Spizzzarko

a colission is a colission. It doesn't matter if there were 2 people or 200 people. The fact of the matter is that there is a rash of these incidents happening and people are dying. This is totally unfreakingacceptable wheather it be one collision or 4 in as many months. I do not think this is the end of swooping but it is more of an end to non organized landing patterns. In a swoop comp there is seperation or you get a zero. There is no reason why there cannot be sepperation on a regular load form an otter. Maybe the non swooping community can learn something from us!

I think this is SDA covering themselves from letigation. Give it 6 months and there will be people ripping 270's and more again. I think a lot of people forget that they do not necessarilly have the right to swoop on every landing. Not every landing has to be an event and if you are putting other people in harms way by your landing style then yes maybe you do need to be constricted to less of a turn.

Ohhh Nooo Ray say it isn't so!!! You are killing me dude! I cannot believe that you just gave up the swoop to be a four way fag. I would have understood if you upsized and continued to video, but being a piece partner? WTF over? Some peoples children... You buy them the books and you buy them the horse, but what do they do? They stand on the books and fuck the horse... Don't be a horse fucker Ray.

It is a 21 cell canopy. It looks like it has a really short line set on it. There are some out there that feel that a longer line set adds some performance.

Comparring the velocity to the crossfire at the same wing loading is not a good comparrison. First of all the velocity is going to be a more efficient wing with a line trim designed for swooping. I'm sure the velo gained more speed out of a turn compared to the xfire out of the same turn. Secondly the velo has less lines which equals less drag and is a thinner airfoil which also = less drag. In swooping drag is the enemy. CB's are designed to minimize top skin distortion by tricking the canopy into thinking it has more line attachment points. If the velocity had the number of lines that the canopy thinks it has it would have something like 22 a lines. That is an awfull lot of line drag. Icarus has quite a bit of info on this at the following link: http://www.icaruscanopies.aero/canopies/EXTreme_FX/index.htm Read that page three times and then if you have more questions let me know, and no there are not little green men in Cheyenne Mountain Norad. Norad is actually going to abandon the mountain and move to Peterson AFB. The Cost of operating in the mountain is far more than operating at a regular base.

I did the lay out comparrison test between a jvx 89 and a vx 89 this weekend. They were the same when pulled tight. We did not compare rib height though.

Yup I got one. It is called a velocity 96! hahahahahaaaa Just kidding. This weekend I got a new infinity rig and it is sized for a larger canopy to accomodate my all sail JVX. I can easiliy put in a sabre 2 135-170 in that container if I wanted to get another canopy. The thought has crossed my mind, but I find that I am able to negotiate traffic just fine with my JVX and Velocity. I have used my 96 velo on 20 way jumps and working jumps.

expression on your face=priceless BWAAAA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA Busted! Back there is actually a really shitty place to put it because of the possiblity of it slipping out and you not having a good idea where you lost it.

Your welcome.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that. As you well know tere are many factors that determin opening shocks. Speed is a major one. Brake settings, nose design, slider size, exct exct exct.

Opening shock comes from the transfering of decelleration forces to the body. If a canopy is starting to fly as it is opening then quite a bit of that shock is taken away. PD did quite a bit of testing on this and put that knowledge into their new reserve.

Lord Slaton told me that they measure the jvx and vx the same.

spend your money on a rig with a pd reserve. it will probably have a better resale value and will deffinately be a better flying and landing reserve.

No it's not photoshop man!!! It is supermans house the fortress of solitude!

OK we all had a laugh, but the bottom line is that CB canopies are no freaking joke dude. We all know that you are going to do what ever it is that you want to do, but what we are saying in a fucked up way is that we don't want to see any one get broken or dead. No matter how good you are it can happen to you and these canopies require a serious commitment to currency and technique.

I never said I would win... Are you doing ok?

I was thinking that we should just all whip it out and compare sizes. Who ever has the biggest would win and what ever canopy that dude owned everyone should buy it. Of course that would suck if some John Holmes dude was flying a lightning 218 or something like that, but your idea has merrit too.

