Luc Armant talks about Debunking the Myths and Upgrading Enzo 3

It's important to realise that the gliders are designed according to the rules and the scoring the rule have a very high impact on the way we fly as a competitor and the way we design as a designer. If the legislators decide that any competition should be raised on ENC wings, then the manufacturer will produce very specific ENC wings, and it doesn't mean that someone which was happily flying an ENC wing before will be able to fly this ENC competition wings. Do you guys still discuss making Enzo 3 better or is this more or less like Enzo 4 is only possible if the sport sees a paradigm shift in its paperwork 1st and then the designers will

get to. Work. We're trying to do an Enzo for whatever are the rules. We are working since maybe five years and we're trying to make progress every glider, otherwise we don't release. Hello and welcome back to Paragliding After Us. I'm your host, Aninda Singh. And joining us today is the man himself, Luke Armand. Luke, this has been a long time coming. Welcome to the show.

Thank you Luke. I want to dive right in and, you know, compare let's say 2011's situation to 2025. The industry has seen fair bit of evolution over the past years, but a debate or a safety debate, as Gavin called in his show has raged on once again. And back in 2011, we had sports class, which was deemed to be too dangerous or open class, which was deemed to be too dangerous. And people said that we need a reform of some sorts. Fast forward to 2025. We have put in all the, you know, time, energy and money in making wings safer and more fun. And yet we are standing at the same question once again.

So from your eyes, who has seen the industry evolve? Is this something different, or is this just history repeating itself all over again? No, I don't think the history repeats. Things are evolving, but we keep having accidents but we try to progress. I mean everyone, manufacturers, but also obviously organisers. By those everything, I mean we're doing fantastic sport there. We're having a lot of fun. It's it's really great. It's a great, great sport. But unfortunately sometimes there is some accidents and so we can only try to get things better. Fair enough. Luke, if we have to look at the main reasons why open class had to go away, is it something

similar to the reasons that are being called out for the too much focus on performance versus too little focus on safety? Because I think Kriegel came up with a statement a few days ago said that we tend to focus on one aspect when that one is weighing heavy and the other aspect takes a back seat. But then when we reach a period where we don't see that many, you know, mishaps or something and then we just go back to chasing safety. So what's your point of view on this? There are several things on your question, but it's true that the community is reacting to events. It's very difficult to have the community anticipating things.

So it's when there are some accidents, there are some reactions. If there is no accident and some people warn for whatever possible problems, usually there is no reaction until a problem comes. That's the way things are. And 2011 there has there was a spectacular problem because two fatality in the first task of the words and from there there was a reaction and and move. And then we also look at something to play with accident because we only kind of count fatal accidents for some reasons. And well, the sport is accepted a lot more broken bones of course than fatal accidents. But there has been a long period without too much fatal

accidents. And we were community was happy. But at the last words there was 1 fatal accident and all the fatal accident of the competitions.

And so there is a reaction which is which is a fair reaction to try to improve things. So there was also a question about open class. I can clarify that, you know. Yeah, yeah. But I can answer, I think open class was obviously missing a little bit of testing from some manufacturers and there was some sometimes some not so good behaviour in some gliders that was responsible for really some accident pilot couldn't do anything about. But there was also other things that has been corrected. It's not only the gliders. At that time final glide was very dangerous. It's important to realise that gliders are designed according to the rules and the scoring.

The scoring is very important and at that time you were not having so much leading points, mostly time points. And you, you could every minute, if I remember well, you could gain 30 time points. On top of that, the competition with the two fatalities on the first task was happening in which is very lifty era with convergence and the final glide was in convergence. So we're talking of final glide with excess altitude and final glide with excess altitude. If you just go to a cylinder, there is no brain to have. You just need to go as fast as possible. There is no Mac ready anymore, nothing.

You just go as fast as possible and you earn maybe 25 or 30 points per minute when one point can make a difference in the overall of the competition. So the format make was making a really big push for the glider to have absolute top speed without so much testing dreamers on the risers. So a lot of ingredients to create accidents. Fair enough. I think that is a very common analogy which is used in aviation in general, that it does not take one mess up which contributes to the mishap eventually. It's a it's a combination of things which lead us there. But I think you touched upon a

very important point there where you mentioned that how we fly depends a lot about legislation and the scoring and how we push the limits. So more or less, if I have to narrow this down for easier understanding of our audiences, are we not having enough learned people in the sport who want to sit down and do the boring part? Because regardless, anybody who gets pushed into the sport is coming in for the joy of flight and legislation, paperwork and all the, you know, bookkeeping is usually done by people who are not so or in a professional manner who are not so much into outdoor extreme adventure sports

or something. Whereas our sport is mostly consisting of pilots who are picking up various roles. So do you see a lack of skilled brainpower sitting down and saying that I want to work towards this? Or is this just evolution taking its own course, more or less?

