Nova Mentor

Nova Mentor Skywings review by Steve Uzochukwu

Nova is a very long established paragliding company based in Innsbruck, Austria. Founded in the very late 1980s, they've had a long line of paragliders since then all designed by Hannes Papesh. Hannes is well known for open discussion of ideas and the Mentor is his latest creation in the LFT(DHV) 1-2 and EN B category. This category ranges from new pilots leaving the schools up to those on their first XC flights. The UK importer is Dean Crosby at Active Edge (www.activeedge.co.uk), and he has a network of dealers throughout the UK. Nova also has a web site where it is easy to find things like line plans . check www.nova-wings.com for details.

The Mentor covers all up weights from 65 to 130kg in four sizes, XS to L, the sizes have all acquired a greater carrying capacity over the years, the Small size is 80-100kg, the Medium 95-110kg and the Large 105-130kg. Quite a lot of people not expecting to fly a Small size will be doing so if they change to the Mentor! The hybrid sail (Gelvenor and Porcher) used on the last two generations of Nova gliders has disappeared to be replaced by an all Porcher Sport offering, with the Evolution 45g/m^2 on the upper surface and the E112A 40g/m^2 fabric on the lower. Lines are a mixture of Liros Dyneema and Technora, and are sheathed in the lower 2 cascades, but the very short highest cascades (<60 cm) are unsheathed, PU coated Dyneema. These short upper cascades rarely touch anything other than the sail during take off or landing, and now have a proven track record from both paragliding and kite surfing use. Risers are the newer, thinner Güth & Wolf webbing, in the 15mm width. It looks like the drag reduction in this glider is via a small reduction in line length, and much less area by virtue of thinner lines, rather than the more radical 2 lines per side seen on the Ra.

The glider is supplied with a rucksack, inner bag, manual, Nova .Speed Pedal.(speed bar), a windsock and Nova guarantee card. Nova bags seem to get better with every new model. The rucksack is the type where the glider goes in the bottom and the harness upside down near the top, and is generously cut with compression straps to tidy it up once everything in is place. There is enough room in the top flap for a helmet, and straps are well padded with the waist strap ventilated and a chest strap for long walks. One of the best rucksacks I've used! The speed bar is supplied with connecting lines and Brummel hooks to join to the same on the glider speed system. The speed bar has a fixture on it very similar to an adjustable Brummel hook . allowing the speed system to be quickly and accurately set to the right length . see photo . without any knots being needed. If you haven't got a speed system rigged up on your harness when you get this glider it will be done in seconds and the adjustment set in minutes.

On the ground the glider is very easy. The one slight risk on take offs with rocks or the remnants of roots is that the thinnest sheathed lines in the intermediate cascades can catch on things. The glider inflates in the lightest of breezes and lays out for take off very easily. I usually use inner As to inflate but with either this method or the all As the glider pulls up easily and slows as it comes overhead. Forward launches are easy as well. The ground handling is good enough to allow touching the tips side to side on the ground and yet still being able to get the glider back overhead, mostly with the use of brakes. Asymmetric inflations/cobra launches also work very well.

In the air you notice the higher trim speed as the glider covers ground quite rapidly. A little brake slows the glider down to the speeds we tend to use when sharing the air with other gliders, and the higher trim speed has made no difference to landing speeds, as the glider has a very good speed range on the brakes. There's also a very useful parachutal phase on deep brake, very useful for avoiding overshoots or making a very low speed, precise location slope landing, but a phase to be explored with great care. On ridge runs with an into wind component I found myself getting to the far end in the company of EN C/LTF2 and comp wings but alone in my own EN/DHV class. I was surprised at what was achievable on this wing.

In the air I flew with a chest strap set to 46cm, and whilst I experimented with wider I came back to this setting as the best for fun flying. The glider responds immediately to brakes, turning quite quickly but without diving into the turn, and is very well behaved when falling out of the back of a thermal. In weak thermals the precise but easy feel of the glider allows you to climb without wasting any energy, the smooth way the glider flies allowing easy optimisation of the climb. In stronger thermals the glider will bank up nicely, quality feedback through the brakes showing where the core is, and a swift stab of inside brake (or weight shift and release outer) would put you in the stronger part of the climb. I found if you ignored this signal the glider widened out but you were not pushed out of the thermal. Overall the glider is incredibly easy to fly and it's the thermalling behaviour that may take one or two flights to get 100% sorted with, but once you've become familiar with it then its simplicity itself just to turn flat in the light stuff, and enter the stronger stuff banked up and ready to climb. Once centred in the climb, the glider needs no further input and you can simply enjoy the view or plan your next move! Brake pressure I really liked, so it's on the firm side, and therefore maybe not to everyone's liking. The comportment of the glider at the inversion where thermals were breaking up was very good, and I had no collapses and only one or two minor unloading incidents at the tips, signalled through the brakes.

