumbered by high-powered advertisers willing to simply give us money, or the occasional 'permanent' demo wing. We do, however, appreciate the finer details of the delicate balance needed when producing a glossy magazine that gives the paying pilot quality reviews and yet at the same time placing enough ads to give slack-arsed journalists sufficient income to take out a mortgage, raise a family and then swan off on flying holidays for the other 360 days of the year. It's a fine line between selling your soul for every last cent and producing a well-balanced review full of useful advice that let pilots know the wing is a dog and will likely kill them as soon as they touch the speedbar. A fine line indeed.

So let's get down to it and give you the latest ad-free, brutally-honest and up-front review of one of the fleet of newly-arrived-to-market world-beaters. We took the latest TopStack Floater3 (EN-C) and put it through its paces and what follows are our conclusions after several test flights and based on years and years and years of testing wings. Years!

The following report conforms to the same standards of reporting as traditional paragliding magazine tests.

"As with all wings delivered from TopStack Gliders the wing arrived well packaged in a sturdy box. The glider arrived with a rucksack, manual, inner bag, compression strap, riser bag and speedbar. TopStack Gliders know first impressions count, and the attention to detail just on getting the glider out of the box impressed us. The manual was well written and very comprehensive in both Amharic & English. Very useful. Laying out the wing in the office we were very impressed with the wing itself, it was really well put together, great craftsmanship and the standard of finish on this glider is among the best in the business. They've clearly made a perfect choice of materials, both for weight and longevity. We noticed the stitching was in really straight lines except around the curvy bits and the colour scheme went very well with the rucksack we felt.

The harness attachments seem well placed just at the end of the risers, we liked this. Pilots should take note that the risers are skinny risers, but that's standard for wings of this class, although TopStack Gliders informs us that pilots may, when ordering, specify fat-risers if preferred. All the accompanying accessories were well presented and we really liked the choice of colour for the speedbar. We found the riser-tidy bag quite useful for our sandwiches and the compression strap worked very well. We tested it.

The line attachment points seemed really strong, definitely a plus, and they use the Gibi-Rigi-Arch, plenty of Mylar and weed-wacker inserts for the leading edge. All of these technological advances are fantastic news for pilots unless, of course, someone is offering you a lift back to takeoff and you've got to get your arse on the back seat in 5 minutes. The reinforcements in the leading edge were very clever and allow the attachment of the A's to be a bit further back. Several cm's back actually. This was simply clever design we thought.

Once on-site, we test inflated the wing several times and it came overhead very easily with little effort required and very little brake needed to control the surge. So no inflation problems to report for the Floater3. None whatsoever.

Ridge soaring is a dream with this wing, the turns are flat and controlled both with and without weightshift. When at altitude we threw in a few wingovers to see how it handled and it coped magnificently. The turning was both smooth and incredibly dynamic giving the pilot the feeling of confidence through complete control. The brakes are neither too heavy, nor too light and brake travel is neither too long, nor too short for a wing in this class. The TopStack designers have outdone themselves with the control acheived through such average brake use here. It turned beautifully in thermals which we liked, as this prolonged our test flights by several minutes in some cases. Thermal centering is left up to the pilot and not automatic on this wing, a good choice we felt.

The speed system is light and easy to use. We used the full range of a two step speed bar to get the pulleys touching, but with the bar being so light it's not a problem to use it at any setting. Trim speed seems very good for a glider at this level and seems to comply with the published data. Big ears are easy to do with the split A's and they come out very quickly when released. Fantastic.

This wing certainly has an improved glide ratio over the previous model, the Floater2, and no mistake. The glide may possibly be better than all other wings in this class, but we'd shy away from such bold statements as the other magazines wouldn't like it much. But we could say it if we wanted to. When using the speedbar we felt we could maintain pretty good pitch control and we could steer it with the rear risers too if required. This is bound to be a plus when considering the target market for wings in this class. A winner, for sure.

Normally at this point in the review we would show you a pointless table of different aspects of the wings performance and manageability with the usual 5-star column on the right. This wing, like so many others, would definitely score a couple of five-star entries and the rest of the table would be filled with 4 and 4.5 stars with one 3-star entry for some obscure tested feature no-one cares about. Unfortunately, we are pressed for time with this review and would invite the reader to simply imagine the table or maybe cut/paste a table from any of our previous reviews and insert it here.

So to summarise, a fantastic glider with mid to high-level agility and handling for its class, making it a great choice for long comfortable cross-country flying and your first competitions. For the more experienced pilot this is a delightful glider to fly around with almost no effort, blending impecable handling with such high levels of performance is an impressive feat, what other wing offers such fantastic performance in such a comfortable ride.[WTF? - Ed] For pilots ready to embrace C-class wings this is a very satisfying wing that will carry you well into your early competition career and beyond."

