No more Gin…needing a hammock and looking to Impress

I love word games.  

The title of this post makes me giggle, but it does say everything going on with my epic harness search.

After setting up the Gin Genie Light in a simulator hanging from a tree in my boyfriend's backyard, I went up to launch with it on Sunday to fly on a 'guaranteed' XC flight.  Clouds/winds/birds all indicated a wonderfully thermic day and I was ready to be all warm and streamlined in my new pod and to explore the airways.

I elected to go first since patience is not exactly one of my virtues.  My launch was perfect, and getting my legs inside the pod was super easy.  I settled back and WHAM!  Into the first snotty little thermal and WHOOSH! I slid over to the right side of the pod.  Which caused my left wingtip to collapse and me to immediately slide over to the left side of the pod.

Huh.  By now I know I should've found some patience (that stuff I don't have much of) and waited for a size small to come in to try instead of convincing myself that a medium fit snug enough.  Crap.  I flew away from the hill a little to find some smoother air to make some adjustments, especially since I was reclining farther back than I wanted & still sliding around inside the pod. The air was a bit too active to start fiddling around so I just headed for the landing zone to try the simulator again even though I knew in my heart that the harness was just too big for me.

Determined not to give up, I asked to borrow a friend's Impress 3 pod (which has a hammock seat instead of a seatboard).  I wanted to get up into the same snotty air to do a direct comparison, and make sure it wasn't just the air or the experience of flying a pod. I've test flown a few others but it had always been in fairly smooth conditions.  So back up to take off, another clean launch and I headed right back to where I knew the air would be active.  I caught a screamer of a thermal and…OMG-I-love-this-harness.

A few weeks ago when I went to Brett's to check out the Gin, he did encourage me to try a hammock-style pod first to compare since pilots tend to love one style over the other (that lack of patience thing wouldn't let me wait).  A disadvantage of living in Canada though is our tiny pilot population, so there are very few chances to actually "try before you buy".  Borrowing from friends like I did is usually all you can do, and now that I tried them side by side, I know I'm definitely a hammock girl.  Despite the Gin being very well constructed with excellent storage space as well as loads of other fantastic features, it's just not the harness for me.  Boo.

So back to square one.  I've wanted an Impress 3 since I sat in the prototype at the Ozone Chabre in 2011 and of course its the most expensive one out there.  But for me, there's no more compromise.  A less expensive harness that doesn't fit properly isn't worth the savings.

Good thing my new tandem arrived yesterday!  Only 4 business days from the day I paid (delayed one day due to UPS…don't get me started!!!) and my sweet new Skywalk Join't 3 Tandem was in my hands.  Time to book some tandems and pay for all this gear!

Flowers courtesy of Ava from Quik Pik Flowers  who made this delivery extra special :)