Ozone’s designer and chief test pilot David Dagualt has completed the flight of a lifetime and flown a record breaking 333 km on 20 August 2009. Dav took off at 10.30 am from his local site at Col de Bleyne in the southern French Alps. Over almost ten hours he flew the entire length of the French Alps, round Mt Blanc, and on into Switzerland.
The flight broke the official French record set in the flatlands only this June. Huge distances are difficult to achieve in the mountains because if you try to just climb high and drift with the wind, as you can in the plains, you tend to bang into the scenery, or worse still fall into rotor. Only shrewd navigation and an intricate understanding of mountain flying enables pilots to make big flights like Dav’s. Read the full report and interview on how he did it in the next issue of Cross Country magazine.