Nordic Paragliding Open 2015

Yassen Savov reports on the Nordic Paragliding Open:

Every year, when the great northern snows melt and the urge to be in the sun is too strong to resist by even the most powerful and fierce and fearless and hugely moustachioed of them, the Viking warriors of all of Scandinavia put on their traditional EN-certified horned helmets, board the wooden sail ships, and converge from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland to some carefully chosen sun-struck piece of heaven lower down in Europe, carrying, instead of their double-bladed axes, a paraglider each – and a nice racing one, whenever possible – so they can fight out the battle of the Flying Vikings and raise up some big wooden mugs and shout, red burned happy faces cheering all together: “SKOL!”

This year that carefully chosen sun-struck piece of heaven was the Italian town of Gemona del Friuli, which – cuddled in the corner between Venezia, Austria, and Slovenia (location sounds not so bad, doesn’t it?), and having both sharp mountains and quite thermally flatlands – delivered on all fronts. We had three very nice tasks, jumping from mountains to flatlands and back, and, even though the length and difficulty of the tasks …read more

Source:: Ozone Paragliders

Seiko Wins Back to Grand-Bo: New Competition Style

We love innovation, and that includes new styles of paragliding competition. The Back to Grand-Bo competition that took place from June 27th to July 10th was exactly that: an interesting format of out and back. The concept was to take off from Le Grand-Bornand with only one goal, to make the longest distance and come back to land at Le Grand-Bornand landing zone. The pilots could choose their flying day or days over the 10 day period. With three Glider categories (Elite, Performance, Standard), there were no imposed courses or turn points and no limit on attempts, simply the longest out and return wins, with a prize purse of 8000 Euros!

Our friend and team pilot, Seiko Fukuoka, took overall 1st place, also setting a new women’s out and return world record (to be ratified) with a 210.67km out and return flight! She was followed by Charles Cazaux who was only .29km behind. Maxime Pinot came in third with Julien Wirtz in fourth, all on Enzo 2s. Also of note was Abe Shogo in 5th overall and 1st in the performance category on his Mantra M6. You can see the full results here.

Congrats to Seiko and all the pilots …read more

Source:: Ozone Paragliders

Portugal National Championship and Big Flights

It’s been a great season in Portugal thus far. Nuno Virgilio wrote to tell us about big flights the last week of may with several pilots going beyond 200km multiple days in a row, as well as his own site record at Linhares da Beira, flying 260km in 6h. A week after that flight he flew almost the same route in reverse, flying 242km starting close to the border of Spain.

Nuno also grabbed first place in the Portugal National Championship after 5 valid tasks. He and Pedro dos Santos Cruz Moreira, who came in third, were both flying Enzo 2s. The Women’s category was won by Rita Vogel on her Delta.

Congrats to all the pilots on the big flights. We love to hear about your adventures. Cheers from all the team!

…read more

Source:: Ozone Paragliders

Amicus: beginner wing from Skyman

The Amicus is Skyman’s first beginners’ paraglider. Certified LTF/EN A in four sizes, Skyman say it’s light with top-level safety. The hybrid three-liner weighs 4.2kg in the smallest size, and has a flat aspect ratio of 5.2, and 47 cells, which is significantly more than some other EN-A wings on the market (Nova’s Ion 3 has 39 and Ozone’s Atom 3 […] …read more

Source:: Cross Country – International Free Flying Magazine