Paraglider Review: Gin GTO3 vs. Ozone Photon & Lyght

Six months ago, I transitioned from my Ozone Swift Six to a two-liner to have better glide and more speed. I was nervous about the transition and there was no “low-C two-liner” that I could find that outperformed the Swift Six, so I jumped into the mid/high C category. Since January, I have flown the Ozone Photon for 80 hours, the Ozone Lyght for 30 hours, and the GTO3 for 14 hours. Here are a few of my thoughts about the GTO3 and the pros and cons of each wing.

Performance Summary

All three gliders are amazing and I’m glad to be starting with this category of glider at a time when the combination of passive safety, stability, speed, and performance are beyond anything that has existed previously in combination.

I was flying all three wings in the 85-105 kg size at around 102-104 kgs all up on an Advance Impress 4 harness. I have about 550 total hours and I’m currently 94th in the USHPA NTSS rankings in the US. I’m a very, very conservative pilot and trying to move slowly in terms of my glider and harness choices. In general, I want to fly better than the wing before moving to the next level of performance, which is a big factor in my wing decisions. Most of my flying on the Photon, Lyght, and GTO3 has been in bigger air—mostly Valle de Bravo and Chelan.

The GTO3 undoubtedly has the highest performance of the three gliders. It is faster, more nimble, and climbs better than the Ozone Photon or Lyght. The GTO3 also tends to move around a lot and has a higher workload, especially on bar or in turbulent conditions. In those conditions, I had to look at the wing or my risers a lot more often on the GTO3 to understand what the wing was doing and sometimes wait for the glider to settle before putting it where I wanted it. The Ozone wings feel “more solid” overhead, move around a lot less, and require less management.

At the end of the day, I think the decision of which wing is best for you is really about what you’re used to, what you want to feel as a pilot, and most importantly, what are you prioritizing. If you’re prioritizing performance, the GTO3 is the clear winner.

The experience of flying all three wings was a game changer in my flying career. I learned a lot from comparing the wings and had to do a lot of soul searching to understand who I am as a pilot. I realized that at my level of experience, competence in wing control, and with my anxiety levels with paragliding as a sport, I need to prioritize comfort over performance. In the end, I decided to fly the Lyght for the rest of the year until I’m ready to have a higher-performing wing.

Detailed Review

In calm air, I LOVED the GTO3. It turns better, glides faster, and climbs more efficiently than the Ozone Photon or Lyght. When I was searching for a thermal off bar, the GTO3 would turn into thermal–it felt like a thermal hunting machine. Climbing and coring were great. The talkative nature of the wing really helped me find and stay in the core. The GTO3 is very fast–I think there is general agreement that it’s faster than any other C-wing.

In more active air, the workload on the GTO3 increases substantially and required much more active piloting than the Ozones. The GTO3 moved around a lot. Both on and off bar, it would often yaw 3 feet either way, which just required simple brake or rear riser inputs, but a lot of them.

On bar, the GTO3 jumped around a lot–it felt turbulent. Half-bar on the Ozones seem to increase smoothness and comfort when on glide, while it does the opposite on the GTO3. As a relatively new C-wing pilot, I found the GTO3 to be uncomfortable on bar and i felt very tentative on full bar in bigger air. That fear is likely not justified. I never had a frontal or full deflation even though I was flying in Chelan in relatively strong conditions. Other pilots have said that the Ozone is more firm and may move around less, but that you can’t see a frontal coming–when it goes, it just goes, while the Gin is more talkative and you’ll be able to taste the air and see things coming. I don’t know if this is true, but the Gin is definitely more talkative and turbulent on bar, and I personally didn’t find that information to be helpful.

I also felt like I couldn’t take my hands off of the rear riser controls. On the Photon or the Lyght, if I want to eat or make an adjustment, I can go to 1/3rd bar and the wing feels super stable and predictable. On XC days, flying 1/3rd bar on long glides is my time to enjoy the views and take photos. In competitions, I tend to use that time to plan ahead. On the GTO3, I had to put a lot more attention on active piloting and I was too nervous to eat or take my hands off the risers to make adjustments.

