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I finally got a chance to have a go on the current training glider offering from Wills Wing - the Alpha 235. This wing is meant to be a school wing for the initial training on shallow school slopes. But unlike the Condor it replaces, Wills Wing designed it to be certified for high flight as well. Reading reviews from various schools/instructors in the USA they are all saying the same thing. That is that this high flight ability of the Alpha 235 is not just a paperwork fudge. This glider, they tell you, is a delight in high flight. And wow, they are not wrong! The 235 is the latest in the Alpha line up following on from the 180 and 210. As with most gliders made in the land of inches, feet and pounds, that ‘235’ is its wing area in square feet. Yes, it is HUGE! Bear in mind that most tandem gliders are around the 220 square feet mark and the Alpha is a solo glider with a minimum certified clip in of a mere 68kg (150lbs) and you start to realise that Steven Pearson (chief designer at Wills Wing) must have found ways to bend the laws of physics with this machine! The new 235 has the same clip-in weight range as the 210 but has a lower minimum speed and better control in roll, especially around the stall speed. So the 235 has effectively replaced the 210. The 180 is then for those super-light people. Construction-wise it is nostalgically old-school with corded batten retention (not a flip-tip batten end in sight) and only a handful of battens to stuff each side. Although, those battens are crazily long what with the huge chord this machine has! The cross-bar is almost straight when the glider is tensioned making it look like the fixed cross tube gliders of yonder year (the cross tube is actually fully floating). It has luff lines (steel for length stability and durability) and the same bungee-retained washout rods that will be familiar to Falcon owners. Although it is a huge glider, it has a normal size solo control frame. There is no nose cone to fit. And no nasty flaps to try and close on the nose like some other gliders that tried to ‘simplify’ by not having a nose cone. The nose plates on the Alpha sit out proudly nacked. This also makes pre-flight inspection easier. Rigging is a minimal affair that when done you are left wondering what you have missed! The one big negative for me on the Alpha however is that it will not rig flat. Wills Wing understand the importance and demand in the market for flat rigging and all their glider bar the Alpha will rig flat. I guess the geometry of the Alpha just doesn't lend itself well to flat rigging (the side wires become tight before the pull-back with the A-frame folded underneath it) and when you consider the intended use - on a shallow training hill in light to no wind - the flat-rig-ability wasn’t as high a priority as the handling and slow flight behaviour (provided by the same geometry that foils the flat rigging). For flying on windy exposed hills this is a real issue made worse by having just so much sail for the wind to grab. It made me very nervous rigging it on the hill for sure and I ended up enlisting helpers to hold onto bits for fear of it prematurely going flying without me. I flew the Alpha 235 clipping in at 86kg from the Malvern Hills (Pinnacle East launch) on an early spring day with 12-18mph winds on launch. Pinnacle suffers from compression on launch so the wind on the slope was probably more like 8-12 mph. I had deliberately waited for a paraglider type wind day as the Alpha 235 is billed as a paraglider with the frame of a hang glider. And I was worried about ground handling all that sail in any wind. I needn’t have worried and I would quite happily take the 235 out again in much stronger winds (other than for the rigging concerns already discussed above). I had been worried about holding the nose down on the steep launch which is a typical issue on even much less well-endowed single surface gliders. So you can imagine my surprise when my nose-wire man casually said “I’m not holding any pressure there” when I wasn't even aware the nose was ‘all mine’ yet! And I had also been concerned about wrestling to keep errant wings down but the Alpha responded beautifully to my subtle corrections in the punchy air coming up the slope. Nothing else for it at this point I proceeded to launch and once again the glider behaved impeccably. The air I flew in was a mixture of dynamic ridge lift, weak but punchy small spring thermals at ridge height and then when higher, smooth wide thermals (that tended to peter out about 1000ft above launch as I had left it a bit late in the day to fly having been tied up most of the day). In flight the Alpha was just as I had found it on the ground. Super responsive and light to manoeuvre in a way that just begged you to play with every little eddy and current in the air-mass, whilst somehow not being twitchy or at all prone to over-control. Just pure, easy fun. The hang point on the Alpha is on the keel not the kingpost and added to the huge chord, this glider should be heavy in pitch. But it isn't! It has plenty of linear feedback in pitch on the bar (linear meaning that the pressures increase the further you displace the bar which is vital for a student) but it was not at all taxing to move the bar in pitch. So just like in roll, the glider asks to be played with in pitch as you try to exploit every last little bit of movement in the air. Which brings me onto my next point. No matter how much I provoked the glider, pushing out in turns and whipping it round in lift, it just took it on the chin and kept on flying. Right down to what felt like zero airspeed it just kept on going and responding to my every control input. There is a slight negative to this behaviour that a beginner ought to watch which is that it could lead to a false sense of security that could then catch one out when migrating on to a more ‘normal’ glider. But the flip side of that is that this is such a safe platform on which to experiment and learn how to feel and understand what a glider is telling you. Things will go wrong much slower, be easier to correct and it will be more forgiving