cobaltdan

plug: atair canopies are ideal for wing suit flying. cobalts are designed for tracking deployments and their deployment sequence makes for safe soft, consistant openings without tendency to spin. ------- robert (the designer of the birdman suits) has worked in our european factoy for many years. both he and jari jumped for many years exclusively our impulse (alpha) and troll canopies. jari switched main canopies (not base) when another company was able to offer a generous sposorship that promoted birdman suits. sincerely, dan

just a side note on small flying mammals. you can drop a mouse any distance, from 3' high or 3miles high and it will survive. i would imagine that small squirrels have similar advantage with or without wings. people do not. as pointed out some things do not scale. sincerely, dan

drenelin, it is never too early to learn good technique and awareness. my best advice is contained in an old post. do a search and read the following thread on the safety and training forum: "balance & canopy control exercises" let me know if it helps. sincerely, dan

i am told the crossbow has equal performance to the gti. style wise it is quite different looking than birdman suits. -dan

the largest sail area wingsuit is a skyflyer and has about 9 square feet of wing. heaviest loaded canopy landed is in the 3.7#/' range sincerely, dan

bill , i understand your point but i'm not sure in the case of a violently twisting mal/reserve deployment there would be much difference between my 110 and the next size or 2 up. i prefer not to use an rsl and keep a slightly higher hard deck. i pull a little high @ 3-3.5k as do i believe most jumpers choosing to fly high performance mains. also keep in mind that for some of us jumping 'high loaded reserves' they are still boats compared to our mains (being about 20% bigger or more). i have no issues landing my reserve into backyards, downwind, etc... i do not believe i am accepting any additional risk by jumping my choice of reserve, except potentially in the case of an unconsious ride. with that as a calculated risk i choose to jump a atair 110 and pd 113 reserve loaded about 1.9. i do think there are some missconceptions about the handleing characteristics of reserves as some models fly like crap and most people fly them for the first time under a cutaway situation. sincerely, dan

"Personally, I would not jump a reserve that's so heavily loaded that you can wind it up if you deploy while unstable. " thats one of the reasons i do not agree with you about using an rsl. in the case of sub 100 mains canopies i am firmly against. deploying your reserve in a flat spin is relatively stable and not that big a danger, but many times your body and/or your canopy will also be rotating axially to your lines, in addition to the overall diving spin. sincerely, dan

will there be cross braced canopies in the future intended for low wing loadings: probably a few. all of the points posted against are valid, but understand to build a braced canopy for low wing loadings you will not geometrically scale up existing models. design variables need to be reengineered for this specific purpose. we are currently experimenting with a competition cobalt variant intended for low wing loadings. its leading edge airfoil is braced, but without lowering the drag on the nose significantly. it is intended for begineers - intermediates and will be available in sizes from 135-210 sincerely, dan.

i have about 12 reserve rides from test jumping prototypes, half of those are on a pd 113 loaded 1.9. the canopy opens, flies and lands extremefly well. i have also deliberitly jumped most every brand reverve. at the wing loading you want to jump, your choices are very slim on reserves that will fly and land well. not to promote a competitor but the pd reserve is a very good choice. sincerely, dan

come: nicely distilled. dan

i fully agree with you. there is always a debate with someone as to what size reserve they should jump. i have always suggested to demo a reserve if you are unsure of proper sizing and to learn their flight characteristics. its much better to jump a reserve under controlled circumstances than do so for the first time in a potentialy bad situation. i have intentionally jumped the following reserves: atair quick 110, pd 113, pd 126, strong 120, tempo 120 & micro ravens. i can definately tell you there is a huge difference between brands. both in construction, design, flight performance and actual wing size. sincerely, dan

" The benefit from a toggle hook mainly comes from swinging way out from under the canopy, then swinging back under in a pendulum effect." this is not a benefit, just the opposite. you may pendulum very fast but the air speed over your wing is not very fast. about the only "benefit" anyone could point out about a toggle hook is simply that to the spectators it looks impressive for the pilot to go over the top of the canopy that close to the ground. personally i think maintaining a wider control range, wider safety margin and a longer swoop is more impressive as such i place the benefits with riser carves. sincerely, dan

skymissy: basically a rogalo wing is a piece of fabric, cut i.e. like a square with three struts, one down the center from corner to corner, the other two on the leading edges. the fabric is not tensioned but loose and will blow into 2 conical arcs. a wing suit functions the same way. if you flip unto your back the wing blows upward forming the same shape as if you were face down. your body is the center strut your arms the leading edge struts. when you go on to your back you are not now flying with an upsidedown airfoil. interesting note: as wingsuits wings work by forming a rogalo type wing, on a wing suit design such as the classic it makes little difference if there is a single surface or double surface wing. robert's early prototypes were single surface wings instead of double surface ram air, and they were equally efficient. of course it does not look as cool, and the design made way for large area wing designs such as the skyflyer. sincerely, dan

does anyone have joe's contact info? sincerely, dan

from the faq page on our web site: http://www.extremefly.com/aerodynamics/FAQ.html#nine "What type of material is used to make your canopies? We use Gelvenor fabric. It is more costly than domestic sources used by PD and Icarus but it packs better, has less than 1% defects on arrival at our factory, and so far has outlasted every other brand we have tried. It is a perfect square weave and is the only material to our knowledge which is treated on both sides." sincerely, dan

