Swing Arcus!
Forgiveness

I am a sinner. I like to take a glider out into perfectly innocent air, take a glider which is flying wonderfully, high as a kite, and then really trash that glider, bend it inside out, see if I can get the wing to jump back into its backpack on its own. My job used to be easy. In the good old days you could sneeze at some of the wings and they'd collapse. Even before you had launched. But nowadays, the gliders are getting so damn solid. I have to be really evil with a wing to make it do something unexpected. And finally, when I had resorted to taking sniffing salt and squeezing lemon in my eye, to work up a good, dark rage and practice being evil, Swing released the Arcus. I had become obsolete. It is no longer scary to trash a glider, it is no longer a challenge to coax a broken craft back to life.

Having been instructing for years, I have always kept my eye open for a glider that is simple enough to train with, and yet has enough performance to take a pilot well past his licence into cross country flying. It has always irked me that I would have to stock basic training gliders, the student would have to buy a basic intermediate, and after a year or so, upgrade to another performance intermediate. At last, I have encountered a wing which spans this entry phase of paragliding perfectly. I am happy to train students on the Arcus - it is not too hot. And I would quite happily take the Arcus cross country - it has easy handling, and great performance.

The groundhandling was superb - just a light, continuous pull on the A's saw the glider arcing up overhead, steady and measured. A little bit of body movement corrected almost all of the skew pullups I did. The glider wants to fly. Once in the air, the first thing I noticed was the mellowness of turbulence. The Arcus does not react much to anything, and there was very little feedback from the wing. It does what you want it to do, and takes care of the rest. The brake pressure was moderate to high, but quite acceptable. It responded nicely to weight shift, in a measured kind of way. Adding hard inside brake to turn tight induced a good bank, although the inside wing tended to drop and lose height. A careful application of the outside brake was needed to keep the turn flat in light conditions. But on strong thermic days, the fact that you can turn tight if you want to means keeping hooked in to those narrow, hard cores.

SAFETY
Wingovers needed to be built up over quite a few swings, to really get the momentum going. If you decide you've had enough, you just stop what you are doing, let go the brakes, and she'll fly straight and level, balanced before you can say "Robert's your father's uncle." Pitch stability has a similarly forgiving feel - I induced large surges, and held the brakes in as I swung forwards of the glider, trying to get it to front tuck on the release. It needs more than committed pendulums to get it to nosetuck. Front tucks reinflated on their own accord, as rapidly as I expected from any glider.

The next logical thing to do was to see if the glider had a tendancy to go into parachutal stall from maneouvres. I popped the wing into a B-line stall and released slowly - it swung gently out and was flying again with no hint of stall. A rapidly released B-line behaved impeccably, out in a smooth, quick exit. Because the brakes take first on the trailing edge near the wingtips, then towards the centre (but never all the way) and then pull on the stabiliser line, there is a moderate increase in brake pressure towards the stall point. The transition into stall is smooth, measured, with no snap.

Trying to induce a negative spin generates the same high brake pressure, and one has to be aggressive to get the wing to slip. If released within the first 90 degrees, the wing will fly straight and level. If held in, the spin stabilises into a mild rotation, not enough to wrap the lines, and by letting go of the brakes, you will exit. Unless you are fairly aggressive with the brakes, the negative spin enters a spiral after one rotation, building up airspeed again.

Assymetric stall (spinning from trim speed) was as forgiving as slow-speed negatives. Bravo! I pump-stalled the wing in to a tight landing field, using Schwarzenegger brake inputs. No problem, no tendancy to stall.

On the next flight, I turned the Arcus in to a tight spiral, which was easy to enter, without any biting in or surprises. Once she was going down rapidly, I let everything go, and pretended not to be the pilot. Well, I was out of the spiral like a shot, swinging high into the sky. The wing overshot me severely, and suffered a big asymmetric collapse because of the unchecked dive. But, as usual, the Arcus was forgiving, reinflating again with a bang and not so much as a change of direction. I yawned, and idly cleaned the lenses of my sunglasses.

Another brand of glider pulled up alongside, and we began to rev our engines, like teenagers in a small town on a friday night, showing off to the girls. On a glide at trim speed, I found the Arcus to be as good as the Edel Saber. Minimum sink seems a little higher than the current sports class gliders (Freex Spear, Apco Allegra). The glider has a crease running spanwise along the top surface between the Cs and Ds which gives the profile a reflex section. This seems to have the effect of providing improved pitch stability on full speed bar, with a reasonable resistance to collapses. The top speed is claimed to be 49km/h. The speedbar is ridiculously long, though, having a total of 54cm travel on the bar. My legs don't go that far, and I had to land and put in a step-ladder system (2 speedbars, one 30cm below the other) to get the full benefit of the accelerator. Once the bar was fully extended, there was a whistling wind, and a constant progression through the risers (A + 6cm = B, B + 6cm = C, C + 6cm = D), an 18cm difference between A's and D's in total. You're probably nodding your head now, understanding why the Arcus was a little naughty on the speedbar collapse test, as opposed to all the 1's it scored for the rest. You'd also feel a bit naughty if you had more than half a metre of speedbar line out.

So I yanked in a full A-riser set, inducing a 70% aymmetric collapse, and followed Bob Drury's advice to 'hold on to my hat'. The hat would have come off, alright. The glider swung directly into an asymmetric spiral dive, going round steadily for two rotations. It evidently needed some pilot reaction - I stayed on full speedbar, but tried to counter the spiral, which stalled the flying wing, which then pitched forwards when I released it, rossetted, and then finally flew. That was the dumb exit. I tried it again, collapsed and spiralled, then released the speedbar, and hey! we swung out of the spiral, reinflated and flew away. So it scored a 1/2. Why doesn't that scare me? I big-earsed down to the landing field, using the convenient split-A risers which I find very considerate of manufacturers to include. The ears needed to be held in, reinflating within seconds of release. I could steer adequately with weight shift to negotiate the landing setup.

CONSTRUCTION
Packing away the glider gave me time to reflect on the manufacture quality. If I was to use one word to sum up Swing's approach, I would say 'functional'. What is necessary, has been done. There are no signs of extra reinforcing, and looking inside the wing I was concerned at how much of the ribs had been cut out to provide open cell ports and minimise the weight. The V-ribs are very lightweight and shortened, only providing bracing near the leading edge. The risers were thinner than most, although made from stiff, sturdy fabric showing no sign of inadequacy. The 13 main lines per side are divided as follows : 2innerA's, 1outerA, 3B's + 1stabiliser, 3C's, 3D's.

The backpack, once again, was functional, though not overly comfortable. Bad features : Thin fabric, no chest-strap, a hip strap that was too long for my (admittedly narrow) hips, and shoulder straps that were only just long enough for my average frame (tall pilots will suffer). Good features were load-bearing straps to hook my thumbs into when walking, reasonable padding on shoulder and waist, and a reasonable internal volume. It also packs away really small.

SPECIFICATIONS
Pilot including equipment 80-105 kg
Reviewer tested at 92 kg
Aspect ratio (flat) 5.00
Aspect ratio (projected) 4.15
Min Sink 1.15 m/s
Stall - Max speed 22-49 km/h
DHV 1/2 \par Lines Cousin

TEST CONDITIONS
Porterville, Cape Town, SA - 700m ASL launch, flight to 1000m, 1 hour total in mild thermic conditions.