Dav and Luc creamed the CFD (French XC league) taking the top 2 spots and helping the local club of Greolieres win the club competition. Dav and Luc completed their flights with various Mantra R protos including the the fabled bbHPP, their efforts in the XC league really helped the development of our comp wings….you can be assured that when we release our wings they have really been put through their paces and flown to the max!

Dav has shown the rest of us mere mortals what can actually be done with a paraglider by successfully navigating himself through the bulk of the Alps, in one flight! Taking-off at Col de Bleyne on the south coast of France at 10.30 am and landing 9hrs 40mins later in Sion, Switzerland! We have talked about this flight for years, in truth I never thought it was possible, but if there was ever a man to be able to do it, it was Dav. Amazing flight by an amazing pilot. Respect.

Luc stamped his arrival on the competition scene this year with excellent results in the French championships (3rd) and Italian championships (3rd) before going on to smash the top British pilots in the British Open held at St Jean de Monclair. He won the competition easily, taking first place in every task!!….a feat that has not been done before as far as I know in any high level cat2 comp. Since he started flying with us some 18 months ago we have seen a massive improvement in his skills, next year he will take on the big boys in the PWC and hopefully get a place in the French team. Watch out guys, Armant is coming, and he has the necessaries to go all the way!!

At the end of the Summer we had the PWC Superfinal, Charles and I had the chance to show off our new babies to the rest of the world…the BBHPP. Created by the genius minds of Luc and Dav and majestically taken by Charles to the top of the 2009 PWC ladder. The wing is awesome; never before has there been a ’parachute’ that glides so well and glides so fast..without taking collapses! It is the first wing to successfuly use only 2 rows of lines (A & B) and was a pleasure and an honour to be able to fly this wing in the first ever Superfinal. We are super proud of Charles and very happy to have the PWC World Champion trophy sitting here in the office. Happy Birthday Ozone!!

It seems like we have opened a can of worms though…there are loud shouts from other manufacturers to have this sort of innovation banned, it seems there are designers out there who are just happy to keep reinventing the same thing time and time again without having to think too much… We will see where this kind of technology takes us, and hope that we dont have the rug pulled from under our feet before we have had time to fully explore the potential. Be patient though, it wont happen over-night.

So gearing up for Christmas…its a busy time for us as many projects are coming to an end; we are in the middle of getting the Buzz Z3 certified in all sizes; and nearing the end with the Delta and R10 projects…..we just need some good weather to do some confirmation testing before taking another trip to Switzerland for test flights and load tests.

Expect big things for 2010, we have some great wings coming with REAL performance increases, without the sacrifice of safety or comfort and without pushing AR to beyond acceptable limits for a class.

Safe flying and Happy Xmas from all the test team.

Russ

Well, we have had a busy autumn of testing and developing the Mantra R09 our flagship comp wing or ‘voile de geurre’ (war wing) as they so eloquently say in France!

The performance results of the latest proto flown by Dav at the French championships were very promising and after more testing, triming and plenty of comparison flights we saw a marked improvement over our previous protos. So we decided to go with this one into production. The R09 has kept the good climb/handling characteristics of the R07 whilst improving the pure glide and top speed, and with the new colour scheme it really is a beautiful wing to behold.

The Worlds will be its first real test and we are confident that we have a really competitive wing. In fact the competition scene will be exciting for Ozone this year with the addition of some more quality pilots to our team, a big welcome goes out to Charles Cazaux (F) and Anders Baerheim (Nor).

Good luck to all our pilots for the World Championships in Mexico in Jan… Looking forward to it!

Russ

Welcome to the test team’s blog! Here we will keep you up to date on some of the latest developments at Ozone and what we’ve been up to.

We have had an amazing spell of great weather down here for the last month or so. It has been flyable pretty much every day which means we have been getting out and up there. We are currently working hard on several projects and seeing real improvements in the way our wings are flying.

Our newest member Luc has just finished his first month with us, it’s in at the deep end for him as he has to learn all the skills needed to test paragliders properly, but already his progress can be seen. I think Luc is a great addition to the team, he literally is a brain on legs and has a calculation for pretty much everything. He is working closely with Dav in design and I am sure you will see the fruits of their labour soon….

But its not all work, at the weekends we like to get and, well, go flying really. Between the 3 of us, within the last 3 weeks, we have flown over 850kms of XC flying (don’t worry Mike, its all been at the weekends!) and that does not include any competition flights. The South Alps really are an amazing place to fly, I don’t know of anywhere better to be honest.

The Brit champs were a couple of weeks ago at St Andre and since we had just received a new comp proto, it was the perfect ground to test it on, I had the good fortune to attend to test the performance and managed to finish in 2nd place, which after a disappointing season was a good end for me.

The French Champs in St Andre start at the end of the week and Luc and Dav will be there flying the Ozone flag. Dav is on a come back! He has dusted off his 35mm cameras, dayglow orange flying suit and is ready to compete again, I’m looking forward to seeing the results of our boys, I think they will do well.

More news soon, we’re off flying!

Take care

Russ