How A Paramania GTR Reflex Wing Responds to Deflations.

A weekend maneuvers clinic with the almighty Chris Santacroce and the Sky Buddha Bud Wruck! These clinics are absolutely essential for both paraglider pilots and powered paraglider pilots alike. Everyone needs to experience collapses on their own wing to learn how they affect you in flight and how to handle them. Any collapse can be mitigated no matter what wing you are flying as long as you know how to react to it.
Chris Santacroce is the absolute master of maneuvers and as you can hear in the video is extremely dedicated to helping people learn how to be better pilots. EVERYONE needs to schedule a session with him at some point in their flying career (sooner than later).

In this video you see a Paramania GTR 24 being flown by a 240 pound pilot. There is a source out there claiming that the GTR and reflex wings in general are unsafe and likely to kill you. I want you to look closely at all of these collapses and judge for yourself how unsafe this wing is. First of all, these collapses are pilot induced and with a reflex wing are extremely unlikely to ever happen. You see on the asymmetric collapses that the wing continues to fly even without pilot input. On one of them you see the glider turn 90 degrees before resuming normal flight. This was with no pilot input at all. In the event of a tip collapse the proper procedure is to weight-shift to the opposite side and pull that brake to maintain straight and level flight.

At half trims I was unable to induce any kind of frontal collapse and I was pulling for all I was worth. This is due to a reflex wing becoming more frontal loaded when trims are released and this is the most stable configuration for the glider. The only thing that will help induce a collapse while in reflex mode is to fly heavily with the brakes as this interrupts the reflex configuration. Using full-speedbar in reflex mode using heavy brakes is what has caused reflex wings to collapse in the past. Tip steering should be used to steer the glider while in reflex mode and you will have the most stable glider configuration. You will notice that even in reflex the asymmetric collapses hardly affected the flight.

Reflex wings wonderful for those desiring stability, speed, and extreme agility! I would not say that they are for beginners as they hold alot of energy and need to handled as such. Learn how to fly from a quality instructor, purchase whatever wing you desire, learn how to fly it well, take a maneuvers clinic to help you build confidence in the wing, and FLY FLY FLY!!!