[Nancy] Supair Delight 3: a fantastic harness I’ve just been flying today. They have made
some really great improvements on it. They changed a lot about the back protection and
the shaping, the back support, and it’s really noticeable in flight. You’ve got
so much comfort in the back. [Carlo] I think that’s the biggest single
change from the Delight 2, which was a great harness, but I always felt I’ve got a long
back, and I’m particularly fussy in the back area about my harnesses. With the Delight
2, I found the back support a little bit short. With this, what’s really noticeable right
away is that it’s got very good support which goes a long way up as well, and I think
a big part of the reason for that, let me see if I can show you, there’s a good thickness
high density foam piece that goes all the way across your back and all the way down
to your bum right up to the top of your shoulders, and I think that’s what gives it such good
support on the back. And also it’s going to be really good protection.
It’s pretty light, 3.7 kilograms for the Medium, but I think they’ve decided to not
compromise on the comfort and the support.
[Nancy] It’s a very nice balance between
where the back support ends and the seatplate is, I can feel the difference between …. That
I’m sitting on a seat, I’m slightly used to a harness, I fly with a harness that is
more of the hammock style, so for me having a seatplate is a more unusual feeling but
actually I found I t very comfortable because of the back support and everything, and because
of the way the harness feels is reassuring but able to still get a really good turn and
movement with it. [Carlo] I think there’s a very good balance
with this mini seat plate in there, and the option to remove it, yeah it’s a very nice
compromise, it feels very easy to fly very comfortable and you’ve got the seatplate
that you can lean and weight shift and use that to give extra leverage. But what you
don’t have is like harnesses that have a full seatplate especially when you’re on
the ground the seatplate bangs into the back of your legs, this harness makes you feel
more free to move around on the ground. This gives you a nice balance of giving a seatplate
but without the compromise. [Nancy] Yeah, noticeably with the groundhandling,
you don’t notice the seatplate, it seems to be in the right position to give you the
support in flight, but not hitting the back of your legs.
[Carlo] So they’ve decided to go to quick-buckles, which is different to the Delight 2, which
has pass-through buckles. I think that’s a smart choice, because the difference in
weight is minimal but the convenience is quite a lot. And they’ve gone for these high quality
Cobra buckles. This system … your legs are very free to
move and walk around. So you do get a little bit of, especially for the guys, a little
bit of … pressure. [Nancy] didn’t notice anything, it was fine
for me! [Carlo] but not as much as some other harnesses,
they’ve made this very padded and quite comfortable.
[Nancy] I can feel those in flight so when I’m weight shifting and when I’m turning
you do feel those straps by your thighs, but not in an uncomfortable way but in a supportive
way, you feel like it kind of gripping you a little bit, but you can move with it too.
[Greg] Did you find those were restricting you, I found when I was thermaling, and when
I was turning, at some point it got quite stiff, turning and trying to put in more weight
shift .. it was resisting me but it didn’t feel like it stopped me.
[Nancy] I could feel that when I was turning and thermaling and there is a little part
of you that feels like you are being restricted, so I think what I was managing to do was to
shift the butt slightly so I was sliding in the harness and doing more of a push out onto
your footboard and do more of a hip bum shuffle to get the turn in , which is how I fly with
my non-seatplated-harness, so more of twist and a turn with my body and pushing out on
the footplate, using leverage to turn in the pod.
So a slight restriction with that, but overcomeable, depending on how you like to thermal.
[Greg] I’m getting enough feedback that I can feel what’s going on with the air,
but it’s taking out a lot of the movement, which is kind of what you want. It looks very
well styled, everything is smooth and clean. That’s to release, that’s to tighten:
super easy in the air. I’m doing a bit of weight shift there and I come up against some
stability at about 30 degrees. Flying out to find a climb here. OK, I’m getting enough
feeling in the harness that I can feel what the air is doing.