note on the non loaded vertical of a quad cell, it does differ quite a bit from the non loaded vertical on a standard bi cell. if you draw a cross section of the cell and add little arrows to show the tension vectors you will notice that the top skin between the diagonals carries a greater tension this reduces the spanwise distortion. the nonloaded vertical in a quad cell is basically to keep an acceptable bottom skin shape. sincerely, dan

personally i would take a huge powder covered 50 degree mountain slope over an ity bity moving truck. but either way, good luck and in all probability goodbye. many people have heard the incorect story that patrick de. g. was trying to land a wing suit down a snow covered mountain. i was told by adrian n. that this story came about because he was fitting ski skids to the chest of a suit for patrick. the intention was not however to land on a slope but to take off from one. happy daydreams (i used to have a great one of tracking into a pile of hay and walking away) sincerely, dan

hi everyone thanks for the feedback. polarbear: i) its not a bad computer drawing, it is extremely accurate and takes into consideration an imposed tension pattern, material stress and inflation. it was done on the most sophisticated program used in the industry http://www.extremefly.com/aerospace/products/parachutes/ataircad.html the web site movie is a flash jpg made from the cad fliles. the files are very high resolution and are difficult to make nicely readable in a jpg flash movie. as far as the center cells being trapezodial. because of the way a canopy loads trapezoids have more rigidy than squares which is what is present center of a tricell. as far as your idea of attaching the diagonals to the nonload rib top seam: the problem is to create any kind of a resonable span between line groups the diagonal rib angle would be too acute to function. the beauty of the quad cell is that you can maintain an equal to larger span than a tri cell while reducing spanwise airfoil distortion and creating a more rigid design with a fully rounded in flight nose. hook: again the purpose going to a cross brace design is to reduce spanwise airfoil distortion. of interest is only the top skin airfoil profile. 3 divisions tri cell, 4 divisions quad cell. but what ever you want to call it , it has advantages. demo's : not yet. it is our policy once we have completed inhouse testing to release the canopies to our pro flyers only. the canopies are jumped usually for a full season, when they have loged enough jumps without any issue they are released for sale. we are extremely diligent and cautious in our testing regimen. come: yes the diagonals are continous to the tail, non stressed areas are cut out to reduce pack volume. if i were producing a tri cell i would not have continous diagonals to the tail basically because they do not do anything, reducing airfoil distortion on the back half of the canopy does little to increase performance. additionally because the height of the rib decreases as you go back on the cord, the diaginal angle gets too acute to function, they do not reduce distortion only increase pack volume. on a quad cell, there is a constuction issue in than you only want to want to end an i beam seam on a spanwise tape. as such in the curent prototypes i have run the diagionals all the way to the tail. comparision pictures: yes we have video with the fx and vx and velocity, i would like to take stills in the next month or so. sincerely, dan

pictures have been posted at: http://extremefly.com/aerodynamics/canopies/onyx.html sincerely, dan

does anyone have experience shooting 16mm movies? we just bought a bell an howel high speed 16mm movie camera with a 110' fov lens. its pretty small and weighs about 9 pounds. apparently it was built in the 70's for lockheed martin as a missile scoring camera (i love ebay) . i have not been able to find out the fps or the recommended film asa... i would line to put it to use on a belly mount... any advice would be appreciated. sincerely, dan

they were trying to shoot a red bull clip. in a few of the clips georgie, flased the red bull can and then dumped her main off his back as the two are in a mad track leveling off from their dive... yea...messy. the last thing i want when im in my skyflyer is a passenger piggypacking me headdown and dumping off. -dan

we have had many requests for line specifications on our older canopies. a line specification chart has been posted on our web site under the faq section. note: viper and impulse/alpha/space are to use the newer cobalt line sets. if you have any questions about a reline fax us with the canopies placard information (serial #, dom, etc...). also note: the line specification chart is for spectra micro line and takes into consideration line dimension change (canopy will break in going into better trim not worse). if you are going to make your own line set and plan to use aramid lines please contact me for different dimensions. sincerely, dan atair www.extremefly.com

the 95 reviewed that opened strange was put in the pond dozens of times and unfortunately dried in the sun. doing such changes the dimensions of the canopy tapes, we hold very tight dimensions of the leading edge tapes as they effect openings. always dry a wet canopy in the shade. sincerely -dan

i have video of robert p. going 1 min 6 sec from arco. (about 3k) -dan

on high speed tail gate passes it is possible to fly higher than the plane. this is only possible on a high speed pass. as far as i know jari has logged a minimum of 18mph momentarially in a stall. my guess is that he has done better but his gps unit is not very accurate and the update rate slow. we have a datalogger that can record 3d position accurate to 2m, plus a vector velocity in addition to 200hz barametric altitude and acceleration at 1000hz. with our dataloger the lowest sustained vertical speed i have logged is about 55mph. as far a momentary my partner in crime simon has logged 0 vertical speed. he cheated though, having his girl on his back they go head down accelerate to above 200mph and then he pulls out to level flight as she sandbags off him. they have managed to go so fast in this way that the stiching has riped off the arm deflectors on his skyflyer. -dan