of incorrect inputs or over-control. This glider is in a class of its own in this respect. More so than on any other glider I have ever flown, I was able to feel what the air was doing. I really didn't need the vario as I could feel the air lifting me before the vario was alerting me and I was already pushing out and banking over to the lifting wing to maximise the gift of height that nature was handing to me. It was like the feedback and feelings you get on any other glider are somehow amplified on the Alpha. The glider will fly along quite happily with the bar pushed out at full arm stretch with no sign of a stall (I didn’t get around to testing it in a dynamic stall). And it is still perfectly controllable in roll right down at minimum airspeed. Pulling the bar in the airspeed increases up to the bar being about half way back. From this point to full bar back ,the speed increase is minimal but the sink rate goes up at an alarming rate! This is a great advantage for getting into small landing fields or correcting for being too high on final and running out of field ahead. I am confident that anywhere a paraglider can land would be fair game on an Alpha 235! The speed is really the only place in flight with this glider that you feel the negative of all that sailcloth. At trim I was being passed by high performance paragliders. They were not streaks faster than me but they were faster than me. So I was flying at the speeds that lower-end paragliders fly at. My sink rate seemed comparable with the higher performance paragliders but it is very hard to know that for sure as we were never in the exact same air at the same time. But pulling the bar in any more than a few inches (this is an inches glider remember, not a cm one!) and everyone else in the sky seemed to float up as my sink rate increased. This means the one ‘hang glider thing’ you really cannot do on the Alpha is to decide you would rather be somewhere else and pull the bar in to get there. Instead you have to think like a paraglider and patiently waft over to where you want to be! As I stated higher up though, I could quite happily fly the Alpha again in stronger winds. I never felt like I would struggle to penetrate away from the ridge if I ever needed to. This is a real bonus over a paraglider which can so easily get pinned on a ridge if the wind picks up. I had planned on landing in the paraglider landing field at the base of the hill. The normal hang glider landing field would have been out of reach on the Alpha but it was also full of sheep with lambs and so out of bounds on the day. So the other hang gliders that were out (which had all had their fun and landed before I even took off) had picked a field even further out (2.5km from the ridge to be precise) that we have permission to use in such circumstances. I had laughed to myself while ridge soaring looking at the field waaay out of reach wondering how one would even reach it on a higher performance hang glider having launched and found oneself ‘bombing out’ with no lift..? So the thought of making this field on the Alpha was laughable! But then I got a climb on the ridge that took me to 2000ft above the landing field elevation. I was now looking down what felt like a 2:1 glide ratio (if you do the maths it is actually 4:1) to the guys packing up their hang gliders and the thought of being able to do my second favourite activity involving hang gliders (talking about hang glider things to other hang glider people) was too much temptation. It was now or never! I was able to fine tune the glide ratio/speed to get a compromise that meant the field was staying at the same visual angle (meaning i wasn't going to undershoot) and I made it with just enough height to dogleg at the last minute for a super-short base leg before turning final. The glider carried more energy in ground effect than I had expected so I actually started my flare a bit on the early side. But that lovely big sail killed the energy when I flared and gently lowered me onto my feet. I’m not normally a fan of flaring single surface gliders as I find they take more strength to flare and whilst they are more forgiving in the flare than a double surface, they actually have a smaller flare window due to how draggy they are. So I often find I don't flare a single surface well and end up with a less than graceful landing. I don’t know if it was the early flare I did for fear of this problem being even more pronounced with the huge sail, or if it just has a super sweet flare but on this (one and only to date!) landing, I found the flare a delight. What I wasn't quite ready for in the nanoseconds after landing (as I mentally applauded my efforts) was my wake catching up with me and slamming into the sail from behind knocking the glider forward off my shoulders! If you watch the video of this flight (link below) you can clearly see this happening! Next time I will be ready for it. So in conclusion, the Alpha 235 is way more than just a training glider. But for all the reasons I loved it on this high flight, I can tell it will excel at the job of training on shallow hills. This is a glider that will really look after the poor sap dangling beneath it trying to remember which bit to push/pull and what it is their instructor is yelling at them. And it will enable students to progress so much faster as every lesson/skill will be that much quicker to master. Do I think all post qualified pilots should own an Alpha? Probably not. The lack of ability to fly at any speed to get from A-B is a real disadvantage. But I absolutely think that everyone should fly one at least once in their hang gliding life because it really is an experience quite unlike anything else. And if money wasn’t an issue and someone wanted a glider for pure hang gliding fun, then they should absolutely have an Alpha in their fleet. For those who can’t afford multiple gliders (or can’t store multiple gliders!), it is the kind of glider that you should hope that a friend will own and they will let you take it out to play from time to time. I’m certainly looking forward to the next time I get to fly one! Check out the YouTube video of this review flight here .

