A Comparison of Ozone’s parawings, from a beginners perspective
Parawinging is the newest evolution of hydrofoil sports and in the past two seasons we have seen a lot of parawings hit the market as more and more foilers gravitate towards this new foiling discipline. Since parawings were introduced, Ozone has been widely considered the leading parawing manufacturer in terms of quality and performance - from Ozone’s extensive history manufacturing paragliders this came as a surprise to no one being that there are many similarities between paragliders and parawings.
Ozone recently released a new parawing, the Power Pack, to complement their industry leading and initial parawing, the Pocket Rocket. Both of these parawings are suited towards different riding styles and in no way has the new release of the Power Pack replaced the Pocket Rocket - it is simply an option for those looking for superior downwind performance at the expense of upwind and stability characteristics.
Ozone's marketing highlights the Pocket Rocket as the more versatile and beginner friendly parawing and the Power Pack as a specialized downwind foiling parawing for riders who are at an intermediate to advanced skill level. After testing both of these parawings as a beginner to parawinging, I agree with Ozone's marketing about the performance and versatility characteristics of each parawing but I think they got the skill level reccomendation backwards.
From Testing the Power Pack:
- It was easy to collapse the parawing and get my hand to the bridle with one simple motion - this often took two motions with the Pocket Rocket.
- When I crashed with the Power Pack the wing seemed to always keep its shape and not collapse or submerge in the water - this is something that I noticed happening a lot with the Pocket Rocket which often led to tangles in the lines.
- The power pack very rarely had issues with lines snagging when redeploying the wing - this gave me more confidence packing the wing and redoploying the wing than I had experienced with the Pocket Rocket.
From Testing the Pocket Rocket:
- The Pocket Rocket is a superior parawing for upwind performance but it is not a drastic improvement over the Power Pack. As a beginner I just wanted to be up and riding as much as possible and losing some upwind performance is OK with me.
- The Pocket Rocket handles gusty wind conditions better. I noticed that the Power Pack would jump around the wind window more in gusty conditions where the Pocket Rocket would stay more stable.
Conclusion:
If you are relatively new to parawinging, choosing between these wings comes down to how important line management characteristics are to you. If you are just starting off, I think that line management should be the most important characterisic to look for in a wing - you may be less efficient upwind or have a smaller wind range but you will spend less time in the water dealing with tangles. As a beginner I favored the Power Pack mainly because the lines were easier to manage.
The Pocket Rocket was noticably more efficient upwind than the Power Pack although the Power Pack performed well. If you are an experienced rider who does a lot of upwind downwind riding this will be an important factor. As you become more experienced with parawings you will get more efficient at avoiding line tangling and fixing it quicker when it does happen - if you have already developed line management skills parawinging the added versatility characteristics of the Pocket Rocket may be worth the trade off. The Pocket Rocket is a very well rounded high performance parawing when under power.