As with all reviews, we advise pilots to test fly any wing they may be considering buying. While much time and many years of experience has gone into throwing this review together, we recognise that each pilot has different requirements and we cannot stress enough the need to fly it yourself. As such, the Pie test team cannot be held accountable should any pilot choose to buy a TopStack Floater 3 based solely on this review and find themselves stuck with a dog of a wing that does not seem to match our test pilots experiences. You have been warned.

This cut/paste job has been brought to you by Pie. The healthy choice. [WTF? - Ed]

Pie in the Sky
Funnier than the 2009 "A320 Hudson River" bridge collision

Remember

CLIPPING-IN, we all do it. Unfortunately, or so it would seem, not doing so makes for a rather shorter flight. Fucking short, in fact.

So please try and remember to do it.

Find a system that works for you [Yes you, Ed], then tell everyone else to sod-off when you're doing it.

If you don't, you might be back on terra-firma much earlier than you planned, and here at Pie, we'd wager the conversation you were having when you were distracted from checking your leg straps will seem much less important.

JFDI.

[not much humour, but WTF - Ed]

Pie in the Sky
Funnier than the 2009 "A320 Hudson River" bridge collision

French FUBAR

OUTSIDE THE French speaking world little is known about the guys down at Nervers, but all that is about to change. Here at Pie we're happy to break the news that, thanks to a little translation work and a wicked sense of humour, we could be looking at the new Blozone. Albeit without the same addiction to red.

"Nervurs?", we hear you say. "That small company that sell wings to the Frenchies?". That's right, "Nurvous". They've been at it for years, selling small volumes of French-made wings to French people, in French, in France, the French way. And good on 'em, we say. That was until last year, of course, when it seems they've decided on a new approach.

Last year, it seems, they took their first tentative step to widen their market and dabbled a toe in the English speaking world. It would seem the waters met with their approval, because this year they are following through with a full-on assault on the mainstream market. Oh yes. You heard it here first.

During 2009 they released their new lightweight mountain wing, the "LOL", and it now seems clear this was simply an early sign of their new direction. This winter, it seems, they will be rolling out a whole fleet of new wings.

The all-new Nervieous 2010/2011 lineup:

Their beginners model, the CWOT-AFAIK, already has EN-A cert & is available in all colour schemes.
The shiny new intermediate, the STFU-BTDTGTTS, is due to be one of this years top sellers.
Their sports EN-C wing, the FTBSITTTD, is already flying off the shelves. Red is sold out.
Their serial class wing, the WTF-DILLIGAF, is due to take the comp scene by storm this year.
The open-class, MTFBWY, has Blozone worried as it has more carbon than a Chilean coal mine.
Their tandem, the RUUP4IT, is due to become standard place at beach resorts all over the Med.
Last years mountain wing, the LOL, is already due to be replaced with their new ROTFLMAO.

So there it is folks, a short list of this winters new releases from those MOFO's down at Nervurs. Get AFK, go AWOL and take one for a test flight. It'll probably be a head-turning son of a bitch.

Pie in the Sky
Funnier than the 2009 "A320 Hudson River" bridge collision

Finding Pie

WE ALL know how to find things on the net right? Just pull up your old friend google and get searching, we all do it. For many of us it's part of our job, sitting there day after day using the google search engine to help us with technical issues or find reports that let us do the job of two people for only one salary. Long gone are the days when you phoned down to the office clerk and he or she looked up the details for you and called you back.

These days, if it's worth knowing, google and friends will have it indexed, cache and referenced for you. All you need to know are three or four key words that will get it on the first page of the search results. Let's face it, when did you last read the second page of results? You just refined your search terms right?

Well, it would rather seem that many readers are simply too daft to save a bookmark and have to google us when they fancy a slice of Pie. Unknown to many surfers, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, these search terms are available to us here at Pie. Yes, that's right, we can see what you [Yes, you - Ed] typed into google to find Pie. So we've taken a sample of your search terms and here's what we've found.

Quite frankly, it beggars belief that the second most popular search is "latin jocks", and it's the number one search used by Canadians. Whatever these girls (or guys) are looking for, we're pretty confident their not going to find it here at Pie. Likewise, "naked figures" features quite highly, and we're a little worried for those who've been using the 17th most popular search "xxs condom". The consensus here in the office is that we'd be pretty quick to clear our browser caches if we had to search for a pack of 3 using the phrase "xxs". Again, we can only presume that the guys who were looking for "blonde marketing" may have been a little disappointed to discover paragliding satire, rather than a Wonderbra ad designer. The least said the better about those who were searching for "pie in her face" as we also felt it rather suggested an unhealthy interest in something left-of-centre.

You couldn't make this stuff up. And we didn't.