[Carlo] I think first of all I was trying to weight shift it like I was in my other
harness, and it’s like Oh, that’s not quite working. And then I changed my technique
a bit to suit the harness and then it’s like Oh, that feels really nice. It smooths
out the bumps, like in the first part, it kind of feels like, at first I thought Ooh,
is it dampening things out? You do need to adapt to different harnesses a bit, but just
relaxing and going with it I was noticing it smoothing things out but then when you
want to weight shift and pull it out it was fine.
[Greg] I was very impressed with that, it was noticeable, some of the other harnesses
I’ve tested recently had a lot of roll or movement which you had to counteract, and
this was definitely smoothing things out without getting rid of the information. The things
that I wanted to react to, the big thermal movements, I could feel, and all the little
rubbishy bits of turbulence it was smoothing out.
[Carlo] and then there’s a point where, I was doing some wingovers on the harness
and it’s totally capable of doing them, but it’s definitely not an unstable acro
harness, it’s kind of, it’s made for cross country, that’s how it feels to me.
Just like the Delight 2, this is an ideal first pod harness, it’s quite an easy pod
to get into , whereas some of the seat-plateless harnesses tend to, for some people, some people
adapt to those really quickly but some people clearly don’t. This is a harness you can
adapt to quite easily. Because of the mini seat plate and how smoothened out the feeling
is, it doesn’t have lots of roll and yaw, it’s quite an easy harness.
So pilots who are looking for that. Probably pilots who want something that is
really unstable, you know they want to wang the glider around and do acro or something,
this probably isn’t the harness that they are looking for.
I don’t think pods are a good harness to go for first, for new pilots. I don’t think
it’s a good idea, we saw some very good demonstrations today of new pilots in pod
harnesses having an horrendous time with them. They do take a bit of getting used to, there’s
a bit more to think about, getting into the speedbag.
[Nancy] What most people are familiar with is having a seatplate, so having that seatplate
option there is definitely important, and I think generally the harness is very accessible
to a lot of people. Obviously, everyone fits differently and things will need to be set
up for them, but for a first pod, and for being light weight … ideal.
[Greg] This is the reserve channel, and I found this zip was actually just opening itself
because there’s nothing stopping any pressure pulling the zip open.
[Carlo] Yeah, so you have to just do that, you do that all the way down to there.
[Greg] OK, and then you zip it up [Carlo] Yeah, these can start to come undone,
but I will point out that the reserve is not going to come out. You can see inside there
the inner workings of the reserve. They’ve actually done a nice, the nylon rods they
put in go quite long, so there’s no danger of that just slipping out, so they go well
past and they go into little holes, so they’re not going to get caught on something, so it’s
kind of a little annoyance. They haven’t spared on the pulleys, they’ve
gone for really big (not quite the ratchet pulleys) but they’ve gone for big Harken
29mm pulleys, and you really notice that when you use the speed system. It’s very light.
Yeah, the flight deck sits very nicely, but for me it sits a little bit low, you have
to be careful how you set it up, because it can sit a little bit low and be slightly concealed
by the waist strap, what I’ve got, the flight panel I put on, I just put the panel slightly
higher. There’s a nice pocket here, which you can
use for food or whatever in flight. Another nice little feature, you can put that
onto your instrument and then instead of having to lanyard your instrument on you can just
clip it in. [Nancy] So when you pack away the harness,
I think it’s really important to undo the zip so that that folds flat, so I always recommend
people to do that. The space in here is great. [Greg] There’s a pocket here, if you pull
on this and you get a spare karabiner. For throwing around a tree, and then you tie it
on and you can’t fall off!
[Nancy] I just tie it on, yeah, just hold on … and then hook it on
[Carlo] He wants details, he wants details, he wants us to talk and then we start talking
and he says Shut Up!
I think they’ve been very smart, worked
out which are the bits that people love, and which are the bits that needed changing, and
they’ve gone and made the changes in all the right places.