(wind blows) (paraglider crinkling)
- In a tube.
(paraglider crinkling) Nova.
Nova Mentor 7 Light. (paraglider crinkling)
Mentor 7 Light. (paraglider crinkling)
- [Carlo] Welcome to the Flybubble Paragliding channel.
- [Nancy] We are free flight experts
and equipment specialists
helping you get the best flying experience.
- So welcome to this first impressions mini-review
of the new Nova Mentor 7 Light.
The new, lightweight high-B wing from Nova,
which has been talked about quite a lot
for several months now.
Let's go fly.
Very interesting risers,
starting with the A's.
We've got the A-riser with some little magnets inside
holding those together.
And then onto the B's.
And there's... already part of the BC connection system.
On the A riser, we've got Ronstan.
20 mil Ronstan pulleys,
which are very nice ball-bearing pulleys
on the top and bottom.
Excellent, with a nice thick speed system cord,
which is really nice and tight up to the top.
Looking onto the BC system,
I think this is different to other ones that I've seen.
So, the BC system actually goes from the C's,
through the B's, to the A's.
There's another pulley there,
another 20 mil Ronstan pulley.
And then, there's a pulley that's kind of built
into the B riser.
The Dyneema...
I think these are Dyneema,
lines go in and out through.
We pull on those.
You can see how that works.
Feels very good on the ground.
I'm looking forward to testing it in the air.
Red for port. (woman laughs)
Port and starboard, green.
Very fancy, plush.
- [Nancy] Very nice. - Carbon bar.
- [Nancy] Yes. - Look at that.
It's like a Michelin star bar (Nancy laughs)
or something.
And it's adjustable, you can change the height of it.
Those kind of magnets as first seen on BGD gliders,
well I first saw them there.
And they just pop on,
and then, if you pull them,
they sort of stay on better than most magnets.
And you can pull 'em off. Like, so.
First test. (wind blows)
There's a bit of breeze.
I can use the rear risers
and the brakes to hold glider down, and that works nicely.
There's nothing connecting the BC system
or the rear riser to the tip,
so that actually works very well.
(wind blows) (paraglider crinkling)
So here, you can see this line here,
this is the two and a half line part of it.
There's the A lines and the B lines.
And then, what we've got here, is this line,
which actually seems to be attached to the A riser,
but isn't an A riser at all.
It's going out here.
- [Nancy] Yeah, and going right.
I'll follow up. - [Carlo] To the C, up to there.
And you can see how,
because of that, when I'm holding it down the wall,
it's pulling. Do you see the tension on it?
- [Nancy] Yeah. And if you look at the tips there,
you can see where the central lines stops
and then goes off to the tips
without that central middle line.
- [Carlo] What's happening is those lines along the centre B lines
and the two and a half liner,
that goes to the
outer C,
they're pulling some tension on there.
So I'm finding that as I hold on the leading edge there,
it's still pulling tension.
Whereas, normally, I'd hold the glider down
and there wouldn't be tension on those lines.
And that just means
I just need to hold the glider down a bit more.
(paraglider crinkling)
(wind blows)
(paraglider crinkling)
(wind blows)
- [Nancy] The sail looks lovely and clean on the under side.
I like the colours too. This is the red one.
(Nancy laughs) White on the trailing edge.
Not so good for UK conditions. - [Carlo] We're okay.
- [Nancy] Gonna have a look at the top surface.
Checking that. Very nice, very clean.
- [Carlo] Feels and looks very solid on the leading edge.
Now, we can see a really good shot
through the glider with the light,
see the internal construction.
Okay. So now I'm gonna try testing the stall point.
(winds blow)
(paraglider crinkling)
(winds blow)
(paraglider crinkling)
- [Carlo] Oh, yeah. You know what?
I was only the ground,
but that's a lot less physical than a lot of B3's are.
B3's are quite often very stiff.
These are quite easy to pull. (parachute crinkles)
And a full frontal.