Perhaps this is more about me as a pilot than the wing. I’m also a single-engine fixed wing and glider pilot. A few years ago, I was taking a flight lesson in an L39 albatross–a sub-sonic, two seat military trainer. When we were cruising at 300 knots and I was flying, the aircraft felt like it was skittering across the air–it felt jittery to me. My instructor who was an x-military pilot would take the stick and the plane would settle and feel smooth. He just had a very fine-tuned feeling and added a lot of micro inputs that were just beyond my skill level. The GTO3 on bar reminds me of that feeling–it’s like the wing is skittering on top of the air rather than flying through it. Whether that’s the wing or the pilot, I don’t know.

My friends flying the GTO3 who are coming from higher aspect ratio wings and those that have flown Gin gliders for a while love the GTO3. They like its talkative nature–it’s more information–and they LOVE its performance.

When the GTO3 enters strong thermals, it pitches backwards quite aggressively. When I first flew the GTO3 in big air, this pitch movement scared me–I’m a relatively new C-wing pilot and somewhat anxious in general. Once I understood what was going on, I just learned to be patient and wait for the glider to settle above my head before turning it. I thought that this waiting time would result in flying through the thermal and fall out of it, but it was already climbing… Whether this is a bug or a feature really depends on the pilot. Ziad’s review on the GTO3 was quite clarifying: “It just needs a bit more time to settle (in turbulent thermals), and then you can push the brakes to turn it. While doing that self-settlement, the GTO 3 keeps pushing forward and up!”

In comparison, the Photon tends to slice through the thermals, which made it harder for me to quickly find the core. The Lyght is a bit more talkative than the Photon and I find it easier to center a thermal, but the GTO3 is definitely the winner. The GTO3 is truly a thermal hunter–it almost forces you to climb when you enter a thermal.

I am not trained as an aeronautical engineer, but my belief is that Ozone gliders do a very good job of dispersing the ram air from the leading edge horizontally to create a fully inflated wing all the way to the tips. There is a reason that Ozone always comes out with the heavy-weight wing first and then comes out with a lighter version later. I believe it gives Ozone time to study how the wing pressurizes in various flight configurations and allows them to lighten up the internal structures and fabric without sacrificing the wing’s integrity or internal pressurization. This highly-inflated wing creates a consistent feeling on the Ozones–the wing is generally where you expect it to be and has a familiar sense of pressure in a lot of very different conditions and configurations. For me, it’s reassuring. But it also gives me less information and makes me have to make more inputs to core a thermal.

Based on my experience on the GTO3 and talking to other pilots, Gin seems to have a different design philosophy. The GTO3 is the only Gin wing I have flown, so take this with a grain of salt, but I believe that Gin is intentionally creating a less-pressurized wing so that the pilot has more information and the wing turns and literally pulls you into thermals. This is a really compelling feature of the GTO3–it’s like riding a horse that knows where it wants to go. It also takes a bit of getting used to. For a high-C or more experienced pilot, I think it’s a big plus and will put the GTO3s at the top of the stack—literally. If I’m low and desperate in calm air, I’d rather be on the GTO3 than the Ozones for sure.

But I’m not a very experienced pilot. For me, the GTO3 added a bit of unpredictability and while I really, really appreciated its thermal hunting prowess, it was also a bit disconcerting. The wing sometimes had a mind of its own.

On this note, there were three occasions in the 14 hours I flew the GTO3 when I was on bar and the wing would grab an air mass and just suddenly pitch back and turn 45 degrees without any inputs. I would quickly get back my wing back overhead and back on the courseline, and it wasn’t a big problem, BUT it scared the crap out of me. The third time it happened, I decided that because of this one characteristic, I wasn’t yet ready to fly the GTO3. All three times this happened, the GTO3 turned to the right. Maybe it was a small issue in production that was causing this, but it meant that I could never be on cruise control. I was just scared to take my hands off the riser control and it added an edgy feeling anytime I was in turbulent air. Maybe someone else will fly that wing and I’ll learn whether it was the pilot (me) or the wing.

Takeoff and landing characteristics on the GTO3 were great. There were a few things I didn’t like about the lineset. When I would rosette the wing, the top cascades of the lines seemed to hang out and drag. I had to be more intentional about rosetting and making sure all the lines were contained within the fabric before walking with it. Checking the lines on launch was harder on the GTO3 for two reasons. First, the top cascades are quite thin and tend to curl up a bit, so it was often hard to see if there was a tension knot before building a wall. Also the lines are all the same color, so the visual line check took a bit more time. The Ozones use different colors and slightly thicker uppers which make it easier to visually check the lines before launching. This may sound like a super minor detail, but it made me nervous when I was launching the GTO3 in high-wind situations when I couldn’t build a wall and there wasn’t much time to look at the wing or abort.

