I am kind of old school in that I don't mind a horseshoe wing. If you are in an assymetric configuration, with perhaps a stage bottle or deco bottles on one side, the horse shoe design makes it slightly easier to carry slightly more gas in one side of the wing than the other to maintain trim around the longitudinal axis.
On the other hand, despite all the hype about perfect trim and streamlining and all the effort by technical divers to be perfectly horizontal (especially in front of a camera), most technical divers do not trim with a zero angle most of the time, but rather closer to 5 or 10 degrees head up from perfectly horizontal given the realities of having to look forward on necks that were made for bipeds. So the horse shoe wing still effectively transfers gas back and forth from side to side in all but a marked head down trim position.
More importantly, a wing with just a wee bit of taco effect, horse shoe or donut, is not an entirely bad thing. If the wing is completely under the tanks and is in effect "flat" with zero air trapping, it can be hard to maintain a bit more gas in one side or the other, while just a small amount of taco will allow enough of a bubble to compensate for assymetric loads without creating objectionable "air trapping" issues.
Generally speaking, if I can roll 360 degrees in either direction and do not have trim issues after completing the roll while maintaining a near zero trim angle, the wing (and any taco effect) is not overly large.
On the other hand, despite all the hype about perfect trim and streamlining and all the effort by technical divers to be perfectly horizontal (especially in front of a camera), most technical divers do not trim with a zero angle most of the time, but rather closer to 5 or 10 degrees head up from perfectly horizontal given the realities of having to look forward on necks that were made for bipeds. So the horse shoe wing still effectively transfers gas back and forth from side to side in all but a marked head down trim position.
More importantly, a wing with just a wee bit of taco effect, horse shoe or donut, is not an entirely bad thing. If the wing is completely under the tanks and is in effect "flat" with zero air trapping, it can be hard to maintain a bit more gas in one side or the other, while just a small amount of taco will allow enough of a bubble to compensate for assymetric loads without creating objectionable "air trapping" issues.
Generally speaking, if I can roll 360 degrees in either direction and do not have trim issues after completing the roll while maintaining a near zero trim angle, the wing (and any taco effect) is not overly large.