Just a small one. (paraglider crinkles)
- [Nancy] Yep. (paraglider crinkles)
(heavy winds blow) (paraglider crinkles)
- [Nancy] It's a very useful skill
to be able to turn your glider
when it goes upside down and around.
- [Carlo] Got some exercise now running around after me.
(Nancy laughs)
(wind blows) - [Carlo] Wee!
- [Carlo] Let's talk about the lines and the risers.
The first thing you notice here is that,
one, there is no split A riser.
There is the red lines,
those are the three A lines.
So it's got three A lines.
And there's no split A,
so the line you'd use for big ear is this one,
standard classic big ears.
And then what looks like the split ear riser,
that line there, is actually the B3 line.
There, which goes to the B3's, goes to the outer C's.
And that's what makes this glider a two and a half liner,
as Nova called it, rather than a two liner or a three liner.
So it would almost be a two liner,
if it didn't have that line, then it would be.
But it's got that extra line which goes across.
And you see it's quite interesting,
how the line goes through here
and actually crosses with the rear lines here,
the B lines, (paraglider crinkles)
which sort of slightly crosses across them.
And also you'll notice,
that the B riser is significantly longer,
a good several centimetres longer than the A's or the C's.
So that's quite interesting. (wind blows)
- [Carlo] So I just finished a little cross country flight
on the Nova Mentor 7 Light.
So I just had my first proper flight on it,
in good thermic conditions, actually.
The glider feels very solid and collapse resistant.
It does have quite an interesting feel about it.
It's got kind of a different feel to,
perhaps, just about any other glider I've flown before.
It does have quite a two liner feel about it
and feels very collapse resistant, as I say.
And it has that kind of solid powerful feeling
that two liners have a bit.
It does mean that from a feedback point of view,
I think it's gonna take a little bit of getting used to.
I mean, today, it was so strong,
it was pretty obvious where the lift was.
(laughs)
Speed bar was very usable and solid, very light.
Very, very light, the speed bar.
Impressed with that, and feels very effective.
I'm not measuring exactly the speed,
but it feels like it pulls a very good amount
of speed for a high-B glider.
Handling is quite firm.
So it's definitely not light brakes, they're quite firm.
The workable travel is relatively short,
I found. Just in the thermaling, I was flying around,
and quite firm brakes, yeah.
It's definitely not light.
A little bit on the firm to heavier side,
but very direct feeling.
So some pilots are gonna really like that.
But a much firmer, much more direct feeling than
its predecessor the Mentor 6,
which I think felt a lot softer and a bit more vague.
This feels very solid and direct.
This feels to me like a completely different glider.
Totally unrelated to its predecessor.
I can see why Nova say about the big ears
that prefer to use the B3's,
which worked really well.
But the big ears are a bit flappy
and not particularly stable when I did them.
I only did them [B3s] once.
On this glider they're actually quite light to pull in,
not heavy, and very easy to hold,
and very effective.
So that's a very useful feature of this glider, the B3's.
First impressions is the glider's moderately agile.
It's not particularly agile,
but you can turn it perfectly well enough.
I mean, I had some quite punchy cores to turn around,
and I could make the glider and get it to turn around.
More agile than its predecessor,
with more energy, and more 'turnability'.
Cuts through the air and just bites into the thermals.
So it's very good for that.
It's very functional, very efficient.
Well, yeah, the sink rate and the climb seemed very good.
I can't comment, yet, if it's exceptionally good or exactly,
but it's certainly good, certainly seemed to climb well.
I think it's gonna take me a little time
to get used to this glider
'cause it has got quite a different feel about it.
Even on the ground, immediately building the wall,
I could feel the difference
with the two and a half liner concept.
That difference of the line layout
is giving the glider a different feel to it.
It probably is, of all the three liner gliders,
that's not a full two liner, two and a half liners.
It probably has got some of the most feeling,
like a two liner,
that sort of very taught leading edge
and sort of powerful feel to the leading edge.
So the BC system feels very efficient.
It's very light. So that's great.
It feels very usable and light.
Better than most BC systems that I've felt so far.
Remember this is my first impressions.
Yeah.
(upbeat synth music)