I was hoping for an early opportunity to put the new Airborne Shark 144 through its paces - albeit in coastal air, and Sunday at Portsea turned on some ideal conditions.

First impressions

My Shark arrived short-packed, giving me an excellent opportunity to take a good look at the internals. The outer section of the leading edges, like those of the Blade are composite fibreglass. These simply plugged into the fore-sections with a locating slot in a matter of minutes.

Floating dive sticks and a tip batten with an over-centre cam are permanently attached to each outer leading edge. This tip batten has a screw-in adjuster that allows you to adjust the tip tension. A massive piece of elastic at the noseplate keeps the LE tension tight.

Airborne are renouned for their nifty trick hardware, and the Shark is well and truly up to their usual standard. With the Shark, they've added some new wrinkles.

The first thing you notice is the upper battens. There are no elastics. Instead, each batten has an internal spring and a cute plastic fitting which slides in and out of the batten end. You insert the batten as normal, compress the spring with thumb pressure against the end of the fitting, then release the fitting back into a pocket formed by the turned-back trailing-edge. The result is a clean, simple low-drag arrangement that got a few raised eyebrows and compliments from other pilots. As a Chaser pilot (a UK-made trike ultralight), I'm used to this sort of setup. The Chaser uses a similar, but adjustable system (but at much higher tension settings - you need a shoehorn to get the battens in and out!

I found assembly of the wing simple and fast. Attaching the spreader retainer cable required minimal force, and a cute bungee ensures that the clip doesn't get lost in the sail. There is only one pin to do up during assembly, this being at the control-bar corner.

The CAM VG system revealed.

The other innovation, this one invisible, is the VG system, which depends, not on changing the rake of the spreaders, but on a clever cam system on the end of each spreader. A cable from each cam runs to the noseplate, and another cable, is connected to both of these at a point about 1/3 of the way from the nose to the spreader. By connecting the VG pulley system to the midpoint of this cable, the wing can be tensioned up with little effort. VG string travel is one arms throw plus a few inches.

The Sail

After a 170 sq foot wing the Shark (144 sq ft) looks smallish (although still larger than my Chaser, at 108 sq ft!). As usual, Alan Daniel and the crew at Wingtech have done a quality job and the frame and sail are a perfect match with no wrinkles. The sail comes with a choice in colours of the two undersurface panels. The rest is white, with a mylar/thread cloth on the LE pocket. There's about 85% double surface, with 9 upper and 4 undersurface battens per side,There's also one root batten plus the over-centre locking tip tensioning batten. There's plenty of re-inforcement on the trailing edge and wear points. Inspection zips at the root, spreader junction and an access zip at the tip make setup and pre-flight easy. This glider is built to last.

Static Balance

Because of the VG arrangement, the spreaders remain in what would, in another glider be a pulled-back position. The rake of the control bar is high, giving the wing good static balance. In addition, the lower side wires are attached to the spreaders a couple of feet inboard from the leading edges, and because of the VG system, they remain tight at all times, including launch.

Weight

The glider was advertised as weighing 71lb. I weighed it as 33kg in the bag on my bathroom scales - about 73lb, which seems right.

My hook in weight with gear is about 85kg, or aproximately 190lb.

Flying the Shark

Now, I have a confession to make. After 13 years flying the same glider (a Moyes GT170), I was a bit apprehensive about jumping into a blade wing. But, to make a long story short, I needn't have worried.

As mentioned, my first flight was in smooth coastal lift at a site I know well. Portsea launch is at about 80ft AMSL, and the dunes/cliffs reach up to about 120ft in places. Most of the time, I had the place to myself (the advent of the paraglider seems to have made them the wing of choice for the coast, but the wind was too strong for them this day), although four other HGs turned up about 1 hour into my flight, allowing me to do comparative sink rate tests.

Wind speeds varied from 20kts down to about 15 at the end of the flight, so I had no fears of bombing out, allowing me to do anything I liked. My tests included stalls, low-speed flight, speed runs, flat, slow turns and high(ish) bank 360's.

Launch was a wire-twanger in the strong lift.

Everything felt fine, so I just eased out and let it climb to the top of the lift band, shooting up to about 200 ft above the cliffs.

First off the rank was basic handling at normal speeds with VG off. The Shark exhibits very little adverse yaw, and rolls quickly. It reacted well to the "punch" turn technique, and also to what I call "think" turns, meaning the turns you do when you're not even thinking about how you turn. I took it into 45 to 60 degree 360's and chandelles. There was no tendency to have to high-side the bar, and the turns co-ordinated well. Given the roll response, I'd hazard that the glider will muscle into thermals well, too.

The glider slows down well, with a very distinct mush and sloppy feeling near the stall, then a clean break with minimal height loss.

Next were some speed runs with the VG on. As mentioned, the VG travel is one arm-pull, plus a smidgeon, and you really feel it come on with a marked pitch change on mid-throw.

I expected some pilot-induced oscillation at speed, given my lack of time in a blade-wing, but there were none. At speed, (and bear in mind that the air did get a bit lumpy), it tracked straight as die, with satifyingly positive (opposing control input), but not fatiguing bar pressure. I was able to make runs of up to one kilometer. The Shark has no luff-line compensation system and doesn't seem to need it.

Handling at speed with VG on was crisp, and at slower speeds, still quite acceptable.

Occasionally I seemed to have a few more inches of rope than I expected dangling from the VG cleat after release. I put this down mainly to the fact that the first foot of VG travel doesn't do a lot, and all it's doing is taking slack out of the rope/cable/pulley system.

The wind dropped a bit and the other gliders joined me, mainly Moyes XT types, and I was able to compare sink rates as they boated about. Despite the smaller wing, the 144 seemed to consistently perform as well or better than the boaters. I'm looking forward to trying it out in "scratching" conditions.

After an uneventful trip to Pt Nepean and back, playing with the VG to easily penetrate upwind over the points, it was landing time. Unfortunately, as there was wind, I can't report on the still-wind flare performance. My landing was cross-wind on a sloping beach. I managed to spot it in within 30ft of the access ramp, which made me happy under the circumstances, and had no troubles avoiding getting sand in the noseplate.

Conclusion

The Airborne Shark is definitely a state-of-the-art high performance flex wing, with performance at least in the same range as contemporary craft. Where it really shines, however, is in the finish, ease of setup, static balance and ease of use of the VG system. While it's rated "advanced", it certainly doesn't seem to have any in-flight vices.

The Shark is also available in 132 and 156 sizes.

Airborne deserve congratulations for a product that is sure to be a winner!

(c) John Reynoldson, 1996 - contact aerial@ozemail.com.au for permission to reproduce.