In the 130 hours I’ve flown this year on the two-liners, I have never lost my wing or had a frontal, so I can’t talk about the amount of energy or the wing’s characteristics in those events.

In the shoots I’ve experienced on the three wings, the Photon requires the deepest brake inputs to stop the shoot. The Lyght seems to carry less energy (it’s 1 kg less of momentum) and the GTO3 required less brake in general including in catching the wing.

I have taken 30-40 percent collapses, and all three two-liners have flown in a straight line and quickly recovered with weight shift and brake. When I grab the collapsed tip of Photon or the Lyght, it requires a lot of brake travel to re-inflate the tip, but when the brake finally grabs the wing, you feel the wing pull back and it opens with a reassuring “whop” sound.

The GTO3 recovers just as quickly but is harder to feel. When I would take a small collapse, I found myself looking up at the wing more often to know where the wing was because the brake pressures are less strong. I also had to have more yaw awareness and make inputs accordingly. One GTO3 pilot reported that they did have some cravats with collapses and had to work the brake 5-6 times to get the tip fully open again.

Of the three wings, the GTO3 turns the best. It rolls more than the Ozones and turns faster and with less brake pressure.

I personally don’t like how the Photon turns–I really have to force it to turn and more weight shift doesn’t seem to help. I can get the Photon to turn better if pull my brake a bit more to the inside laterally (bending my wrist to the inside). This pulls the wing tip in and helps it turn. I can also add the inside brake, let up a little, and re-add brake, which seems to help the Photon turn. The Lyght turns better than the Photon in my opinion. But the GTO3 in general has lighter brake pressures and turns the best.

What wing did I choose?

The GTO3 is clearly the highest performance wing of the three. But it's like having an anxious girlfriend who is amazing at everything, but is just always a big anxious. I am anxious enough on my own!

For me, a mid-C wing feels like the right choice and the Ozones give me enough glide and speed to satisfy my current level of competitiveness. I personally am willing to give up performance for the sense of safety and lower workload. Although there are a few things I don’t love about the Lyght–mostly the heavy, long brake pressures and its cumbersomeness in turning, I think it’s the best of the three wings for me. The Photon is probably the better choice for racing because it cuts through the air better, but it also dulls the feelings of thermals and makes them harder to core.

The GTO3 I flew (assuming it’s not a trim or manufacturing issue) is just too much workload and unpredictability for my current level of confidence, especially in pitch reactivity and recovery when entering edgy thermals. It’s truly a high-C and although I have the skills for it, I am a very conservative pilot and don’t have the self-assuredness for it. I think I need a few weeks in Oludeniz to get confident enough to truly fly it properly in rough air. The GTO is higher performance and I like how the GTO turns a lot, but the Lyght feels more comfortable for me fly.

In the end, I learned a lot about myself as a pilot and truly learned that there is no “best” wing. It’s truly a preference.

Hope these notes help!

—Jason

Addendum for High B pilots thinking of moving to a C.

I prefer the feeling of my Ozone Swift Six compared to any of these c wings, but it just doesn’t have enough performance. Of the three, I’d recommend the Lyght to a new C pilot.

It’s only a big step if you lose the wing. The high Cs still fly like a high B. But new Ozone Delta or a slightly lower performance wing would be a more conservative choice and would be a more comfortable step.

So when is a good time to switch to the two liners? When you’ve flown the Swift Six or a high B for a long long time without losing the wing, you are confident in your ability to catch the wing quickly when it shoots, you are able to fly long distances consistently, and the wing is holding you back in long transitions. Plus you have a few SIVs under your belt.

My priority is safety. At this point in my progression, I think the Lyght is one the safest wings I can fly. It’s a 2-liner so I can feel what’s going on. The better glide lets me arrive higher above the terrain or get out of situations with good glide and penetration. And it’s a wing that is both comfortable and one that I can still learn a lot from. When things go wrong, it will be far more dynamic so having a few SIVs seems essential and I’m trying to do one every year.

I also decided not to fly a sub yet–instead I’m sticking with my Impress 4. My goal right now is to fly the safest and most comfortable equipment I can. I believe that the foam protection in the impress and the forza 2 have the best protection in the industry.

But these are just my opinions. Hope they help.