I don't think so. I think there, there is a lot of good brains working on the rules and scoring and stuff, but it needs some drive. I mean a lot of these guy, they are also pilots, passionated pilots. I also tried to spend a bit of my working time on on the subject, participate some expert group and give some technical inputs. But it's also difficult to get things working efficiently in in some groups because you need to agree it's good to have a lot of brain working together, but it needs also some efficiency in the debate and some some leadership. And it's difficult to organise things. But CCC has been created, the

scoring has evolved, the things are evolving in a good manner. It takes time, but these sort of things I think can only take time. OK. I want to take the example of Ozone. We have seen a lot of brands come and go in the industry. Legacy brands are few, but the ones who exist are more or less cementing their place as the time goes on. Mostly brands have been started, as you said that you know, we are a bunch of passionate pilots. So somebody is like, OK, I want to start make a living out of this. I'll go out and put my own brand and invest in R&D and collect the team.

So Ozone has done a lot of things right to come as one of the top contenders when it comes to wing choice. And I believe Ozone needed a lot of paperwork, a lot of R&D and a lot of other things that contribute to the success eventually. So if FAI or civil or any of these, you know, the the companies or maybe even European norms if they were run commercially like the brand, is there more chances of success? Because I think money is a big problem that anybody who's coming in is doing it more or less out of passion and not out of profit.

Yes, but you know, like the World Cup, for example, is, is a, is a kind of company, it's a non profit company, but it needs to to not lose money. So the organisers, all the organisers, they need to organise things. They do that not for earning money. Most of them is for the passion as well. Uh but they need to organise the things efficiently so they don't lose money. Don't know if that's answering your question, maybe I haven't understood it. Correctly. It's, it's, it's basically like, are we not having professional structures in place enough that invite the right people? More or less because Ozone had a

professional structure based on, let's say, the model of capitalism and they succeeded in surviving where other brands eventually lost out on the race. So if Ozone can do it when it comes to commercializing the, the, the selling part, then why can't we professionalize the structure when it comes to managing the sport? That is my dilemma here. OK. I think it's quite professional in a way that the organiser are in competition. I mean if you speak about capitalism, organisers are in competition in a way. So they they are pushed to do a good job. I don't blame organiser or Cava or stuff like that. They everything can be more

efficient and but there are some feedbacks, there are some competition. There was a time where PWVC was in competition with the area and they were pushing each other. At the moment it's kind of the same leading team, which also gives some advantages because everything can be equal in the scoring and. Let's talk about the legislation a bit. You know, I think as you mentioned that it the way sport evolves is a lot about how the rules are set. Rules do change, but not up to a large extent. Are we, are we lacking tightening of rules at a lower level which eventually leads to this kind of an attitude once we reach the professional levels or

what is kind of lacking that allows us to make machines which are really fun, really cool to fly, but when they go bad, they go really bad. And sometimes the the cost that we pay is is the highest possible one. About holes, you you talking about Section 7? Not just that, also the guidelines that manufacturers have to adhere to, because, regardless, it is the European norms based on which the equipment is being produced. Section 7, of course, has its own importance when it comes to racing, but more or less the. Ecosystem of rules, yeah. So there are many things behind rules here you have European norm which is driven by European administration with a group of

experts trying to make it evolve and it takes time.

There is the Section 7 which includes the the CCC rules and all the scoring things. This is a big book of rules for competition driven by CIBA and there is a PWVC rules which also is in accordance with Section 7 anyway mostly.

