Just had my first session on the 3.5m PPC Orbit double skin. Was a bit of a shocker to be honest. For context I’m 56 years old and 135lbs, and am not a very good parawinger or foiler. I was on my 70L 5’9" Hydrocraft Equalizer board with a Hydrocraft 775/140 helix foil set up.
I went for an evening session at Maryhill and I thought the conditions looked about perfect to test the 3.5m. The gauge on ikitesurf was reading 15-27, and when I got there it looked like about that. Here’s the chart, I got in the water about 6pm and rode the PPC until about 7pm and then got my PowerPack 3.6 and rode it from about 7pm to 7:30 to have a back to back test:
Much to my surprise, while it seemed like there was plenty of wind out there, I had a really, really hard time getting on foil. The Power Assist Line adjustment makes a big difference in pull, but it also makes the wing really ornery. If you put too much pressure on the back of the bar when the PAL is engaged the wing just instantly back stalls and wants to fold up on itself. When it re engages it shoots to the front of the wind window violently. I imagine with some practice this could be capitalized on to get a yank to get up on foil, but for me in this first session it was hard to handle.
Eventually with a gust I did get on foil, and let the PAL out when flying which made an enormous difference in how hard the wing was pulling and also in ease of handling. With the PAL disengaged the wing had a very soft bar pressure and settled into a pretty easy flying style. I had no trouble with gybes, it was pretty well mannered overall. It was very calm and easy going even when the gusts hit and I made pretty impressive angles upwind but that was a bit of a downfall because when I did come off foil I really struggled to get going again and found myself drifting upwind in the river current and kinda worrying about getting back. For a while I just couldn’t get on foil and tried taxiing downwind but there was just barely enough wind to keep the thing in the air. A bit of a shocker. Eventually I got back on foil and sailed downwind, just enough off the wind to keep pressure in the wing and keep it flying, and I made it back.
Just to get a feel for how much wind there really was and if I was just asking too much of the PPC, I went back to the car and got my PowerPack 3.6m. Night and day difference. It got me up on foil instantly and was on the verge of overpowered on the gusts. What felt like a light breeze on the PPC felt like a solid wind on the same size PP. Honestly I was surprised, it just seemed like a different day altogether and I couldn’t believe the two wings were the same size.
Overall it’s too soon to really judge the wing. It flew well and felt great when powered and on foil. It definitely had some quirky handling issues that I’m sure were things I’ll learn to handle. I’m short so it sometimes dragged the wing tip and folded back or pulled itself behind me. It wasn’t difficult to start after getting wet and it never really got waterlogged or weighted down being full of water. It was more difficult to handle than my other wings, but again I think I just need to learn what kind of input it wants. I think my biggest takeaway here was that surprisingly the wind at 15-27 was just too light for that wing, which surprised me. I’ll look forward to flying it in higher winds and see if it’s better behaved, but from this experience I expect that the 3.5 is going to be comfortable when I’d normally be out on my 3.0m PR or even the 2.4m PP.