We would also guess that someone has been looking for old friends, when we spotted the search "Thomas Pie", which we concluded was our old friend and part-time wedding photographer, Avian Lomass. We're also confident that top designer Hands Pampas has been looking for us as several searches for "Sky Vings" resulted in a visit to Pie, or maybe a group of travelling German pilots have been trying to find the BPHA online magazine. Of course, we hope they eventually did.

There are some more abstract searches that have led the casual visitor to us, "things could be worse", for example, is a rather strange search and we hope they eventually got in touch with a self-help charitable organisation that could be of more help. Google has a strange way of relating their results too. For example, some visitors were searching for "skypax", a FedEx type parcel service, and yet Pie appears fourth in google's search results. Go figure.

3 years ago when releasing our "Manilla 2007 Mini-Special" celebrating Bruce Goldchain's victory at the Worlds we, among other lighthearted endeavors, defined the verb "Brucin". Of course, at the time we never imagined we really were in the process of defining it, but as it can now be found as the fifth definition on wordsdomination.com clearly we were. Please do try and keep this in mind next time you're playing Scrabble and are down to a few difficult letters.

So there you have it readers, it really is a strange world-wide-web and clearly the all-seeing, all-knowing, internet God does not, in fact, know it all. Let's face it, when your start out in business calling your new enterprise "BackRub", would you really expect to become the worlds biggest provider of internet search results? Just google it, they really did!

Pie in the Sky
Funnier than the 2009 "A320 Hudson River" bridge collision

Outed

HERE WAS an unusual issue we thought, upon receiving a letter recently. The letter described how a pilot has clearly been having some local issues with, shall we say, his personal lifestyle choices. Now here at Pie, we're proud of our open-minded attitude towards anyone and everyone. Whoever you are, whatever you are, wherever you're from and whatever you choose to do in the privacy of your own leather-studded underpants is your own business. This is our attitude towards just about everything we do here at Pie, and it's served us pretty well so far. We do, however, understand that there are people who take a dim view of others who don't agree with them or who choose to live life differently from themselves. The Spanish Inquisition could be a case in point, for example.

So we were happy to offer what help we could for poor old Charlie when he wrote to us saying that he'd been quickly outed at his local flying sites and has been having some problems with his gear ever since. We could imagine the small-minded locals getting upset with someone they thought as different to themselves. We could imagine them making some last-minute adjustments to his harness when he was taking that final piss on takeoff. Something to scare him off perhaps. Something that would help him decide to find another flying site maybe.

Bastards.

We decided against phoning in advance or emailing, instead we headed on over to the coastal sites south of Barcelona where we thought we would just roll up and try and witness some of this bigoted behaviour first hand. After checking their sites guide we headed over to the Ginebra-Rosa takeoff and sat down waiting to witness some of this unacceptable behaviour towards a fellow pilot. After a couple of hours or so, a small guy rolled up with a big glider bag and an even bigger smile on his face. Perhaps this was our man, we thought. We chatted for ages, asking him about the site, the local conditions, what to expect, when the sea breeze kicked in, all the usual visiting pilot questions flowed forth. Carlos seemed really happy for the company and more than willing to impart what seemed to be years of local experience. After an hour or so he seemed to think this might be about as good as it got, and started getting his kit unpacked. While doing so, he turned to us and asked a question.

"I 'ath been a wondering, ever thinth I got thethe new mothquetoneth wether they are thetup right.", he said in heavily accented English. "I 'ath been a 'aving thome ithues with them. I 'ath even thent thome letterth athkin' for 'elp, you know. Perhapth you could 'av a quick look. You guyth theem like you ith well travelled, tho perhapth you could thee if I've inthtalled them right. Would you mind 'avin' a quick look at my thetup?"

"Of course", we said, happy to assist in any way.

"I ith uthin' thethe new Charley Quickly Outed'th, and I jutht can't theem to get them to thtay in correctly. Maybe therth a thpethial thing I needth to do.", he said.

"Charley Quick Outs you say?".

Bugger.

Pie in the Sky
Funnier than the 1908 "Louis Bleriot Tree-Landing" video

AN Other

YOU MUST be kidding, they want to what? This seemed to be the general reaction around the office when news started coming in that the Assian Paragliding Union (Do-APU) were planning on setting up another parallel testing regime and certification standard. For those with short-term memory problems, let's have a quick refresher course in how not to set international standards, shall we.

Many years ago in a land not so far far away there were two groups of people, both had the interests of pilots at heart and both wanted to see good, repeatable testing performed on paragliding and hang gliding equipment. There was a group called Le-AFNOR and another called Za-DHV and they constantly battled each other on the fields of Europe for years boring the shit out of paraglider pilots worldwide with their inability to actually agree on anything.