But all these rules have to be manipulate with a lot of cautious because it's very difficult to anticipate the consequences of any change of these rules. And so often the people writing these rules, they want to try test before really applying them because they may have some good effect and they may have some side effect that you don't know

and it's difficult to anticipate. So there is a lot of debate of experts and some testing before a rule is is set a a change is set. So you mean prototyping of some sorts? Basically when you guys come out with a new product, you prototype it and then you know, do a hit and try method. And that is kind of lacking over here, that we don't have a foolproof method where we can test the success of rules and the only way is to go out and keep on going ahead with the challenges that we face like it. It just seems a very lost case. And and in that regard that we don't know which rule will work,

but we can only keep on trying. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the, the, the rules are tested and they eventually are changed, you know, yeah, norms is changing like every two or three years. Section 7 is changing every year. A lot of details like way of calculation in the end of speed in in leading points. CCC rules are also evolving. There is a lot of debate now,

but the rule have a very high impact on on the way we fly as a competitor and on the way we design as a designer. But this effect is very difficult to anticipate. Let's talk about ENC class. It's not that long ago that the whole class saw revolution of some sorts. From your perspective, who has seen the sport go from open to triple to triple C down to There was a time when END's were considered as the go to gliders for a lot of pilots and now almost nobody's talking about END. So how did ENC class get its significance and why do we suddenly see a whole new level of performance being pushed onto

a lower category of glider that was never meant to be raced? It was just a cross country machine for pilots who were looking not to increase the bar too high but still have the fun. Yeah. So yeah, a bit of history here. We had open class after Piedra ETA 2011, it was END. The reaction was to forbid open class and glad you need to have an EN. So the manufacturers they produced, the first competition was done with existing ENDS and then the manufacturers did specific design END for competition because manufacturers wanted to win competitions and this specific design were nothing to do with the previously existing ENDS. And for example, in Ozone, we

had the Montra Air 04 and we produce 4 competition, a wing called Enzo, which was based on our open class, slightly modified to pass END norm. But we were still selling the END for leisure pilots, the targeted pilots that we had doing cross country experience, cross country pilots. And at the same time we were selling the competition END glider. But this was putting a lot of confusion in the market because the the people they had the idea that EN stamp is, is a way to to know what glider is for them. So they there is a pilot flying E&D wing and he thinks his level is for flying E&D wings, whatever the manufacturer says.

But the reality is not like that. END is not is just a big guarantee of some testing, but the product is targeted for from you. You should know what the manufacturer says about the public target. But because the there is this confusion with yen and the target public, a lot of people were buying competition gliders where they they didn't have the label for that. So there was a that was one of the reason there was all the reason behind, but I don't want to develop too much for creating the CCC. So basically it was a class of competition with some specific rule, easy to apply for competition and testing.

So I'm guarantee of some behaviours, flight testing. So regarding ENC wings, it's exactly the same story as E&D. If the legislators decide that any competition should be raised on ENC wings, then the manufacturer will produce very specific ENC wings for competition. And it doesn't mean that someone which was happily flying an ENC wing before will be able to fly this ENC competition wings. This competition wings will be if it's, if you apply just only ENC as a as a criteria, this competition wings will be maybe an aspect ratio of eight and some really high performance features that will be only suitable for top pilots. So it's important to always, it's always the story of rules

and side effect of rules. You can say the any NC current ENC wing like the photon is great. I'm I'm making so nice cross country with it. It's so great to race with it. Why don't we make all competition with ENC then? So we have all this sort of gliders to race with and it would be super safe and fun. But when you do that, you don't anticipate for the next generation glider because you have to understand that every manufacturer is in is in competition.

I don't want to put you in a spot Luke, because yeah, probably you know there are some responsibilities that come when you are associated with the industrial leading brand like Ozone. But help me understand this, how are we not sabotaging the E&C class as we did with the E&D class back in the day? Because right now there is not a single pilot out in the market who would want to go out and put their money on a three liner E&C simply because of the image that a three liner versus 2 liner has. And when the majority of the field is going out and getting a better glide in A2 liner and getting faster speed in A2

glider, everyone is going to just go in for two liner ENC. And to me this is clearly history repeating itself, but in a different class altogether. And right now I understand that we are focusing on triple CS because the noise and the anger or like the this conversation is in that regard. But I see this thing coming back to sports class in like the, the kickback will come in a in a couple of years and, and it will be ugly and it will be messy. And we will be scratching our heads that what did we not learn that we are in this position all over again. Uh, first, ENC is existing since

