The Tribe is an EN C cross country paraglider, designed to have the optimum combination of performance, agility and safety. Gin’s website says, “the cross country paragliding community is a tribe of people who live by their own rules, drawn together by a love of freedom and the discovery of wide open spaces”. This glider is for them.
Its most innovative design point is its W-shape air inlets on the leading edge. Designers Gin Seok Song and Robert Graham say the shape allows the air inlets to be smaller, so giving the wing a higher internal pressure and thus better performance at maximum speed, as well as more direct handling.
Despite its high pressure Gin say they have paid a lot of attention when trimming the wing to ensuring brake pressure is light and progressive. They also say the wing is pitch stable and cuts well through turbulence.
As with many manufacturers at the moment, Gin have chosen to use lighter weight materials, believing this benefits a wing’s handling as well as making it more pleasant to walk to launch with. Flexible battens in place of Mylar in the leading edge add to the weight savings, as do the unsheathed upper lines and thin 12 mm risers. It weighs 6 kg in the M size.
The Tribe comes in 5 sizes (for all-up weights of 60 – 130 kg) and 4 colour options.
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