cobaltdan

We produce the 36 cell x-brace ONYX in standard sizes up to 125. As far as the largest X-brace: we have produced x-braced paragliders up to 1000 square feet (largest elliptical paragliders ever built). Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)

I have not been following this thread but just a note: the magnetic closing technology is being commercialized by Bill Booth under license from Atair. Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)

a 9 cell will have a higher aspect ratio and lower spanwise distortion than a 7 cell. therefore a nicely designed 9 cell will always have a higher glide ratio than a nicely designed 7 cell. Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)

how much you notice your hmod in terms of increased speed in flight really depends on your wingloading. at high loadings it feels like a ~1/2 size increase, at light wingloadings it feels more like ~1/4. Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)

“Call me crazy, but literally every modern canopy made has a "staged" opening. You deploy, reach line stretch, snivel for a bit while you slow enough that the slider comes down the lines, then you're under a fully open canopy.” -if you jump a cobalt you will notice that the snivel stage looks a bit different from other canopies. instead of looking like a fluttering ball of fabric, you have 3 inflated center cells with an inflated and spread slider, only the outer 3 cells on each side are sniveling. the canopy hesitates in this position because of the way the planform is shaped and due to limiting the conductance of the cross-ports to slow the filling of the outer cells with air from the center. this design technique is patented. it provides for a distinct staged opening which modulates slower with increased speed, additionally it keeps the leading edge straight through deployment limiting the chance of spinning mals. The design has been further proved in our military cobalt canopies: eg. cobalt 350’s for tethered tandem up to 1000 pounds, and cobalt 350’s for autonomous guided cargo drops of 2200 pounds , both deploying at speeds of 155kts/180mph. You will not see another design canopy open at a 6:1 wingloading at 180mph and provide a 6 g, 8 second deployment. ;) " hard that I could not jump it was a demo Cobalt 170 I got from Atair." -cobalts are proven to open softer, particularly at high speeds, than other designs. there was a problem with several of our 170's. it has long ago been corrected, and unfortunately the mention beat to death on these forums. i find it interesting how much a few people continually harp on this. Why not focus on sabers, or other designs notorious for bruising? There are thousands of them out there continuously bruising and even seriously injuring people…. “The response from Dan in a phone conversation I had with him was to purchase a PC that was much smaller then my container manufacture recommended and to double stow small rubber bands on all of my stows. Which I found odd since literally every other modern canopy I jumped had no problems with single stowing small rubber bands and the PC that my container manufacture recommends for proper extraction from the container.” -one last time: the purpose for recommending a 24” pilot is for increased safety when deploying at higher speeds. If you don’t find this valuable don’t listen. As to recommendations on rubber bands it has been my experience that using small bites and double stowing gives the lowest incidence of the bag spinning and causing line twists. Only the locking stows effect deployment. “With the extreme success that Atair has had in the military market, I really wonder why Dan puts up with the pain in the ass it is to deal with the civilian sport jumper market. It seems that Atair doesn't spend any time researching or improving their sport market and the improvements that have been made over the years and the new canopies tested and released were all to serve a purpose. Research for the military industry. There's nothing wrong with that, infact, from everything I've heard and read Atair is putting out some amazing products for militaries around the globe. “ -at the risk of alienating anyone, the sport market is dominated by fashion and ignorance. I would be amazed if 1 jumper in 100 could tell me the difference in construction quality between two canopies laid in front of them. A manufacturer could release a product with design flaws that kill, but sponsor enough people, give away some t-shirts and wind blades and you will have a legion of “experts” swearing it’s the best. The military on the other hand simply judges by data: the company with the best measured performing product wins, period! No fashion, no silly characters, no entitlement issues, measured performance talks, bs walks…. none of this “the red in my canopy doesn’t match the red of my jumpsuit, if you don’t give me my money back or I’ll tell everyone your canopies suck”. we continue to develop new sport designs simply because I am passionate about it, and in a sport where i have seen too many good friends get hurt and killed, I will continually do what ever I can to improve the equipment and educate the users. As to the pain in the ass’s …. I’m thick skinned. “from everything I've heard and read Atair is putting out some amazing products for militaries around the globe. “ -thanks Dan, as a side note, I would love to see the video I've heard about with the extreme loadings from payloads that were flown under an Onyx. That does sound very impressive. -I will get something ready for posting in the next few weeks… Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)