Disclaimer - this blog is NOT instruction. It is intended as a guide to help you understand the subject of 50/50 bridles. You should only ever attempt to set up and use such equipment under the guidance of experienced and qualified instructors/coaches. Why a 50/50 bridle? Hang gliders have huge pitch stability built in. The faster you fly, the more this positive pitch stability will be trying to pitch the nose up to return the glider to trim. When you aerotow you are constantly flying fast. So on a slower, more stable glider, this means you will be fighting quite heavy bar pressures. This is exhausting and has the added negative of hugely increasing your chances of getting into a pitch/roll PIO (pilot induced oscillation). The reason for this is that as the glider yaws, one side of the control bar will also move forward relative to the other. As you are forcing the bar back you end up applying more aft pressure on the side of the control bar that has moved forward. Of course this applies an opposite roll/yaw input which sets the cycle off the other way reversing the side you are then applying greater pressure to and the cycle reverses again the other way and so on with increasing amplitude. In free flight, the solution here is to just relax up on the bar and this interrupts this inadvertent roll/yaw input. It is often understood that it is actually the bar pitch pressures that are causing this and not the pilot deliberately applying roll inputs. But you cannot just relax the bar pressures on tow as you will pop up dangerously higher than the tug and in the best case scenario, you will be given a present of ALL of the tow rope by an angry tug pilot! So the solution is to move the point on the glider where the total tow force reacts. The easiest way to do this is to split the tow force and have part of it pulling on your body and part of it on the keel of the glider. This is what we call a 50/50 tow bridle. In actuality, more tow force is still applied to your body than the glider so it is probably more like a 60/40 to. But that doesn't sound as catchy! With the 50/50 tow attached, the resultant CofG acting on the glider (a factor of both your weight hanging under it and the forces it feels from the tow rope) moves forward. The more you move it forward the lighter the bar pressures will be. But here comes the caveat - if we move it too far forward the pitch pressures will be dangerously light or even worse, the glider could become divergent. Divergent basically means the more the glider pitches nose down, the more it will want to pitch nose down! This is the reason why when using a 50/50 bridle you must only release from the top release and not from the backup harness release (except for in an emergency). So by splitting the tow forces between your harness and the keel we have split the forces nicely and will have reduced the bar pressures under tow (with the added bonus of reducing the tendency for yaw). We can fine tune how much bar pressure we get by moving the upper anchor point forward or aft on the keel. The further aft we move it, the further back that resultant force will act on the wing so the more nose up pitch force. The further forward we go, the less bar pressure we will get up until it actually reverses and the glider become divergent. As a rule of thumb, the lower aspect ratio a glider the further forward the upper anchor will need to be. Again as a rough guide, never go further forward than the crosstube junction as this will typically be too much. And only go as far forward as the crosstube on single surface gliders. Lower performing double surface gliders want the anchor at around 20-30cm from the hang strap. This is a generalization and not a rule! A high medium high performance kingposted glider will probably only want the upper anchor at the harness hang point. Higher performance gliders do not want to be towed by 50/50 as their bar pressures are already light and so there is no need for splitting the tow forces. Some manufacturers publish recommended distances along the keel for the upper anchor. Some have no idea so you will have to figure this out on your own and with some trial and error. Always use someone experienced to test fly your glider after having set the upper anchor point before you jump on and fly the glider with a new 50/50 setup! You should not be the one carrying out the experimentation until you are a competent enough tow pilot to not need a 50/50 at all (even single surface gliders will tow with chest only bridles with a really experienced pilot). As stated above, you need to have your primary release at the upper anchor when using a 50/50 bridle. These come in various types from spinnaker type releases to custom made releases. They almost all release by means of a cable that runs down the upright. Some have bike brake type levers that you pull to release. Others have a cord that is always in your hand so that you do not have to let go of the bar and reach for the release. The upper release is secured to the keel by means of a loop on the keel that is also anchored by another cord so it cannot pull forward further than the desired distance. A bungee is also then often used from the release to the nose of the glider to hold the assembly up and stop it from flopping around in the airflow when you have released at the top of the tow. The upper bridle is made long enough to go forward from the release (at the keel anchor point), through the ring on the end of the tow rope and back on itself. It then attaches to the lower bridle that is a shorter cord with each