OK I have just gotten off the phone with PD. I actually learned a lot about canopy measuring among other things. Those are some pretty informative folks that really care about customer service. If you have a question just send em an e-mail or call them up. CANOPY SIZING: It was explained to me that in the early days of canopy measurement many manufactures made up their own methods of sizing. Eventually PIA came up with a standard but few manufacturers used it because they had their own system and didn't want to change. Again as I said in my earlier post canopy sizing is a little more than just measuing span x chord and subtracting the missing area due to the ellipticallity of the canopy. That is one way to do it, but we have to take into account that would give us some relatively skewed numbers because a canopy is not all nice a flat when it is inflated and hurtling you towards the earth. If we had a 1 cell canopy it would cease to be rectangular when inflated and become fairly tubular (Totally Tubular Dudes!). Well we do not have 1 cell canopies we have 7, 9, 21, and 27cell canopies. Now when each of these cells inflate they want to go tubular, but there is the next cell there to keep it square. The only places it can expand is on the top skin and on the bottom skin. This is what happens when you kite a canopy or if you were to inflate it over a table and try to measure it. Remember we are not dealing with a solid object. Take a look at canopies when they are landing in turbulance. They breath and expand and contract. Even your tiny little fast canopies do too! This inflated expansion actuall shrinks the spanwise measurement of a canopy 10%-20%. Think about it. If we were to measure the top skin (most manufactures use the top skin) with span x chord and subtracting the missing area for the elipticallity when the canopy was laid out on a table we would get one number. Now if we inflated that canopy just above that table with a fan that measurement would shrink because the top skin between the ribs would be bulging out. This causes the span wise distortion in the measurement between inflated and not inflated. The chord measurement shrinks far less because the canopy does not distort in that direction as much. Now if we were to measure the thickness of the same uninflated canopy from top skin to bottom skin we would get one number. If that canopy were inflated on top of our table again with a fan then we would notice a 10%-20% increase in that measurement because of the canopy expanding and trying to become totally tubular. Now if we were able to take this measurement if actual flight the number would again be different. This time the airflow over the bottom skin would be pushing the bottom skin back into a flat or concave surface. The top skin on the other hand continues to bulge out because of the internal presure of the canopy and the low pressure on top of the wing because of lift. Another reason that the flying wing is smaller than the canopy laid out is because of the anhedrial. We know that canopies are not completely flat in the air and that they are curved down towards the wing tips compared to the center cells. Skydiving canopies are not as bad as paragliders but if we took a paraglider for example and measured it's span on a table not inflated and then measured the span in the air our numbers would be vastly different. Remember that the part of the wing producing a horizontal component of lift does you no good when you are measuring the amount of lift pulling you up vertically. This is why Cross Bracing is so effective as it keeps the top skin from distorting as much. Another interesting fact that I gleamed from my conversation with the PD engineer was that canopy flight and opening characterists do not necessarily scale up and down as size does. This is why you don't see 190 velocities or even 135 jvx's. If you had a 100 sq ft (10' x 10' for ease of math) canopy and you wanted to double it by doubling the line length and making it a 20' x 20' canopy you now have a 400 sq ft canopy. Do you see what I mean by scaling? In conclusion there are as many different measuring techniques as there are manufacturers, and there are even variations within the same technique of measuring. Therefore canopy size is not a very good indication of flying characteristics from one canopy to another and even the same canopy of a different size. It is easy for us to assume that an 89 JVX should measure out to be very similar to a 90 velocity. That just is not true, and now with the growing popularity of different cross braced canopies we really need to find a better comparrison tool than just size, because using just size to compare the two is comparing apples to oranges. I hope this helps out some. Now that I have learned all of this I feel that just laying canopies out and comparring their sizes is useless. I think the best way to compare the two would be to fly each canopy and compare them that way. In the end that is why we should be choosing one wing over another, because of it's characteristics not because of how it is measured. Ihope this helps out some. If you have questions please let me know. Grant

Nice job dude! I am glad you guys have such a huge crowd! We do not have very many people here in Colorado who want to get in on it. It was really popular a couple of years ago, but nobody wants to spend teh money or take the time off from doing tandems.

"I suck at web pages, so forgive the mess when you get there" Yea you do! Just kidding. I have never done a web page before I but I have looked at a lot of them. hahahahahaha I did the same test with a 89 JVX and a 90 Velocity. There was quite a difference in sizes. I then laid out my 96 velo on my 89 jvx. They were very similar in sizes. It seems as if the two are measuring approx 7 sq ft or so differently. I do agree with Mark that the sizes probably do not scale evenly between the two canopies. Lord Slaton has always said that comparring the JVX to the Velo is like camparring apples to oranges. I am beginning to believe this. Nothing against the JVX it is a killer canopy and I will buy another one as soon as one of you guys out there buy my 89. It is for sale BTW so go and check the classifieds. I am just looking for a little more of a wing loading this season as I have lost a little weight. Don't worry there is still plenty of me to love (where it counts) but just a hair less in the fat area. hhahahaaaa I do kind of agree with Chuck when he says 7sq ft is to much of a measuring fudge factor but canopy measuring has always bee a fairly nebulous process. It seems as is no two manufacturers measure the same. Conversely, if you are going to bash the jvx for sizing irregularities then you really need to bash PD for being cryptic about the pack volume of their new reserves. They are saying that you should be able to get one size down packed up into your container. Most of the people I have talked to and with my limited experience with the canopy you should be able to get two sizes. I am not sure if the manufacturers are measuring just bottom skin length x width and subtracting the area for ellipticallity of the canopy, or if they are factoring in other variables. Lord Slaton did tell me that the JVX and VX measure exactly the same. In the past I have talked to Sandy Reid of RI and he told me that there is a PIA method for measuring canopies but it is a very convoluted process with lot's of ins and outs and that is kind of why most manufacturers have done their own thing. I tend to believe him as he kind of knows what he is talking about. So this canopy measuring issue is just not confined to one manufacturer, but more of a systemic issue industry wide. I will call PD and ask them how they measure their canopies. Then if the process is not to freaky deaky then I will try and measure my JVX accordingly. I know this is not solving the problem but since most people are jumping the velos I will compare the jvx against that. I do not want to start a brand war here because in that issue no one wins. I think both canopies are great. I still own my 96 velo and have no plans on selling it.

The black in this black and white photo is slimming.

Some people have told me two sizes up is what they are able to pack into their rigs. I believe it after packing those canopies. I did not get a chance to pack it into a free bag though. I might call PD up for a demo just to pack it up in my Free bag and take some pics to post here on line. I was amazed at how much you were able to flatten the material out and how much it just compressed down. It is some cool shit!

18 Competitors! That is amazing! I'm having a hard enough time finding 4 that will commit, and I'm one of the 4.

No CB canopy is really going to want to plane out on it's own. The closest you can get to that would be an FX. I had an FX104 for a long time. It was a good little canopy. The problem with purchasing larger CB canopies is that they are harder to resale. You may want to think about just increaseing the wingloading on your xfire or getting a smaller xfire. The xfire should hold up and perform ok up to about 1.9 or so. That would give you a little better of an idea of what to expect when and if you decide to go CB. Many canopies have vastly different flight characterists at higher loadings. Try slapping on some weight. I think you might be surprised at what your current canopy will do.

Pointed at both ends so your asshole doesn't slam shut!