Ozone Zephyr

Ozone’s construction is one of the finest on the market as you would expect from a company that builds high-end paragliders. With the addition of Teijin TechnoForce D2 canopy material to the Ozone range these really are some of the crispest and most refined kites you can find.

The Zephyr is flown on the Megatron bar which provides a fantastic control system: comfortable, safe, and the above the bar depower on a 2:1 purchase system means that when super powered up it’s still as easy to trim as when just cruising.

On the water and, at 17m, the Zephyr handles like a big kite: it’s not very fast to turn, but once it’s up and going you really don’t need to move it around. If you do move it around though (and you’re carrying some decent guns), then you can whip the Zephyr back to get some decent jumps, fantastic lift, and some seriously floaty air time. As with all Ozone kites the Zephyr really does rocket upwind. Some other light wind kites struggle with this aspect as there is just too much raw power, but the Zephyr laps it up.

A big plus for us with the Zephyr is the lightness in the bar: if you closed your eyes you genuinely wouldn’t think it was much bigger than a 14m. Normally in kites this size you tend to find that as the wind picks up the bar pressure also increases, but this does not happen with the Zephyr, the bar pressure remains consistent which is something we really like and testament to how well tuned this kite is.

The most striking difference for us though when compared to other ‘big kites’ is the wind range of the Zephyr which is truly epic… Many light wind kites claim that they are good from 6-18 knots, but very few can pull it off quite like the Zephyr. We would say that an 80kg rider could get going in 10 knots and continue to ride the Zephyr comfortably at 20! The wind range really is that good – it’s pretty mind blowing that Ozone have achieved this, and this is the Zephyr’s biggest selling point: it’s not just a light wind kite.