end attached to one side of the chest/shoulder of the harness. This lower cord passes through a loop in the end of the upper bridle so that by releasing one side of the lower bridle (emergency release only) if will slip out of the upper bridle allowing the upper bridle to slip out of the tow rope ring and hopefully release without snagging up or leaving you connected just to the upper anchor (which would be bad for the reasons stated above). The bridles and anchor cords must all be made from a non-stretch material. These days Dyneema is the go-to material for this. The end loops must be braided loops and not knotted or stitched. This is to ensure that they will freely slide out without snagging on things (the loop in the other bridle or tow ring for e.g.). When towing, you should always use a weak-link. This is to act as a kind of mechanical fuse to protect the glider from an overload from the tow rope and also to ‘blow’ in the event you get dragged on the ground or etc. Due to the forces in a lockout being pretty much the same as tow forces, a weak link is not there to protect you from a lockout and you should NEVER rely on a weak-link to break the tow in a lockout situation. ALWAYS release! Due to not wanting the tow to release from the harness end you should never put a weak link on the lower bride. As the pitch of the glider changes in flight (while you adjust to stay at the correct level relative to the tug), the % force felt at the upper and lower attachments will change. For this reason it is also not a good idea to put a weak link at the upper bridle. The only place to put a weak link when towing 50/50 is in the end of the tow line, attaching the tow line to the metal ring that your 50/50 bridle will go through. This is the only place that always feels the total tow force applied. Different countries have different rules on strengths of weak links so consult your country’s technical/rules manuals for this data. Finally, the emergency lower bridle release - this will typically be a barrel type release connect to one shoulder of the harness (on your dominant side). A lot of folks who only chest tow (so no upper bridle and release) will fit a barrel release to each side of the harness so they have a backup. When using 50/50 this adds to the complication and risk of an inadvertent release (and would be a 5th level release device after the upper release, lower release. weak link, tow-plane release) so is really overkill. So one side of the lower bridle should be directly connected to the harness and the other to the release pin of the barrel release.

Different harness manufacturers work different ways with sizing. Most manufacturers work by physical sizes. But the most common brand of harness (in the UK at least) is Woody Valley and they work on a sizing matrix. This isn’t a problem if you are buying new as you submit your measurements (ideally taken with the help of a dealer who knows exactly how to measure you) to Woody Valley and they work out what is right for you. But buying used is another matter. How do you know what might work for you? The height is determined by a number. It is set by your shoulder height above the floor not your head height. So you need to measure your shoulder height (about a finger away from your neck, wearing the shoes you would normally fly in. The sizes on the matrix these relate to are as follows: 1 = 133 - 138 cm 2 = 139 - 144 cm 3 = 145 - 150 cm 4 = 151 - 156 cm 5 = 157 - 162 cm 6 = 163 – 169 cm When buying used, you can let the shoulder straps out or in a bit and/or pad out the foot area so you can typically make things work a bit either side of ideal. I would only diverge very slightly though as adjusting the length does mess with the geometry of how the harness works and goes in/out of prone. New you would obviously get one that was perfect. Then they assign a letter for the chest/waist. The chest should be measured around nipple height. The waist should be measured around the buttocks (IE this is NOT your trouser size!). You should measure over light clothes. These matrix sizes look as follows: XS = 80 - 86 cm S = 87 - 93 cm M = 94 - 100 cm L = 101 - 107 cm XL = 108 - 114 cm XXL = 115 - 121 cm These sizes are a range so if you wanted a tighter fit you would want to be at the top end of the range. Or if you find you are just in the bottom end of a size range you could go for the smaller size. If you wanted a loose fit you would want to be at the bottom of a size range (or again, one size up). Remember though that if you live somewhere that gets very cold in winter, you might struggle to get a harness on with full winter gear, that was perfect with summer clothes on. So bear this in mind. For those lucky to fall nicely in the lower end to middle of a range winter clothes are usually not a problem. Once prone a tight harness will be ok, it is being able to put it on and do it up whilst standing that is the limiting factor! A correctly sized harness should be a little bit of challenge to get the zip together and started when standing. This way with your weight in it prone it will be exactly as the designer intended in terms of comfort and streamlining. How you measure (for both height and width) is critical so it may that if I as a dealer measure you, I would find you are a few CM either way of what you thought which would change my recommendation over what you might think you wanted. It is best to use a builders type metal tape measure for height and a soft dressmakers type measure for waist. You will get errors if you try either with the wrong type of