a long time and it's not going crazy if it's not using competition, where competition results as an important for manufacturers to promote themselves, then manufacturers interest is only to have a glider that is suitable for market the target. So when you target a specific market, I would say like pilot, like flying 100 hours a year doing this sort of cross country. This is a pilot I want to target and I want them to have a good wing for sure, a performant wing, but a wing where they don't crash themselves with. Because if I design A glider where that is very, very competitive, very performant, but the target pilots are crashing a lot with this, then I

just fire a bullet in my own foot. As a manufacturer, it it's a very, it would be like maybe few months term, bad calculation. You maybe you sell a little bit at the start, but then the the glider has very bad reputation. Your brand has a very bad reputation. You don't sell it anymore. So that's the reason why ENC gliders are I think stayed reasonably in their target in term of safety since a few years ago. I mean maybe 10 years or 15 years, but now if you start trying to promote your glider with competition results where the competition use top pilots, which means pilots able to fly

difficult wings, then manufacturer will have interest in making difficult to fly gliders but competitive.

So SLS, for example, is we see SLS with a bit of worry because it's, it's it's a way to promote gliders as a manufacturer. You could say, oh, look, my, my glider is doing so much good result. It's a it's a good glider. You should buy this one. While maybe the guys doing the the good result are top pilots, expert, able to fly and very skilled and then that would be problematic even though you could say as a manufacturer. So the same story as the India was explaining, you could say, OK, this glider has won the competition but it's not for you, it's CNC, but it's not for

you. And a lot of pilot, they won't hear that. They would, they would only hear it's CNC and they would buy it. So that's that's where a solution could be to create a proper sport class that has his own criteria on top of him or separately for for. Me. Makes sense, you know, Before I move on to the next topic, Luke, this has been at the back of my head, and I'm pretty sure there are a few pilots in the audience as well. Like maybe not the racing ones, maybe not the ones who are already having WPRS points and rankings in their name, but let's talk about a 50 hour

pilot. Let's talk about someone who has passed his school, invested his savings because I mean, you know, it takes quite a lot of money to get to 50 hours in the sport. Now, can you possibly be ready for A2 liner enc after 50 to 70 hours on A&B? Or is this a fool's paradise that all of our community is willingly keeping their eyes shut at?

I wouldn't point things into liner like 2 liner, three liner, things like that. I mean two liner doesn't mean so much. There are huge different in design between Denzo 3 and D5. For example a D5 is not more difficult to handle than a D4 which is 3 liner in the centre. The delta 5 is 2 liner so. But there are a lot of parameters for the for the design that are not called in any way. The only thing that we look is how many risers there are on the bottom, but it doesn't really point too much about what is the reality of this glider. I mean in term of behaviour. So I would say yes it's

possible. It may also be possible to have an ENB to liner that is easy to fly and suitable for someone 50 hours, but this cannot happen at the moment because ENB is not allowed without collapse lines for some reason. I could explain, but we don't have time. Help me understand this Luke, Is human brain capable of handling A2 liner Ena one day? Because if two liner is going to become the norm of the society then why aren't we starting pilots on 2 liners so that the inherent feeling which we develop from the beginning is on A2 liner? Why do we even have 3 liners anymore?

I explained 3 liner cannot be produced or certified without collapse. Plan. Accept that part. Let's let's forget. The legislation for me, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then you you shouldn't be too much focused on how many liner here. But you're right about the feeling for example, things are evolving with a more more and more riser control with some pulleys. So the feeling could become even like paracaid, you know the moustache, there are three liners but the feeling is like 2 liners. It's a direct control of the risers. But it's very different thing because there is no accelerator. You do everything with your hands. But you could have an Enbe with

speed system like classic paraglider. When you go full speed you have the similar things as a park height and that could be fun. But of course a moustache is not for a beginner or park height engineer and Ena. You could try to optimize the line drag for some schools. They like to have more glide ratio for the student for the same behaviour as if the glider is still very forgiving as a as a glider for beginners in schools. So it's possible to have Ena with better performance, maybe 2 liners or whatever solutions as as long as they are table for beginners. Let's talk a little bit about

test reports. Luke, I'm I'm pretty sure this is kind of common amongst all most of the brands that when you usually go a category up. And I've seen specifically for Zeno in in ozone that there is only one or two letters and mostly in accelerated asymmetric, which makes it jump to the next class. So if you were to pick up a wing for yourself or like let's say a good friend, which specific test result would you want a person to look at before making their decision? I would say don't look at any specific result. Don't look, just look at what the manufacturers is saying about this glider.

