Wing loading and water ballast

Wing loading is the weight of the glider, the pilot and any water ballast, per square metre of wing. It changes how the glider flies.

Heavier and lighter

• Heavier flies faster at the same glide angle, which pays off on strong days with good climbs. But it also sinks faster in a turn, so it climbs worse in weak thermals.
• Lighter climbs better in weak thermals and suits days with weak or narrow lift, at the cost of speed between thermals.

The turning radius

The biggest price of flying heavy is the size of your circle. A heavier glider has to fly faster to stay at the same angle of bank, and a faster turn is a wider one. In a narrow thermal that wider circle takes you out of the strongest lift, so a heavy glider can climb noticeably worse than its polar alone suggests. On days with small, tight thermals, flying lighter often pays more than the polar makes it look.

Setting yours

In Settings, under Aircraft, your wing loading shows with a word for where it sits in your glider’s range: empty, low, medium or high. Press Adjust to set it from the pilot’s weight and the water you carry. Your glider starts dry.

The map, the speed and the distance follow the wing loading straight away. A shared link carries the glider and wing loading it was made for, and opening one never changes your own settings.