Flying the Phi Maestro
NOTE: I was half way through writing this when Ziad Bassil (Dust Of The Universe) published his review of the Maestro. I decided not to read it until I’d finished written down my impressions of the wing. It’ll be interesting to read what he thinks of the same wing. http://ziadbassil.blogspot.com/2019/03/phi-maestro-wish-maker.html
TLDR; watch the video
I’m a circa 200hr pilot with a 55/45 coastal/inland flying mix. My inland flights have been almost exclusively on a Gradient Golden 4 and the last 45 coastal hours have been on a Gradient Freestyle 3. My Golden has been a great wing first wing that I’ve enjoyed on coastal sites and had some great XCs on. It’s still going strong but I’ve been itching to try a higher spec wing. This weekend I had opportunity to fly a Phi Maestro.
This is a modern, high-B wing with an impressive pedigree going back to the highly regarded Nova Mentor. I don’t have enough experience to write a proper review but here are some impressions for others considering moving up to a high B wing.
I flew the 21m M size with an Advance Lightness pod harness (new to me) which is quite ‘rolly’. All up weight about 90kg. My adventure mate Rowan flew my Golden 4 (26m) loaded similarly so we thought it’d be interesting to see how they compared in the air.
Golden 4 26:
26.57m flat area, 22.89m projected
5.3 aspect ratio, 4.16 projected
5.2kg weight
Phi Maestro M:
24.91m flat area, 21.21m projected
5.56 aspect ratio, 4.01 projected
4.6kg weight
The inflation and launch were easy off the steep slope at Beechmont. The wing seemed a bit more responsive to control input than the Golden. It was similar enough that I felt quite comfortable flying it immediately. I’ve flown another high-B with lighter brake pressure and it took some adjustment to feel the pressure in the wing.
In climb, the two wings performed very similarly with Rowan and I swapping heights at different times. In thermals I fly the Golden with wraps, a fair bit of pressure on both brakes and a healthy amount of weight shift. On the Phi I felt the same pressure seemed to ‘choke’ the wing and it seemed to climb better with less brake pressure. My hammock style pod harness made weight shift a bit more difficult and I feel I’d be able to fly this wing better with a seat-board harness.
We left the top of the thermal at the same time and the Maestro immediately pulled away from the Golden. Rowan later remarked at how fast it flew away. I was only at half bar on max travel because I hadn’t adjusted the speedbar for this wing.
It was a very good flying day with cloud streets and fairly lifty lines. Still I was very impressed by how efficient the glider was and how little height I lost on glides.
I’m pretty conservative and like to milk each little thermal I run into before moving on so my overall speed is usually pretty slow. Rowan hooked up with an Ozone and sped off towards Rathdowney while I slowly wandered through the Kerry valley on my own, having fun in the clouds on the way.
The glider provides a lot of feedback about the air it’s travelling through. And this was exaggerated by my pod harness. One of the reasons I’m looking for a higher spec wing is because I feel that I fly through light lift sometimes without feeling it. The Maestro seemed to point out every little bit of lift and seems to get lift even on small bubbles that my Golden would just fly through. This gets even better on bar — it is difficult to feel the air on the Golden while on speed bar. On the Maestro I had a better feeling of the air while accelerated.
The efficiency of the wing was highlighted by the sound it made. I can hear the whistling lines on the Golden when at speed. On the Maestro, a few times I thought I heard the faint sound of a jet before realising it was the wing! The fewer lines on the Maestro make very little noise and the faint jet like sound of the canopy was interesting.
I flew above Rowan after he succumbed to pub suck near Rathdowney. The sky was still looking pretty good and I wanted to get closer to Mt Barney to see the routes we use when climbing it, so I continued on.
The air got quite rough near the mountains and I had two asymmetric 30% collapses on both sides of the wing. In both asymmetric collapses, I didn’t notice any change in direction or pitch. A quick pump in both cases opened them up. Once the entire wing unloaded and I felt very little pressure before it surged forward but I was able to control it without an issue.
After encountering this rough air I gave up on heading towards Mt Barney and instead turned South towards My Lindesay— the wedding cake mountain.