I believe all the demo's are standard line sets. Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)

a slider is sized for a canopy at a particular speed to produce an acceptable delay and resulting force vs. time curve. if that canopy/slider combination is deployed at a higher speed it will open faster and the resulting g-shock higher. it is primarily the spreading force generated from internal pressurization of the canopy that drives the slider down (not bottom skin inflation). As speeds increase the ratio of spreading force to aerodynamic force pushing the slider up does not stay the same. canopy reefing is more than just a slider. e.g. cross porting and inlet area pay an equal role. as these govern conductance or the rate at which the canopy can inflate. now back to the role of the pilot chute at high speed deployments. It seams unbelievable but a large pilot chute can create a higher g shock to your body at line stretch than the canopy can. the reason is that a pilot chute catches air immediately and accelerates through line extension until the system instantly reaches tension. At high speeds the effect of this is significant. Take the case of a tandem drogue. The tandem drogue must collapse before the canopy bag leaves the container, in cases where this failed we have video and data logged load links showing 26g+ at line stretch before the parachute clears the bag ! This is difficult for many to picture because a jumper is not able to differentiate the difference in feeling from a shock on pilot chute line stretch vs. the shock on a canopy catching air. the peaks are seperated by miliseconds. With a data logger sampling force at > 1000 times a second this is easily noted. there is a distinct peak at line stretch followed by another when the canopy un-cocoons and catches air, followed by a lower extended peak through inflation to slider down. as to bands, short bites with double stows are my preference for reducing the bag twisting on line payout but only the last locking stows have any relevance to hard/soft deployments. If the canopy catches air before line stretch you will have a hard opening. it is the job of the locking stows to protect against this. as to limitations of risers and harness: yes this concerns me. parachutes systems that open with too much force at higher speeds are in danger of doing damage both to equipment and jumper. as to my 180mph jumps: they are as soft or softer than yours at 120... 6 g's with my body weight is well within specs of my body and equipment. blue ones, . Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)

Atair recommends a 24" collapsible zero p pilot. Which is becoming increasingly more standard with some rig manufacturers btw.(rws offers a pilot which by our standard of measure is 23") The reason to use this "smaller" size is strictly for increased safety in the case of a premature deployment while freeflying. For canopies up to 190's you do not need a pilot chute with higher drag than a 24". using larger pilots will definitively contribute to higher g shocks in the event of a deployment at free fly speeds. as someone that fractured their neck on deployment i feel adamant that i will only fly at a speed my parachute system can safely open at with a reasonable chance of not injuring me. as i like to freefly that has to be in the 140-180mph range. I will go jump all day and deploy in a full out 180mph stand or in a track. I know of no other manufacturer that will do the same. I am not super tough, just that my body is going to be subjected to about 6.5 g's max and the other guys more than double that. premature deployments happen, loss of altitude awareness leading to a low pull when freeflying happen. ... Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)

This can be an old seated, ignorant point of view. Whether or not a canopy is a swooper-star machine or a student canopy is the sum total of many design variables. Just knowing that a canopy is elliptical can only tell you that it is a probably more efficient wing, almost nothing more. Any canopy with more than one size rib is elliptical. Manufacturers like to use "tapered", "semi elliptical", "elliptical" its all just a marketing word based on whom the marketing is targeted towards. The stilletto canopy was one of the earliest elliptical canopies to see widespread use. For all its performance, the early models did have many negative traits, e.g. very twitchy, high tendency for spinning mals, etc.. traits that made it unsuitable for lower skill jumpers. "Elliptical" as a result become synonymous with high performance canopies not suitable for beginners. Now, fast forward a decade. There are tons of modern canopy designs that are elliptical and are perfectly suitable for beginners. And btw it is absolutely true that some design canopies can be suitable for both a beginner and an expert with the only difference being suitable wingloading. e.g. The Atair Space's flawless track record over 7 years + as a begineers canopy. The Atair Alpha : number 1 swoop canopy before the FX (competed by the likes of jim slaton, etc) ......ther are the same exact canopy. only difference was the label, marketing and wingloading. Sincerely, Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)

