U-Turn's latest EN C offering, the Passion
The reputation of U-Turn’s latest EN C paraglider, the Passion, precedes it, with news of Pál Takáts’ 300km flight in Chile a few days ago.
The flight took the record from 208km, to almost 305, almost 100km better, so U-Turn’s claims of outstanding performance would seem to be justified. They also claim a high level of safety, close to EN B class, and good longevity for the wing.
The Passion is built with a plethora of U-Turn technologies, which makes a long list of acronyms! First-off, it uses the PPN and PPNplus systems, synthetic rods in the leading edge. In addition, U-Turn say the Passion is the first wing to benefit from ‘HDP’, High Definition Profile, where the top sail is also reinforced by plastic rods to a depth of 45-80%.
Then, borrowed from their acro wing, the Thriller 2K11, where it has proved to be greatly beneficial in its stability and collapse-recovery, is the HPCD or High Pressure Crossport Design. This system of optimised crossports controls airflow between the cells even when cells are closed to the head-on airflow.
The Passion was given the Brake Gathering System (BGS) to improve its climb rate in thermals. This system shortens the trailing edge up to 36cm when the brakes are applied and the changes in wing geometry give the wing “excellent climb performance and an outstanding pleasant handling never known on a wing with this aspect ratio”, according to its designer Ernst Strobl.
Trailing edge mini ribs, which help prevent ballooning at the trailing edge, are a common feature of many modern wings and are also there on the Passion.
Its durability is assured by the choice of 40g and 36g nylon fabric for the topsail, and hard finish fabric for the ribs and V-Tapes. Even the way in which the materials are cut has been thought through, (there’s a name for this too: the Smart Sail Cut system), whereby the orientation of the fabric filaments is carefully lined up so that it’s at its strongest in the direction of the load it will be subjected to.
Still with us on the acronyms? There’s one more: the SBP, or Smart Bottom Protection, system. This sytem comprises 7.5cm-diameter, half-moon shaped sticky pieces of 60g/m² fabric that are stuck onto the line attachment points to reinforce them. The system has been tried and tested on the Thriller, and found to help.
The Passion has an aspect ratio of 6.85, and a three-riser system using lines of no less than seven different diameters to optimise the trade-off between strength and performance.
The Passion is available in five sizes, covering all-up weights from 65-130kg.
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