What is the target pilot for this glider? And that's what we, we should look as a, as a customer because all these manufacturers around they are just telling the truth about what, what the glider is for, who is it for? And this result about collapses and things, they're not really telling you so much about the glider. Let's let's come back to Enzo for a SEC. Luke, you know, we're, I know we're running out of time, so I'll have to keep my questions short. Enzo 3 has been pretty much unchallenged and at the top of status quo for closing in on decade. I think eight years or eight or nine years, something like that

when you guys came out with that design. 2017 so yeah. Yep, right. So right now, is there, like, do you guys still discuss making Enzo 3 better or is this more or less like, yeah, you know, fits in the norms? We have pushed it as much as we could and now Enzo 4 is only possible if the sport sees a paradigm shift in its paperwork 1st and then the designers will get to work.

That's a good question. But no, we're trying to do an Enzo 4, whatever the rules are doing and we are working since maybe five years on the Enzo 4. And then we're trying to make progress every glider. Otherwise we don't release. And it needs to be in every aspect. You can make progress in one aspect like torque, speed, but then a sacrifice in another aspect like syncret or behaviour. But we want something that is globally better and it's quite difficult. So we haven't succeed our criteria for the moment, but we we're still working hardly on the subject at the moment. That's so exciting to hear any any tentative, you know, let's

say date that you guys discuss amongst yourself when you're sitting in the in the office. I was like. Dates we try to decide to to discuss and sometime we give information. It's been like 3 or 4 times that we say to the pilot maybe next year we have an Enzo 4 and it's not happening. So you can decide date, but it doesn't help. You what does Mike? Mean it doesn't what? Does Mike say about this? Does he want it to come out early or he's he's like not not thinking about it? He's no, he's OK with Enzo 3 is OK because this market is very specific.

When you have a glider that is competitive, even though it's old, the peoples are still buying it. The pilots, I mean they're still buying it because they can see it's still competitive. That's due to the competition of your own month. When you have an ENB that is still competitive, you don't sell it after two years even though it's still the best ENB on the market, for example. Yeah, marketing is huge in ENB category. Man that's like weird to see paragliding. No, but any any pilot in ENB doesn't have the mean to know which one is better. You know which one has the best performance or BV or whatever. So by default they would first

discard anything that is old. Makes sense? You understand, and a competition pilot doesn't care if it's old on you. You want the best. True. So that's the reason why we don't sell after two years or so and we are pushed to produce a new model. Look, I've been wanting to ask this question to you As for a very long time and your your test pilot and you know, world champion Honoren was on my show when I started a couple of years ago and he said that the answer depends on profile. And my question is basically that you guys came out with shark nose and you decided not

to patented for the greater good for the community to become safer overall, which was a very selfless move I would say. And maybe that is karma coming back to you that you have managed to keep the lead in such big numbers when it comes to your closest competitor. Time and again we see someone coming out and say that, hey, I am discovering the technology which is the shining star of tomorrow. For example, Swing said rust helps keep the rear edge deflated. Jin came out with the wave leading edge after investing crazy amounts of money in the R&D. So if we collectively did not have patents in the community, will we be having safer wings or

does it not really matter that much with these technologies because eventually it's profiled? No, it doesn't matter. They this this industry is too small to bother attacking ourselves and trying to make money with patents. So I mean if you talk about the rust swing will be very happy that we use the rust in our gliders and if we use a wave leaning edge gene will not attack us in any way. We have implemented winglets on our gliders recently while it was used for edges by Advance. Fair enough. Coming back to the debate that is going on, Luke, a lot of people are saying triple C's should be going away. Do triple C's really need to go

away or do we need to become more responsible and more structured overall with paperwork, with legislation, with testing, with, you know, hit and try method? What what is your take on that? My take is we should make this triple C evolve in the holes. That's it. So in also in the scoring in my opinion. I'm trying to explain that, but it's a long subject. I cannot explain it here. We don't have the the time I need to go. I'm sorry. I see my wife is sending me a lot of what's up. Very nervous. I understand, Luke. Well, on that note, yeah man, thank you for coming.

It was a long time in the planning that I wanted to have this chat with you and I think we have touched upon a lot of interesting topics here, so whenever. Yeah. OK. Welcome. And we could redo one if you have some other question important. But sorry for now, I need to go to you soon. Have a good evening, Luke. See you. Bye. Bye, bye, bye.