When ever you are ready, we will be glad to send you a demo, or custom build a canopy for you. Based on what you are looking for a Cobalt sounds ideal. Demo everything, purchase what suits you. Sincerely, Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)

you would think it is easier, but in fact it is harder than designing a rigid wing system. the reason being is that your inertial sensors are located on the vehicle not the parafoil. the two are not rigidly linked. the vehicle exhibits a yaw oscillation as wel as complicated spring vibrations from the lines, etc... so the data the inu gives you is extremely noisy and the heading it gives you at a particular instant is not necessarily the direction of actual flight. it is a non trivial task to make use of the inu data in a powered parafoil vehicle and a subject of an AIAA paper being presented in a couple weeks... keep us posted on what you develop... . Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)

ok here is an aluminimum case we just machined for the archos gemini hd video camcorder. this is to be used on cargo drops. i will post the archos av 500 case pictures soon... . Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)

Atair aerospace has developed a series of powered parafoil UAV's under contract to DARPA. The vehicles have been named LEAPP (Long Endurance Autonomous Powered Parafoils). The smallest , dubbed the Micro LEAPP, is 75 pounds auw. The largest LEAPP is 3000 pounds auw. All can be air drop deployed or ground launched. Flight endurance ranges from 4 hours to over 48 hours. if of interest, you can view recently updated information and videos on our web site. http://www.atairaerospace.com/microleapp/ and http://www.atairaerospace.com/uav/ note the 3000 pound LEAPP page is still being updated with current pics, check back soon... Edited by slotperfect to make the links clicky . Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)

im pretty happy so far with the archos av 500. its quality seems comparable to a

we have two. mostly use it for drop testing, but i have jumped it helmet mounted. it works very well. and the image quality is good. one records to a mini dv pro solid state recorder (very expensive $3k) and the other we record to an archos av500 (much cheaper, and very nice toy $400). we cnc machined a protective aluminum shell for the archos av500 to ruggedize it. i was worried about the hard drive skiping on openings and with shock, but so far so good. . Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)

its been here for some time...just not sony: we use the mini dv pro from fast forward video with a high resolution bullet cam. http://ffv.com/ the unit is about the size of a pack of cards and digitizes analog video directly to two compact flash cards. we use two 4 gig cards. the compression rate is adjustable from better than beta cam quality to mini dv to fischer price... this is the unit that shows like fear factor use for their helmet cams.... one flaw: they're $3k . Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)

you are partially correct in that atair doo, atair aerodynamics and atair aerospace are separate corporations. as to the radical it is a kick ass canopy, and yet another incarnation of the proven cobalt airfoil and planform. . Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)

spinning is not an issue as the swivel works quite well. if you use a poor swivel, onel with a high tortional friction the lines twist up and the parachute falls faster. at 70kts opening shock is about 6g's, at 120kts it is about 13 g's......you would not want to jump the helichute at high speeds. with its current reefing (no slider) it is intended for cargo. . Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)

the demon is a privately labeled canopy resold by performance variable. the 'no-name' canopy brian is jumping is a newer yet to be named version. look next for the integration of our comp cobalt nose. and yes the onyx openings are every bit as sweet as your cobalt...i believe we have several 115 demos, however you will have to fight some of my staff for them....juri, baker: you on line? give a call and we will work it out. . Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)

Actually the idea was re-born when Dave Barish wandered into our factory looking to use a sewing machine!!! He had with him a portfolio of his past work, which simply is nothing short of amazing. He got me when he showed me his rotating single skin miniature parachutes designed for use on SADARM munitions. I showed him the work we had done on autorotating ram air canopies. And later when a requirement came up for an extremely low cost parachute, we decided to revisit the concept with Dave. As to deployment issues: they are so far proving out highly reliable at deployment speeds from 70 kts (helicopter) to 150kts (c130,c17)... sincrely, . Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)

The onyx is a 36 cell comp-cobalt. It is hands down the best canopy we have ever produced. The standard model is adjusted to my preference which is short lines and fast recovery arc. At moderate wingloadings this does not make it the best canopy for pro-swoopers looking for max distance. For this context we produce the canopy with a line set ~10% longer and more agressive trim. We have sold ~ 50 canopies, most with the shorter lines set but several with the longer. The reason you dont see more is that we are 100% booked with military orders and have not ran a single sport advertisment in close to 2 years. We recently received the single largest U.S. military order for percision airdrop systems in history. The result of all this rapid growth for Atair is that sport canopy production which is the lowest margin and highest liability work, has drastically decreased. We have a very strong grass roots following of repeat customers and referred friends. For the time being we are simply taking care of and supporting them. ps. brian is jumping both a onyx and the 'no-name' proto. the no-name is a new airfoil and fully elliptical. i believe brian recently broke a speed record with that canopy in competition. sincerely, . Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)

