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Test Flying the Wills Wing Talon: On Becoming a Bird
By Dennis Pagen
Originally published in Hang Gliding Magazine, January 2003. © 2002 Dennis Pagen. Reproduced with permission. All photos courtesy Wills Wing. All flying for this article courtesy Wallaby Ranch.
This review reflects the author's personal experience and assessment at the time of publication.
We all have flying fantasies of one sort or another. Mine has always been to be a bird, specifically an osprey. The rest of you can be eagles, hawks, condors, vultures, swallows or even ostriches or dodos if you like. I want to be an osprey. Such a raptor has one salient feature that separates it from the songbirds and yard birds and other less lethal avians: it has talons.
Wills Wing realized this natural fact when they named their latest high performance glider the Talon. Now, the only thing the Talon will hunt is lift. The only thing it will devour is distance. But strapped under the body of this virtual raptor you fairly feel like a powerful bird of prey, given the freedom to swoop and stoop, sail and soar with the real thing. At least, that was my impression when I got a chance to test tow the Talons at Wallaby Ranch last October. I flew two sizes, the 140 and the 150 for multiple flights and thermalled them both with an added dose of mini X-Cs and mild wing wringing maneuvers.
A Bird's Anatomy
The Talons are of the now familiar quasi-elliptical shape that most of the high performance gliders have adopted. Just as soaring birds have developed similar wing structures and shapes, so too have most flex-wing hang gliders designed primarily for performance become similar. That means they are topless, tapered, swept wings with curved tips. The Talon fits this description.
But the Talon has a few unique traits. The most obvious is the clean undersurface rear root area. Wills Wing has perhaps created the cleanest arrangement here with neoprene and zippers to hold the sail tight and faired while allowing ready access to the center area.
The real unique qualities appear inside the glider's skin. There you find a cam VG system as opposed to a swinging crossbar system. The cam system consists of a lever at the outboard ends of the crossbar which is forced outward when the VG line is pulled, thereby spreading the nose angle and tightening the sail. There are several advantages to the cam system: the side cables always remain tight, and the dihedral and spiral characteristics of the glider don't change as you change VG setting.
Wills Wing has used larger levers to provide more VG range than on any glider they have previously produced. The Talon's sail tightens like a snare drum to slide through the air effortlessly, and loosens like an intermediate sail to turn at the will and whim of the pilot.
Litestream Performance Control Bar detail.
The leading edge construction is also unique. Wills Wing's Steve Pearson pioneered the use of plastic eccentric inserts to step down tubing diameter along a leading edge. But for the Talon, Wills has gone to a simple one diameter (52mm) leading edge. The benefit is lower weight and lower cost. The sprogs are non-compensated carbon rods. Wills load tests each sprog with a 475 lb weight hung at the end. The approved rods may deflect up to 30 inches, but don't break.
An Early Molt
The Talon as it stands is not your last year's model. It has undergone more changes than a bird in molt. This past summer the glider was overhauled, with the primary change being the addition of two inches additional chord at the tip area. In all there have been some 25 sail changes. I have seen the new gliders perform in the last few months, most notably at the pre-worlds in Brazil. There were only a few in the meet, but one placed second in the able hands of Nene Rotor, and Carlos Bessa flew his Talon impressively. There is no doubt in my mind and should no longer be in yours that this glider competes with the best.
Taking Wing
When you go to move the glider, you will notice a bit of tail heaviness. The drawback is the glider feels heavier than it really is when you carry it off the field. On the other hand, the benefit is that you have a free pass from the hand of God on landing. The glider really resists nosing in.
On tow, I felt right at home. I used a third VG and tracked true. This glider is not an intermediate model, so don't expect it to be like flying a soft wing. But I think it is among the easier high-per models to tow.
Dennis Pagen launching the Talon at Wallaby Ranch.
Handling is so important that we should be more specific. I tried all the usual reversing turns, tight 360s, flat and steep gyrations. What I found is that the glider was indeed set up to be spirally stable at all bank angles. I could push full out with my high hand and ride the merry-go-round with little input other than to occasionally change placement in the thermal. The Talons gave me confidence in thermals because I could put them where I wanted and I could easily offset the caprices of errant air.
My weight fell nicely in the range of both the 140 and the 150. The 140 handled a little snappier, but I believe for me the 150 was the ticket. I could slow the bigger size down to my liking and really climb.
I also had a chance to go on some long glides and some screaming dives. Without gliders to compare, it was hard to do the numbers, but I was blowing by air molecules as fast as I have on anything else. Suffice it to say that we both felt we were on comp quality gliders.
My performance and flying conclusions: I believe Wills Wing has created the best all-around glider they have had since the HP AT. Once it gets into the hands of a greater number of pilots it's bound to show up in the winners circle. The handling is pleasant enough for all pilots who have cut their teeth on topless gliders. Landing is a joy.
The Talon won't break you, for it lists for $6,000 with all options. Shop and compare. If you've always dreamed of being a bird, you really need to fly the Talon.
The Development of the Talon
By Steven Pearson
Originally published as a sidebar to Dennis Pagen's Talon review in Hang Gliding Magazine, January 2003.
Dennis's comments relating the Talon to the HP-AT were unexpected but perceptive. It has been 13 years since Hang Gliding magazine published Dennis's review of the HP-AT in the January 1990 issue. The period during the preparation of that article was also the last time Dennis and I had substantially discussed product design, yet it was precisely the HP-AT that was the inspiration for my development plan when I started the Talon two years ago.
In the intervening years since its release, the HP-AT had remained my personal favorite among high-performance gliders. The HP-AT was the culmination of a long series of incremental refinements to four models that preceded it. Despite that heritage, the HP-AT itself required many additional refinements to the sail fit and finish before it became the competition-class leader of its day. More than any other factor, the commitment to continuous improvement and attention to detail was the basis of the success of the HP-AT.
When I started development of the Talon I knew that, given the same resource investment, an upgrade to the Fusion would have produced a better-flying glider in the short term than the best I could expect to achieve in my first attempt at the Talon as a completely new design. However, I knew that a Fusion makeover would never evolve far enough to become the world-class contender I wanted. The best chance to achieve our goals for the Talon was to begin development with a clean sheet of paper.
Unfortunately, starting over always commands a longer development cycle. In addition, the level of development of high-performance gliders stands far beyond what it was when I designed the HP-AT. I knew that the Talon would require even greater dedication to achieve comparable success. Fortunately, our capabilities at Wills Wing for developing and testing prototypes have grown significantly. When I designed the HP-AT sail, AutoCAD started from a floppy disc, and creating a production sail pattern required crawling around on my knees for two days with three tape measures and a lofting batten.
Today, I can send a pattern to the sail loft with a click of the mouse, and test-fly the glider three days later. If I have any concerns about structure or stability, Mike Meier often tests the glider on our aerodynamics test truck with as little as one day's notice. These capabilities, along with the exceptionally dedicated and experienced staff at Wills Wing, resulted in a total of 42 incremental design improvements over the three sizes of Talons in the first 18 months of development.
In the end, looking back, an interesting and surprising truth emerges. The superficial differences in planform shape between glider models is often astonishingly minor, as the scale drawing of the Talon on top of the HP-AT illustrates. The myriad details, often too small even to be seen, are where the important and significant differences are found.