Big ears come in easily, thanks to the split A risers and are quite sticky but will not stay in over any period of time unless they are held in. Once they have started to pop out they exit quite quickly. The speed bar is light and easy to use, and I used it a lot for transitions at Gourdon, in the South of France. With the exception of one day the ridge was not working there requiring transitions to the village from take off and then across the gorge. On the first day I used the bar but only to about half way. On the second day, seeing how much faster some pilots were crossing the gorge and still getting up I used a lot more of it, sitting at full bar in the middle of the gorge and using between 1/3 and 2/3 when closer to the ground, and was rewarded with excellent transitions with not much loss of height. The glider felt very stable on bar, even up to full and after a brief period of canopy examination on the first day of bar use I had no further need or desire to look up. The Nova provided speed bar will allow you to very easily get the adjustment needed so it sits in the right place to find easily with your feet but is tight enough to get the glider to full bar.

I b-lined the glider twice and found it moderately physical, but the biggest problem for me was getting an adequate purchase on the B risers with the thick gloves. The risers themselves and the small maillons the lines are on didn't offer me much to grasp via my winter gloves. The actual pull wasn't that hard, and I'm sure if I were trying the same thing with the single layer gloves we fly with in summer it would have been much easier. The B stall itself is classic, with the glider dropping back, coming overhead and then sitting slightly forward. Once the glider has stabilised the release of the Bs leads to a very confidence inspiring recovery, with no need for intervention. Spiral dives seem to need about 360 degrees for entry, and if you push the glider hard it spirals quite fast with a lot of energy. It's very easy to do asymmetric spirals on, with a moderate pull of the brake whilst on the climbing side of the spiral exit sending the canopy down and you up quite quickly. On releasing everything, the glider exits quite quickly and I tended to slow the exit down to try and convert some of the energy back to height and to get a tidier exit. This shows how well the glider retains energy as it climbs back out.

Overall the Mentor gave me a good deal of enjoyable ridge soaring in the UK, and four days of excellent thermal flying in the Cote d'Azur, with best a height gain of over 850m. I loved the easy flying characteristics, the high trim speed, the easy thermalling, and the efficiency of the glider both at trim and on bar. It's got a trim speed as good or better than some EN C/DHV2 gliders, and it's close on glide, as brief comparisons with current 2/C machines showed. However, the Mentor allowed me to achieve things I could not do on machines in this category a year ago, and with ease, and we should be looking at it as a B/1-2 class machine with real, class leading, usable performance combined with easy flying. Another excellent glider joins the fiercely competitive EN B/DHV1-2 class, but at the top. This will be the glider for the others to try and beat in 2008!

Likes:

Easy handling
Excellent ground handling
Wide speed range on brakes
Stable and confidence inspiring on bar


Dislikes:

Occasional tangles on thinnest sheathed lines
Comments by the Importer Dean Crosby

I.m lucky and honoured to have distributed Nova for the past 16 years. In fact, they are soon to be in their twentieth year of paragliding production; a testament to a unique business in our ever changing industry. Led by the brilliant designer Hannes Papesh, the spine of the company design, testing and production are headed by the same people that started the business back in the 80.s. Nova may have changed their logo, but their commitment to make safe performance paragliders is unrelenting. The Mentor was the first wing that passed the new combined LTF/EN test of the Academy (new German test laboratory)

One of the first things you notice about the Nova Mentor is the easy ground handling characteristics as Steve suggests. This is always a good early sign of a well harmonised glider. Personally, I found the Mentor to be one of the easiest gliders to fly for along time. Its handling is progressive, direct and beautifully harmonised without being spoilt by one of the three axes of movement. This allows for easy thermalling and stress free transitions. If you fly LTF 2-3+ wings it.s the sort of glider you wished you were on when flying in strong, tricky conditions. The legendary Mamboo was a hard act to follow, but with easier handling and even more performance and bigger safety values the Mentor is a true confidence inspirer.

Thanks Steve for such a comprehensive and accurate review!

Active Edge
The Mill
Glasshouses
Harrogate
HG3 5QH
Tel: 0845 129 8286 www.activeedge.co.uk & www.nova-wings.com