Nova Performance Paragliders is an Austrian aircraft manufacturer based in Terfens. The company specializes in the design and manufacture of paragliders in the form of ready-to-fly aircraft. The company was founded in 1989 and originally located in Innsbruck. In 2010 the company relocated its headquarters to Terfens. By 2016 the company had 110 employees, including 95 in the Mecsek Ballon KFTHungarianproduction plant in Pécs and 15 in Terfens. The company's first designer was Hannes Papesh. Other founders were Hermann Habe and competitiveparaglider pilot Toni Bender.
History
The company's first design, the Nova CXC was sewn by Papesh on his mother's home sewing machine. The company initially operated from Wolfgang Lechner's apartment. In 1990 the company established a manufacturing relationship with Mecsek Ballon KFT in the Hungarian town of Pécs to take on production. In the communist era Mecsek Ballon had been a balloon and mountaineer clothing manufacturer. Glider development was not without problems. In 1992 the Nova Phantom developed technical problems that could not be easily resolved and was replaced in the line by the Nova Phönix. Paraglider pilot Christian Heinrich won the 1999 World Paragliding Championships, held in Bramberg am Wildkogel, Austria, flying a Nova Krypton, although the contest was not validated, due to poor weather. The Nova Argon introduced in 2000 was DHV certified with unsheathed Kevlar lines, which greatly reduced drag in flight. The introduction of the Nova Carbonin 2001 resulted in delays filling customer orders as demand exceeded the ability of the fabric manufacturer to provide the cloth for construction. In 2002 The Carbon wing developed porosity in the field after delivery to customers, resulting in parachute-like descents. The fault lay with a batch of fabric which the fabric manufacturer had sub-contracted to a new factory and which had produced a sub-standard product. Nova replaced 65 Carbon wings of the 1440 sold that had developed issues. By the mid-2000s the company had a full line of gliders, including the beginner Phorus, intermediate Pheron and Artax, performance Aeron and Radon, plus the two-place flight trainingPhor. In 2003 Hungarian paraglider pilot Szilard Forgo flew a new world record to a declared goal of flying a Nova Aeron in Brazil. The 2008 contest season XContest resulted in the Nova Mentor being flown by the first-, third-, fourth-, seventh- and eighth-place finishers. In 2011 the Nova Mentor 2 dominated the standard class in the DHV league, with Mentor 2 pilots taking seven of the top ten places. In the XContest nine of the top ten gliders flown were Mentor 2s, including the top three.
