What are you strapping to your head? Ed is up with another review:
I wanted to get a new full-face helmet as a recent heavy landing had jammed my sunnies onto my face, causing a pretty bad cut above my eye. It made me realise that sunnies aren’t the best solution for hang gliding – goggles or visors would be better. I had ordered one full face helmet from a manufacturer in Germany who never sent it (I’ll be doing a separate article on that one – long story short – Paypal found in my favour and sent me a notice saying what could best be summarised as ‘good luck getting your money back – we couldn’t'). The choices from REPUTABLE manufacturers seemed to be the Icaro or the Charly, and I preferred the shape of the Icaro.
For a number of reasons I was inclined NOT to go a longtail helmet. A lot of my friends have the Icaro 4Fight Longtail and I noticed that when ever I saw them flying they almost never seemed to have their head in the correct aerodynamic position for the helmet – negating the supposed main advantage of getting one. Arguably, it really doesn’t matter until you are on glide, however I started to notice that even when I’m on glide I tend to be moving my head around quite a bit, looking over at the vario and keeping a look out. I’ve also had concerns with the idea of having something so long hanging off my head that if it got caught on something during a bad landing etc that the leverage effect on my neck could be fatal. Furthermore, the tail looks like it has the potential to limit visibility by limiting how far up you can look before the tail jams on the top of the harness. So for all these reasons I opted for a ‘cut’. Much of my flying is in darn hot conditions so after much deliberating I opted for the Grid Cut as it has ventilation holes. I also love the matt black. I asked for the darkest visor they have which was the blue one.
So how does it stack up. It is expensive (about $420AUS delivered), it is very noisy, the paint scratches off pretty easily but it looks great and I love it. The ventilation works well and works when you need it the most – waiting to take-off (either the hill or in line to tow) and when scratching down low. For those of you who might be concerned about getting a cold head – my head has never felt cold in the helmet, even flying in Canberra during winter.
Of course non of these factors are reasons to buy a helmet – after all it is first and foremost a safety device. So when Trent met the ground pretty hard out at the Forbes comp wearing his 4Fight Longtail I was impressed when I saw how well his helmet worked. The helmet itself seemed to survive quite well but most importantly – Trent’s head fared very well considering the speed that he impacted the ground.
I DO have a real problem with the price – I could pony-up once for the $420 but the problem would really come to the fore if I were to have a ‘minor’ accident in the helmet. At $420 it would be very tempting to just keep using the helmet, which is obviously not wise.
My other main gripe is the noise, which is annoying and makes it difficult to hear the vario. I have a Brauniger GPS/Comp vario and I can barely hear it most of the time, but particularly on glide where I find I am constantly looking over at the vario because I just can’t hear it. I do seem to have gotten used to the low volume and my ears seem more atuned to the the vario for the most part – but glide is still a problem.
Soon after purchasing the helmet it developed some marks in the paint – it was as if the paint layer had been scraped off (a bit like a Scratch Lottery ticket). This was disappointing as you expect more from such an expensive helmet. The 4Fights have a lacqured/sealed finish that this just couldn’t really happen to but for some reason the Grids don’t.
I have found the visor takes a bit more maintenance to keep clean than my previous solution – sunnies. When I first got the helmet I’d put it on just before I was going to launch but after a few incidences where the visor was particularly dirty I have developed the habit of checking the visor as part of my pre-flight, while I still have easy access to cleaning devices.
I do really like the helmet but would have to think twice before buying another one as they are just so expensive. One every 5 years – yes, one every year – no. At least from a price perspective, it’s hard to go passed the Charly. If anyone out there has a really quite helmet I’d love to hear about it.
Cheers
Ed
