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favaks

Pilot chute size

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Favaks;

What is your container extraction force? (Is your bag tight or loose in your container, and does your container have pocketed corners?) What is your line unstow force? (Do you double or single stow Spectra, or Vectran, or Dacron lines, with tube stows or rubber bands?) Do you ever do hop and pops? Do you often open above 120 mph? Is your pilot chute F-111 or ZP, and is it made correctly? I ask all these questions to point out that there are a lot of variables other than just canopy size. For instance, what is the difference between a 5 lb. canopy with 15 lb. line stows, and a 15 lb. canopy with 5 lb. line stows?
If I assume you are about "average" in all the above parameters, I would recommend a 27" to 28" ZP, correctly made pilot chute.
Bill

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Bill, as long as you are answering this question: my friend has a PD 170 F-111 canopy. She double stows her Dacron lines with rubber bands. She does hop and pops rarely, and doesn't exceed 120 very often. The width of the pilot chute measures (approx.) 28-30 inches. Is this a little big for her canopy? Besides extra drag, what other problems are associated with a too large pilot chute? Thanks.
larry

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Larry;
Her pilot chute is about right, if it's made correctly. As I wrote in "Is you hand deploy pilot chute correctly made?", a pilot chute is doing its job correctly if the time from pilot chute release to line stretch, at terminal, is between 0.45 and 0.75 seconds. She could count "one thousand one" as she releases the pilot chute, and should be at line stretch just before she says the second "one". If you want to know for sure, just have someone video one of her deployments, and count frames at 30 per second. 14 to 23 frames is OK. Also check construction as in the above mentioned article. Poorly constructed pilot chutes may work for a while, and then "peter out". ZP's will last longer than F-111's.

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