Tuesday 21 January 2014

Day 6 - The Great Glider Debate Continued... on another rest day


How about we get straight to the point:  Did Ozone cheat with the Enzo 2? (vote on the top left)

Sadly this is not so easy to answer and it will be debated to death.  The pilots flying these wings have been given some sort of suspended sentence for an alleged crime they could not have committed.  Now they must give their best and wait for some test pilot half a world away to confirm or deny them their place on the ranking (or podium as the case may be).  The innocent are guilty until innocent or otherwise (to be all perversely Hollywood about it).

Who to blame?  Take your pick: Ozone, Air Turquoise, FAI/CIVL, PWCA

I put the blame squarely at the door of FAI/CIVL (no surprises there).

All credit to the PWCA committee who, through Goran, have taken a strong and responsible position while communicating more than adequately.  The decision may not be popular or sit comfortably with everyone, but what else is there to do.  There is a rather ambiguous statement from Ozone that warrants that the Enzo 2 conforms to the certification which is hopefully sufficient to clear the PWCA of any liability should there be a flying incident involving the Enzo 2.

For those who do not know: the final results will remain provisional until such time as Zoller and friends confirm that the gliders on the podium are fair representations of the certified samples.  If they fail, the offending gliders are deemed un-certified and the pilot is disqualified given that the PWCA rules are clear about the fact that it is the pilot's responsibility to ensure they compete on a certified wing.

There was some debate about tolerances and in engineering terms, as explained to me by Francois the uber-engineer, this can translate into huge differences particularly on something like a glider where the stitching on ninety cells can cause 'tolerance stacking'.  It was very quickly pointed out that the Mylar strip on the trailing edge of most new gliders allows production techniques with very fine tolerances given that Mylar hardly stretches or shrinks.  This would probably explain why the differences between the trailing edges of the three Enzo 2s measured so far were less than 10mm over 6000mm (< 0.2%).  

The fuss is about 200mm difference (>3%) on each half so there can be little doubt the glider was designed with the dimensions observed.  This point is apparently not disputed by Ozone.  They simply claim there is no rule that prevents them from doing what they have done.  

I asked several people who know about these things and they are adamant that a longer trailing edge improves performance dramatically.  They also say shortening the trailing edge helps to get these wings through certification for an assortment of reasons.

So there you have it!  Take my spot poll if you want to shout out!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

The different trailing edge lengths would explain the rumours of the low topspeed measurements (~54km/h) during the certification. Of course are these speed measurements hard to do and not very precise. But a glider, which has a topspeed of clearly more than 60 km/h in competition, can't be the same like the glider with only 54km/h topspeed at the certification...

Anonymous said...

First there's 100% chances they will pass in that configuration, seen as it's already borderline as was.
Second, even if it does pass, it's another certification since 40cm clearly makes it a different glider.

So the issue would arise of the certification's retroactive effect. And if this effect is given, then in my opinion all hope for the sport I love is lost (and sadly, that's pretty much what good old Luc Armant said about fire flying last year... what a douche!) !

Anonymous said...

According to what you say Andy PWC took correct action I would say. What is annoying is that people within the sport did not take a lesson from the others (bearing in mind that paragliding is still quite young sport) and are trying to ruin it. Regardless, if what Ozone did is within tollerance or not and whatever the excuse is, this is just cheating (probably my friends from Ozone would fight it strongly). It seems that the things are going into similar scam situations like cycling, athletics etc where everybody knows about the doping (who, what etc.) but the regulations (being made by teeth-less system) simply are just being empty word. Following recent unvailed scandals, i.e. Lens Armstrong - people involved never where afraid of anti-doping orginisation(s), police investigation (and actualy this what made them named and shamed) was sth they were afraid of. The point is - whatever regulations are or will be - there will be always way around it, if someone wants to find it. Its not only Enzo 2 - was not IP6 retrimmed at least twice within the same certificatation last year? It just annoying (at least for the honest ones)ant puts off the sport and competing

Anonymous said...

This reminds me why I called an end to competitions personally. Watching certain pilots in the European championships accelerate past you, on the same wing (supposedly), same weight (supposedly) while your pulleys are wrapped over themselves, they glide past you to goal. The only time comps were remotely honest were the R10 and R11 years. At that time, the desperado's looped their lines, adjusted their risers and were 10k over the legal weight. Difference then was, they could admit it and we knew they needed the win more than they valued their life. But once rules get introduced, the cheats will cheat. This is yet another bad time for paragliding comps. Let's simply compete on ENB wings, to find who is best pilot.

Koa'lele said...

Many way of cheating rules, pool line a lot on B make the wing faster ,specially with new line... so ther is hardly 2 wing exactly same due to different workers in Factory...
Easy to make line yourself when you know it...
Or modify speed system to accelerate more...by pulling manually external A line...
Hard for organiser to tchek all details of a comp wing.....
After use the lines change a lot depend to climat hot humidity etc....
So according to certification it will be hard to verify wings to the exact design of origin...
Best was Open class Or having a certify wing openclassed by modify it....
On safety concern you need to know if the wing can guet out of critical claps in high speed, after that too many rules will not help the sport, because not many people can attest that the glider you fly in Final hare the exact design of original certification...

Unknown said...

This is a competition and for the manufacturers it is the same. For this reason there are rules and regulations.
2/3 years ago carbon reinforcing was introduced because the rules were not clear, no one cheated but everyone jumped on the band wagon until the rules were amended.
I'm not sure if you follow F1, but the 2 sports compare very much; manufacturers/teams and drivers/pilots. Some interesting reading....
http://www.formula1.com/news/interviews/2013/11/15315.html
Adrian Newey: The first thing that you do is to read the regulations - very, very carefully. You try to read what they actually say, rather than what they intend to say, as this is not always the same thing. After that I’m actually breaking it down into bite-size chunks. Then you try to understand from the regulations the aerodynamic and mechanical packaging that appears to be the best solutions for those different areas.
Q: Coming to the regulations, years ago they had the characteristics of Swiss cheese: many holes and much room for interpretation. How much interpretation is possible today?
AN: It’s less and less. The F-duct was a very clever example of getting around regulations; the exhaust duct was a good way of getting around them; little bits and pieces where we’ve found small loopholes in the regulations.

Anonymous said...

May be this is the time to fly with one or many solid wing, carriable in a backbag... and that you can fly one thousand hours or more...with a l/d of 16.Not existing yet ? Well... build it !!