PARAGLIDING IN SA  |   FLYING SITES  |   REVIEWS  |   AIRLORE  |   STORIES  |   GALLERY |   CARTOONS Does size really matter? Big or small? The dillemna of the in-between-er. by Greg Hamerton Greg has been flying since 1992 and has flown over 100 wings. He prefers responsive handling and agility but rates passive stability highly as he enjoys taking photographs and snoozing whilst gliding.  After reading the rave reviews of the latest wing, you know that you need it. No ifs, no buts. You've sold the kids for medical experiments, pawned the family silverware, and you stand ready with your fistfull of pounds, quivering with anticipation in front of your paragliding dealer. In a hushed voice he pulls you aside. "So will you be wanting the big 'un, or the small 'un, then?" Reality bites. You don't know. You weigh 67kg in your socks. The weight-range of the small goes from 50-70kg for the pilot, and the medium is 65-85kg. The glossy brochure doesn't help. You're struck with the dillemna of the in-between-er, lost in the overlap. You're not alone. I was recently faced with this Hobson's choice, and I'll take you through my findings. 1. What is my weight? The bathroom scale reads 67kg, but the brochure gaily quotes 'takeoff weight' or 'pilot weight' and 'flying weight'. 'All up weight' is the standard, and is the weight of you and all your flying equipment, including your new wing. Stuff everything into the glider backpack, and stand on the scale. More than you thought, huh? The equipment usually adds 20kg to your naked weight. That's 87kg. 2. Loading your plate. Theory states that by loading a given wing with more weight you will find an increase in all flying speeds, increased stability (resistance to collapses) and more responsive handling. You'll still glide just as far from the sa me launch-site as before, but you'll fly faster and sink faster. When the flying conditions are strong, flying heavy is good. When the conditions are light, the reverse is true - you want to minimise your speed and sink rate. But does the large wing fly slower with my 87kg than the small wing with would? 3. Airborne. Theory was bending my brain, so I took the question into the sky. I found that the larger glider was more mellow in its response to collapses and aerobatics. It didn't have the direct bu mping and twitchy feel of the small. It had a lower stall speed, which was useful for landings. On the down-side, it tended to suffer small collapses more often, due to the lower wingloading. But the most crucial question was the speed. Even though I was light on the large, I found it to have the same trim and top speed, and a better sink rate. All things told, the large was king in the air. 4. Groundbound. On the ground, the small glider ruled. There was less sail area, so it was easier to manage, collapse, pull up and control. Once I was caught in strong wind, the large became more of a spinnaker, and was difficult to stop. The small could be popped up in more wind, and be controlled, and collapsed. If you suspect your ground-handling will alwa ys be weak, or expect your launch conditions to always be strong, the choice of glider can be made on this point alone. 5. Different strokes for different folks. Glider manufacturers don't seem to use a standard system of allocating weight ranges to gliders . Just compare the little Nova X-Act (20.9qm) with the Edel Atlas (23.4qm), both certified as gliders for 65-85kg payload. Some test a glider for a 20kg range - Apco Santana L (90-110kg), some stretch the a glider over 30kg - Freex Flair M (80-110kg). Weight ranges are certainly not an exact science. 6. The added spin of scale models. Some manufacturers (Pro-Design, Apco, Swing) have innovative designs to simplify construction. For instance, to make a small Pro-Design Compact into a medium required the insertion of two centre-cells, and minimal rigging changes. Need a large? Another two cells where sewn in. Very clever, but this changed the wing's aspect ratio, resulting in the x-large being a very different wing to the x-small. The bigger sizes wil l always out-perform the smalls in this configuration - the higher aspect ratio wing (wider wingspan, narrower chord) flies faster, further and sinks slower. Many manufacturers (Freex, Nova, Edel) produce meticulously scaled versions of the same wing, mea n ing each wing is exactly the same aspect ratio, no matter the size. This reduces the difference between the gliders in the same range, but does not eliminate it. Some manufacturers actually reduce the aspect ratio as the size increases (Advance-Sigma4). What this all means is that there is no easy way to tell if the small will fly the same as the large. It may be a different wing entirely. 7. A visit to the DHV. By this point I was getting thoroughly confused. Too many theories offered too many diver gent answers about my two wings. Do I buy the small or the large? I needed some facts, and I turned to the DHV. I know the Germans to be precise and meticulous, so when they quote a figure in their tests, I rest assured that they found that figure to b e true. But there were speeds quoted that just defied logic. Sometimes a lower wingloading on the same glider would result in an equal or higher speed (Santana, Fusion, Harmony). One wing which I knew to be fast (Flair M - holder of the 100km World Speed Record) was quoted as the slowest trimmed glider of the lot at 32km/h! Applying the same 87kg weight, 2 'small' wings were definitely faster, 3 were slower, and 5 the same as their 'larger' counterparts. The facts were not crowning a definite victor. 8. Dynamite comes in small packages. Every design undergoes rigorous testing by either the DHV or the AFNOR bodies. Of the 10 paired wings I reviewed at the DHV website, 7 mediums were safer than their paired smalls, 1 was the same, and 2 were more viole nt in their response to being collapsed in flight. Thus the larger gliders were generally safer, as I suspected from my flight. 9. Back to the drawing board. If the DHV struggle to find accurate speed readings, there must be something fundamentally diff icult about it. When I considered that they were trying to measure horizontal velocity in a restless fluid where they were travelling at a slight downwards angle, and I was looking for 1km/h in 35km/h, I began to appreciate the problem. The speeds are j ust too low to yield accurate results. In the abscence of scientific facts, and my brain fizzing with controvertial theory, I settled on what felt right in the air. 10. Hammer's Rule of Thumb for all Things Uncertain. Size does matter. If you're within the manufacturer's quoted weight-range on both, take the larger wing, and go and master your groundhandling. Big is beautiful. But you knew that already.  You might also like to read: Other paraglider reviews on this website.