Thought this might be of interest: http://atairaerospace.com/parachutes/heli-chute/ Atair has been working on auto-rotating parachutes, both single skin and double (ram-air) for many years. We are now introducing a line of “Heli-Chutes” for low cost humanitarian airdrop (e.g. economically dropping 100 liters of water), military SOF air-drop and specialized UAV recovery applications. Why a rotating parachute? A round parachute basically has the same drag coefficient of a flat plate of the same projected area. Modern rounds are slightly higher due to some wake vortices effects, but basically rounds are in the 1.15-1.4 coefficient of drag range. And they are of course ~100% solid. A helicopter rotor by comparison is only ~4% solid (with respect the circular area it inscribes) but has a drag coefficient of ~40 ! The Atair Heli-chutes operate in a Vortex-Ring State. Helicopter pilots will be familiar with the term. As a helicopter descends vertically with increasing speed the rotor starts to enter its own wash, creating an inversion which transitions into the so called vortex ring state whereas the flow pattern is two concentric toroidal vortices extending above and below the rotor. This condition spells disaster for a helicopter pilot but in the context of our parachutes we are taking advantage of the fact that we can influence a huge air mass with very little material. The Heli-Chute has the same vertical decent rate as that of an equivalent projected area round parachute. The material and construction costs of Heli-Chutes is drastically reduced, as is pack volume ! They're real pretty in the air: Check out the video ! . Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)

we dropped two of our autonomous guided parafoil systems, think of them as parachute smart bombs. the systems were identical in every way with the exception 1 had a zpo cobalt 40 and the other had a composite cobalt 40....they were dropped 2 seconds apart several miles from a common landing target. they flew identical headings. the composite canopy datalogged a glide ratio 65% higher than the zpo canopy. the wing we designed and are building for darpa was first constructed and tested using zpo. it proved out to have a 8.2:1 L/D . On the newest version being constructed in composite we fully expect to break a 10:1 L/D. . Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)

you can not adhesively bond or weld nylon zpo fabric by any method. - Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)

"just teasers" sorry guys, didn’t mean to tease. i have a great powerpoint presentation with more detail as well as video of our fabric manufacturing machine in operation. i will have our web guy put it up on our site and post a link. some quick answers: the canopy shown at pia: actually I brought 2, one was a cobalt 95 and the other was a pulled down apex reserve. and also displayed a cobalt 350 rib with a custom fiber pattern (non uniform, starburst patterns off line attachment points) both were sewn however one had a strip of fabric adhesively bonded over the seam, making a structural bonded fabric-fabric lap joint in shear (the underlying sewn seam then becomes non load bearing). the reason for sewing it first was simply as it is an easy construction technique. with developed fixtures/machinery one could skip the sewing step all together. bonded seam cobalts: you can not pack them (extremely difficult) without some vent holes. On sewn construction ones the sewing hole perforations are enough to allow you to pack. our composite canopies are actually easier to pack than zpo as they do not swell after cocooning. very strange to see but they just sit there looking like a crumpled shopping bag. when vacuum packed they feel like a block of wood. you can knock on them. the fabric is produced on a custom machine we developed. it looks similar to a cnc fabric plotter except with 4 gantries. each one zig zagging fibers onto a moving conveyor in a computer controlled pattern i.e. + - 45' , 0', 90' for a uniform fabric with 4 layers each at 45' to each other, or e.g in the case of a large canopy each panel of fabric is made with fibers in the exact orientation to match the stress on a rib in flight. the 95 cobalt at pia was constructed with 0-90 fabric top and bottom skin and +-45,0,90 fabric on the ribs. we are now constructing the largest elliptical parafoil ever constructed for DARPA using our composite fabric, this wing is 37 cells, fully elliptical and almost 150' in span. ribs are produced with a custom pattern... sincerely, - Daniel Preston atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military)