The Astral 5 is one of the nicest safe gliders I've flown. I've written a review of it on my website here. It's a responsive wing with a reassuring aerofoil. Why is it better than a competition wing?

You see, when a designer tries to get more performance out of a competition wing, he has to reduce the drag, and so makes the cells narrower, the camber smaller, and the aspect ratio higher. This leaves you with a wing that is more unstable and doesn't handle being hammered - it needs more height to recover from a collapse, and will collapse sooner than the DHV2 wing. Most of the time a good pilot can actively manage the wing and avoid it being a problem.

But when you're flying in 30km/h+ winds, the ground turbulence increases remarkably. Now a wing that can handle being donnered (as we say in SA) is an advantage, if only because it keeps the pilot relaxed for longer during the 7hr+ flight.

The other aspect is that as the windspeed increases, your down-wind performance is more affected by the wind and less by the glide angle of your wing. In the winds we are flying in, there's very little difference between a Stratus and an Astral when going downwind.

Yet when trying to survive that final landing at 475km in the kind of turbulence that will most probably be there, the Astral5 has a better chance of staying open and maintaining its direction. It's the right tool for the riding the wild wind.