As I circled in front of Mt Lindesay wondering whether I should attempt going South or return back towards Rathdowney, Jeremy appeared in his yellow wing. We had shared some thermals in the Kerry Valley before we went different ways. I radioed to ask what he was planning. The response was garbled so I decided to try my luck flying South.
Flying directly above Mt. Lindesay was a treat. The two concentric triangular cores that form the summit are remarkably geometric and only visible from the air. The QLD/NSW border passes through the middle of the summit. The fact that I was about to cross state lines for the first time while paragliding put a smile on my face.
To the South of the summit is the town of Woodenbong with about five kilometers of tiger-country forest leading to it. To the East is a valley with some landing options. With the wind on my back I thought I’d be able to glide over the forest but I needed more height. Searching for lift put me on the lee side of Mt Lindesay. I wasn’t too concerned because I was higher than the summit but I was surprised at how rough the air was even this high. A 50% asymmetric collapse encouraged me to get out of there. The Maestro behaved very well again and didn’t change direction or pitch in this collapse. Recovery was sped up with a pump of the brake.
The big forest crossing was quite intimidating so I picked a decision point. If I couldn’t intercept a thermal by then, I’d turn East to the landing options available. I may have been high enough to fly downwind all the way across the forest on speedbar but not being very familiar with it, I didn’t want to risk putting this brand new wing into a tree. Thankfully I found the thermal feeding a small cloud half way down the forest. The base at this point was over 2000m and Woodenbong was within easy glide.
Beyond Woodenbong I had the option to fly from one volcanic plug to another going South under a blue sky or fly South East across a low range to some clouds. I decided on the latter but lingered a bit too long in light lift on the way there. This put me low enough that I didn’t think I’d make it across the range. The volcanic plug I’d decided against earlier looked very appealing now. I only now noticed some dark fields just upwind of it. Heading back to this mountain, I didn’t find any thermals and being low with all the trees on the base of the mountain I decided against attempting to ridge soar it. Then it was just a long desperate glide South without any lift. I was again quite pleased with how well the Maestro glides.
No sooner than I had landed next to the road, someone pulled over to see if I was OK. This turned into a ride a few km back to Urbenville and then another ride to Woodenbong where Rowan soon arrived with the retrieve vehicle.
At almost 80km from launch, this flight was my personal best from Beechmont. Overall, I am very impressed by the Maestro. I felt very comfortable and safe flying it even in rough conditions and despite providing more feedback than my Golden, the workload isn’t any greater. I was also super impressed by the glide even though I could only push half bar. I was looking for a more talkative replacement wing with a better glide without reducing the safety level too much and this wing fits the bill.
Aesthetics are important to me :) I’m not a big fan of the uninspired visual design of the Phi wings but that’s a subjective thing. Having said that, I kinda liked the orange with blue stripes of this wing and could get used to the minimalist design if only because it stands out from all the other ‘curves on a curved surface’ designs.
Another aesthetic aspect that stood out was that the Phi logo and Maestro label appear to be vinyl stickers. But in the rush to unpack and fly and then rushing to pack so I wouldn’t miss my ride, I didn’t get a chance to look closely.
The brake handles are a bit flatter than I prefer. The flatness makes them less comfortable if you fly without gloves like I did on this flight but shouldn’t be an issue with gloves. The magnetic handle stows are nice and effective. Definitely better than my Golden where I’ve had to replace both snaps.
I did notice that I had a harder time coring thermals on this flight but I think that was more due to my unfamiliarity with the hammock style pod harness. I never felt happy with weight shifting in it. Also the harness had enough roll in it that my abs felt quite sore at the end of the flight after balancing the movements of the lower body in the pod. I’d love the fly the Maestro again with a seat-board harness but there’s a queue of people lined up to try this awesome wing.
Thanks to Martin Havel of Fly2Base for lending me the wing to test fly. There’s a strong chance this will be my next wing!
p.s. I have a feeling that one reason why the Maestro beat my Golden was because it has more surface area with the ‘go-faster’ orange colour than my orange/red/black Golden :D
