Paramotor Mondial’s Women’s Slalom Team – Coralie Mateos, Karen Skinner, Marie Liepman and Lydia Jacques. Photo: Ed Ewing
The first Paramotor Mondial went off with a bang over the weekend of 19-21 June, with 400+ pilots in the air and a trade show that saw manufacturers and dealers from across the world of powered paragliding.
Held at an airfield near Blois in France, about 170km south west of Paris, the fly-in was designed to carry on where the famous Basse Ham left off. Basse Ham developed a reputation as the biggest and best fly-in in the world when it was held every other year from 2000 until 2012, and attracted thousands of pilots.
Spiralling in at the Paramotor Mondial 2015. Photo: Ed Ewing
Organised by the local paramotor club, A Voile et a Moteur, the Paramotor Mondial featured a packed programme of display flying over the three days. Free flying was allowed each day from 6.30-10am and from 4pm to sunset.
With mostly flyable weather, the stars of the sport got to come out and fly, with displays by former world champion Pascal Vallee, Laurent Salinas, trike world champion Fred Mallard, the French slalom team, Nico Aubert, an international women’s slalom team of Karen Skinner, Coralie Mateos, Marie Liepman and Lydia Jacques plus many others. Spain’s Manu Malaguita’a wowed everyone with his acro routine which included infinite tumbling with power.
Manu Malaguita. Photo: Ed Ewing
On the trade strip, GIN’s Gin Seok Song was on hand to personally introduce their new paramotor glider, the Pegasus, while Paramania showed off their new digital-printing technology that allows any image to be printed on a glider.
Niviuk’s new single skinner the Skin meanwhile took to the air under power while Dudek introduced their new Hadron XX performance paramotor wing.
New company Simplify was there to introduce their new lightweight approach to paramotors, while other new products on show included the Xomo, an electric-powered proto, and a new frame system by Italian firm Yooda.
Extremely well organised the fly-in did suffer from low numbers during the day, but early mornings and evenings saw pilots arrive en masse to fly, when organisers said an estimated 450 pilots took off to fly the Loire Valley.
Organisers said they hoped to hold the next Paramotor Mondial in 2016.
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