There was no snap as it came overhead and it needed very little control when above – all very easy. Pulling up the wing it rose smoothly and not too quickly in the steady breeze. I didn’t want to go down on this route as landings are small and few and far between as the whole area is well populated. With the next train not for a few hours we had plenty of time to make the 20km flight. As you would expect the finish is all high quality. Do we need to reduce drag that much?įinally, the wing is supplied with a lightweight rucksack and standard inner bag. Of course you should pre-flight thoroughly but we all make mistakes. Metal brake pulleys are attached on thin Dyneema line, but I’m not really a fan of these on this level of wing as they make it much harder to untangle if you accidentally take-off with a brake twisted through itself. Other modern improvements include soft links connecting the lines to the risers, and split-As for easy big-ears. Despite all the tech and nine more cells the latest Geo weighs nearly a kilo less for the same size, and that’s with webbing risers that are easier to handle. That wing had bootlace risers and seemed incredibly light at the time, but weighed 4.6kg in the M size. I had the original Geo back in the day, a wing I took on a motorcycle adventure in the Himalaya. Some of those lines are pretty thin, especially for this class of wing, but Ozone say overall it adds up to a 20% drag reduction compared with the previous model, the Geo 5. Material is a mix of Dominico 20D and Porcher 27 Classic cloth, while the line-set – it’s a three-line wing with bifurcations on the back set to D-tabs – is pretty much unsheathed. And there are ‘G-strings’, small bits of tape that span the centre of the cell openings we first saw this on the Rush 5 and it is designed to maintain a cleaner open shape when accelerated.Īt the back the wing has mini-ribs to keep the trailing edge clean and tidy. There is of course a Shark Nose, which Ozone say they have optimised even further. Based on the full-fat Buzz Z6 the wing has a fairly low aspect ratio of 5.16 – identical to that of Nova’s Ion 5 and a little lower than Supair’s Leaf 2 at 5.3. On launch I unrolled the wing for the first time. So, as the whistle went we all headed off to the nearest take-off above the village.Ĭompared with the Geo 5, the Geo 6 is 350g lighter and includes up-to-the-minute tech like Ozone’s G-Strings – small straps across the cell openings that improve performance at speed and help collapses open faster. On the day though, assembled at Gourdon, it seemed obvious that the first leg would be to reach the train station at La Manda in the Var Valley, reachable by flying along the front ridge. However, with strong north winds forecast I wasn’t sure how much flying we would actually get. Poor weather meant I didn’t actually get to fly either before the race, so I opted to fly the ML for the competition. Ozone test pilot Russell Ogden suggested the ML would be better for cross-country, but said I should also try the MS as it would be more dynamic, so I ended up with both sizes of glider. Looking at the glider specs I realised I sat right at the top of the MS and just below midway of the ML, so I wasn’t sure which size to take. It seemed obvious to combine the two and so, in a moment of madness, I signed up. Ozone had just released the sixth iteration of their lightweight low-B wing, the Geo. The unique twist was you had to use the small train that runs from Nice to Digne at least once. It started and finished in Gourdon, with turnpoints at Digne-les-Bains and Colle Saint-Michel. My local flying club in the south of France organised a three-day hike-and-fly race in September. May be we should have a coefficient in efficiency rather than a poor "glide number" on paper.Marcus King flies the latest iteration of this classic lightweight wing Glides wingtip to wingtip in different conditions will show gliders ability much better.And that's why i do the videos. Glide measurements are pure marketing ,but they still are interesting in putting some spices under the pilots nose -). Why? Because the ability of glider X in head wind glides and moving air is much better than glider Y in converting those bumps to lift and still moving forward ,rather than ,when hitting those lifts glider Y stops and dive loosing the glide. Glider X that has a glide of 8.5 on paper, could reach the other side much higher than glider Y that have a glide of 9.0 on paper. Thermal flying and transitions are made in moving air,and in those conditions a glider can change from its good performance on paper to less performance in real air and the opposite also. Knowing that all measurements are made in calm air(no thermals), and in those conditions we practicably "don't " fly. Looking at the glide numbers, is like seeing a beautiful food dish just before tasting it.