tape! If you see a harness that has a ‘+’ after the number (3+L for example) that means the length is a half-size longer than stated. So a 3+ would be halfway between the length of a 3 and a 4. Some people have a waist that is a lot wider than their chest. This is fairly typical with tall skinny people. So the waist might fall in XL and the chest in an L. When this happens the size matrix code of the harness changes with a ‘+’ after the letters. (3L+ for example). The chest will be the size stated and then the hips one size larger. So the 3L+ will have L size chest and an XL size waist. Of course you can have a ‘+’ in both length and waist so may even see something like a 3+L+ for sale. Woody Valley make customs harnesses for people who fall outside of the matrix. So these do come up for sale used occasionally as well. Typically though, if you are an odd (unique!) size/shape, you may need to order a new harness to get one that fits properly. If you see an ‘S’ in the harness designation that stands for Signora which is Italian for it being a ladies harness. You might also see the word ‘Biposto’ or ‘Biplace’ written inside the harness next to the size. This means it has an extra large parachute container for a tandem rated parachute. Modern solo chutes are far too loose in these container so they tend to only work for a heavy pilot with a huge older Mayday or Conar as these are much bulkier chutes. It is possible to get into and initially feel ok in a very incorrect sized harness in a hang check. Many people do this thinking all will be ok. But a harness needs to support the body properly along the whole length and its size is critical for this. So what might feel fine in a hang check (even a prolonged hang check) WILL give grief in flight. Many people have come to me saying that they wanted to give up the sport because they thought their body just wasn’t cut out for hang gliding. And then once we get them into the right size harness their experience is transformed! And it isn’t just comfort that suffers from an incorrectly sized harness. Getting into and out of prone and your ability to flare correctly are also hugely affected. So I do strongly recommend that you work out what size harness you should have and then hold out for the right size to come up on the used market. It takes some patience but is well worth it! The Libero size matrix is slightly different just to confuse things! So ignore the above when it comes to Liberos. You tend to have to have a number and letter one bigger in a Libero than in the standard matrix. I’m a 4M or L (I fall right on the border at 100.5cm chest/waist!) in the normal matrix but my Libero (which is my favourite harness ever and fits like a dream) is a 5L but has no ‘extra’ in either height or chest. A bigger issue in choosing a used Woody Valley is which model. This depends on your level of skill and is a whole ‘nother discussion! Fly Safe!

It is a common theme when I demo any of the latest sport/intermediate gliders to experienced pilots who are used to flying topless gliders that they feel like they ‘run out’ of VG. These modern sport gliders are much easier to fly than their predecessors. I don’t just mean skill wise, but also effort. I heard one pilot recently saying he always flies with the same couple of other people and they all tend to launch together and land at the same time. On his new glider he couldn’t understand why his flying buddies suddenly started to go and land super early leaving him alone in the air. Of course, he then worked out that what was actually happening was he was having to put in so much less effort and so was able to fly for longer before getting tired. His mates were landing after the same airtime they always did! It is said that you should not move up to a topless glider before you tend to fly an intermediate glider on full VG pretty much all the time. Otherwise you are not going to be able to use any VG on the topless and there will be no gain at all to going up a class. A topless glider gets more performance at speed. But to get this it has stiffer handling throughout the range. So you sacrifice handling for that little edge when going FAST. Below about 50kph a modern intermediate will not lose out to a topless on glide and sink rate. So it becomes ingrained in the flying ‘feel’ of experienced pilots that they are not maxing out their glider unless the glider is almost uncontrollable in roll. To get the best out of their glider they will continue to pull VG to the max that the conditions will allow. They end up with a performance metric that is control ease. Controllable glider = low performance. On the edge of no roll control = high performance. Then when they jump on to one of these modern intermediate gliders and go to full VG they find the glider is as easy to fly as their topless was on zero VG. This gives them the feeling that the VG is not powerful enough for them. But they are looking at it from the wrong perspective. The glider is just as tight and max-ed out performance wise as it can be. But the designers have done such a good job that even at this setting the glider is still fully controllable in roll. For a new pilot this will still be too much and they will need to build up to using full VG. But for experienced pilots they need to change their mentality and realise that they are flying a super performing machine. It just happens to also handle a dream when fully tight! Meaning you can fly in performance mode more of the flight and get more out of the glider whilst working less hard and having more fun. What is