In the blue corner we had Le-AFNOR who were promoting a "laissez faire" pro-EU, live-and-let-live testing regime and in the red corner Za-DHV were chaffing at the bit with hundreds of years of demonstrable engineering talent and showing signs of having spent rather too long in a Schardenfreudian Dominatrix Dungeon in Munich.

Several battles were fought and they even continued on after Le-AFNOR had renamed itself Le-EN and it's testing had been renamed LTF (dubbed Less Than Fair, by many). Eventually Za-DHV, found itself with its back against the ropes, it's trousers round its ankles and trying to stem the bleeding from its nose. The fatal blow to the famous proboscis arrived when the relatively local manufacturers ganged up and organised themselves into an association. Certain pronouncements were made, and they were made in a tone of voice most of us will remember from childhood.

Most memorable among these declarations was the one beginning "For fuck sake, stop acting like overpaid, spoiled assholes and join the EN testing regime or we will stop using your testing facilities you twats." This seems to have done the trick as within a year or so, Za-DHV modified its testing and finally came in line with the rest of Za-World.

So it was with great trepidation that the world of free-flight opened its curtains on an overcast Monday morning in September, took a big yawn and uttered the words, "Bloody hell, not again".

It would seem that Do-APU seem set to try and repeat history, but this time in Asia and they're calling their shiny new tests AN. Very imaginative.

Luckily, of course, we can examine history, learn from our mistakes as a mature, wise sport and ensure they're not repeated at the expense of Joe Pilot.

History gives us a few pointers so we can know what to expect. Looking carefully, we can see plenty of examples of western cultures treating middle-eastern and far-eastern groups with the respect and courtesy one would expect from mature societies. The Westerners have almost never simply ignored local wishes and ridden over the people and their culture without a care in the world. Neither have western civilisations invaded these parts of the world and massacred entire populations at the whim of a cretinous inbred hereditary monarch with all the mental prowess of a 4x2 piece of Nordic Pine. Oh no.

So... good luck with that then Mssrs. Do-APU and Co!  [Or should we just call you Steve - Ed]

Pie in the Sky
Funnier than the 1908 "Louis Bleriot Tree-Landing" video

White Wash

WHITE IS the new black! It would appear that some manufacturers have begun running out of certain colour materials and are being forced into producing one-off colour combinations to satisfy demand for their best-selling gliders. According to industry rumours, one manufacturer has almost entirely run-out of white cloth.

We can imagine that it's pretty difficult to predict the demand for specific colours when a new glider is released, and we'd like to assist the manufacturers by asking pilots to be as patient as possible when waiting for their new baby to arrive. Pilots should also try to keep in mind that it's not just the customers that are suffering. The latest gossip suggested that demand is now so high for white cloth that top management at some PG manufacturers are being forced make changes.

"This is no joking matter!", said Calvin Cavanaghgogogoch, chief head of Blozone.

"I haven't been forced to make changes like this since I was in my 20's for god's sake, and trust me, that was a bloody long time ago sweetheart", he told on-the-spot Pie reporter Maribel "Rose" Culottes.

"It'z just zee white colour, yes? Zo zee zituacion can't be zat bad, can it?", enquired Rose.

"Listen love", he continued, "When I showed up at the office last Monday, did anyone say 'Good Morning', 'Salut', or 'Fancy a coffee Mike?' Did they fuck!"

"I beg your pardonne?", replied Rose.

"They just asked me if I was wearing white kecks and then proceeded to frog march me to the lav's.", he continued. "Before I knew what was going on, they'd locked me in the cubicle and had chucked a pair or red Y-fronts over the door. They said that we all have to make sacrifices when running a small business and now it was my turn. They then informed me that they'd all being going commando since week last Tuesday, and the entire production department has been completely naked under their overalls all month."

"Last I could work out, my pants were last seen as part of the upper cloth of a DHV-2 wing being loaded into a DHL van and heading for Scotland.". He continued, lowering his voice somewhat, "I'll let you into a little secret, there's a pilot in Holland that's actually quite happy with his new glider and he's totally oblivious to the fact it's entirely made of the R&D departments shreddies. We called him to ask how he was getting on and the feedback was actually very positive. He told us that his early morning flights are significantly improved, so maybe this is something we'll look into in the near future."

"Of course, that's assuming Russo or Luc don't get frostbite in St Andre. You know, our boys are over there right now proving our outright domination of all things waypoint-driven, and they're doing it without their lucky pants!"

Here at Pie, we openly admit to knowing less than sod-all about wing design, but we know a fair bit about underwear, and we're sincerely hoping these revelations can assist with future wing design in some way.

Let's face it, wouldn't it be great if you could just throw your wing in with the whites at 40°?

Pie in the Sky
Funnier than the 1908 "Louis Bleriot Tree-Landing" video