U-Turn Razorblade

U-Turn Razorblade Review- Firs impression

The Razorblade is the first Parakite from U-Turn. It’s faster and dives more than a moustache. It also more reactive to weight shift. It has the speed of a Line but it sinks less when flying hands up in the same size. When diving it and doing turns in really builds up a lot of speed, more then a Moustache for sure and also more then a Line. The best glide is similar to the Moustache.

Launch

It likes more impulse than e moustache to rise and come up. If your hands are not all the way back you will drag it, it won’t come up. But if you give it a good impulse and the toggles are well released it does come up quick, you even have to stop it to prevent it from overshooting. But that’s easy to do, you can stop it well using the toggles, also in strong wind when it comes up quick. When you put it on the ground, it’s quit a lot preinflated, the rods make a solid airfoil already before it’s inflated. When you have to stop it from overshooting, you need to be carefull not to stall it. That’s the weakest point of the Razorblade, it’s very easy to stall. Once the brakes get tensioned, you have only very 5-10cm before it stalls. On the 15 i flew, the inside top brake lines never got tensioned, the wing stalls before they get any tension. The wingtips get brake tension first and the middle later, that gives it some extra reactivity.

Flying

The Razorblade is a lot stiffer than the moustache, the canopy is very stiff and tensioned up. That probably makes it more reactive as well to  any inputs. It’s more sensitive to weight-shift than a moustache i had the impression. The Razorblade is the most tensioned Parakite i have flown so far, the Flows and the LC are less stiff, less like a board above you. The glide angle range it can fly is really good, it glides well and also goes very fast and steeper than a moustache. While flying hands up and fast it also feels quite solid still. But i didn’t have the chance to fly it a lot in turbulence. When playing around on the ground you can see quickly it has some reflex in there, the nose wants to go up. Not as much as on a Mullet or Mullet X, it feels more like a Flare Line. The handling feels nice and you can fly it quite precise. You can also speedride with it, it doesn’t collapse on you, but you must keep some speed. You can’t ride slow with it. Also when riding it’s quite easy to stall or spin it. I even spinned the 15 accidentally just when doing slow turns in the air. It is really very sensitiv to stall it or spin it accidentally. I like that the Razorblade is rollstable. In no brakeposition it started to roll by itself like the Flare and the Flow wings do. For experienced pilots no problem, but a roll-instable wing in the wrong hands can lead to very bad accidents.

Landing

Since it picks up so much speed, you can do amazing swoops on it, it goes for longtime. But at the end you have to run a lot, you can’t slow it down well since it stalls so quickly. You have to run quit a bit more than on a Line or on a Moustache in no wind, at least on size 15 and 18. That’s the only ones i have tried.

Quality

It’s well made, the Quality looks pretty good. The A-Risers stretch about 1cm just when pulling on them, they should be stiffer. They have found a smart way to retrimm the risers, you can extend the B or the Cs when needed. Because all the lines going through the pulley’s shrink a lot over time. U-Turn used quit a heavy fabric for the wing, it feels very solid and durable.

Summery: I think it’s a fun wing for experienced pilots. For beginners i think it’s too easy to stall and that’s a sketchy thing when soaring but also when you use it for speedflying. Any wing should warn you well before it stalls. The opening from the Razorblade are designed for speed, not for flying slow. It’s really missing a sharknose. The Moustache sadly also came without a sharknose and isn’t great at slow speed, but the Razorblade is quit a bit worse at slow speeds.