EAerodyne

No beer fridge in the office yet. :-).... we want a reason to go to the DZ and drink beer, and skydive... Aerodyne does not hold the rights to designs made by PISA, and all service of such items should be directed to them directly. We still have some linesets in stock and we'd be happy to provide the service of relining them for people as well as depleting the stock of old PISA line sets should you need them. regards

Official Statment From Bushman @ Aerodyne: The company has been bought by two Norwegian Skydivers. One is Vidar Antonsen, who is a private business owner in Norway and recently sold his bus company to the Norwegian Railroad. Vidar is a relatively new skydiver, has been jumping for about 4 years and has approximately 500 jumps. He most recently was a participant in the Norwegian Basic camp held in DeLand together with 60 other skydivers. Ole Petter Hjelle is the other owner and was spurred on by his enthusiasm after recently being sponsored by Aerodyne. Ole is captain of the Norwegian National Team with over 5000 Jumps in approximately 6 years. The Norwegian Team Arcteryx, recently posted a 21.3 in the Shamrock showdown. Ole has been so excited with his gear and the company since moving to Aerodyne sponsored equipment, he took the opportunity to buy a small but significant stake in the company. Both owners will not be involved in management and I will continue to lead and steer the company and it's future. Although their roles are not management roles, having buyers that are skydivers, who understand skydiving, sponsorship and what they want out of their own personal gear, will I am sure make my job a lot easier. The company is yet to publicly disclose the details of it's new manufacturing solution, as not all contracts with raw material vendors, company registrations and other legal documents are final yet. (Don't want to put the cart before the horse) What I can tell you is that the manufacturing facilities we are looking at will be dedicated 100% to sport parachutes and the further development in our products, quality and delivery times. I am 100% committed to us improving our manufacturing quality and seeing if we can knock a couple more weeks out of our delivery times and these will be the primary focus through the remainder of the year. To those that did post re your delivery of your Pilot or other gear. You should have nothing to worry about. There maybe a small hiccup of about 2 weeks or so but we should be able to manage to keep current delivery times of 12 weeks for custom colours. We have tried to beat the demand for custom orders by building a large stock inventory (due in shortly from our current facility in South Africa) Included in that shipment we have a large portion of stock rigs coming. Basically if chosen from stock, you will be able to get a custom fitted harness on a stock coloured container in about a week. The main lift web, diagonals and leg straps will be custom fitted to your measurements and as the ICON features a unique yoke design, this should be pretty close to as good a fit as you could get even if you ordered it custom. This will be a test or pilot program, and we'll see how it goes. Should it take off, we will continue to stock containers in the future. Just a small note of thanks to all the people that have supported us through this very difficult period after losing our last investor. It has been a tough & trying time, and it wouldn't have been possible without your patronage and support. I can personally assure that I will give it my all to improve the company further and to continue giving you good products, at an affordable price with excellent customer service. It is an amazing thing really..... we are now owned by skydivers, run by skydiver for skydivers. I am really excited about the future of our company and it's products and hope you will be to. Blue skies Bushman

Hi Brook, there have been no changes made to the Pilot at all since it's introduction. The changes made to the Triathlon, are due to the canopy having a change of fabric type, which changed the characteristics slightly, and also with it being a 12 year old canopy, there is technology in line sets and trims that we know today, that we were able to incorporate into the Triathlon. Hope this answers your question. Please do not hesitate to contact myself or my sales staff should you have any further questions or if we can assist you in anyway. Kind regards and blue skies

Having previously worked at PD, I can tell you that your statement that all PD Reserves are made in Honduras and all mains are made in DeLand is not in the least bit accurate. I am sure a PD representative would be better suited to put the facts to paper as I haven't worked there for 2 1/2 years now and currently work for a competitor, It wouldn't be fair for me to comment much further than this. Kind Regards Bushman

To Clarify the difference between the Vision and the Mamba. When I joined Aerodyne from PD in Oct 2003. They had some products that I axed due to them not performing within the parameters that i deemed acceptable. The Amax was one of these canopies. The Vision was an ok canopy, but it had a tendency to stall if not brought in with some decent speed. Something I don't find acceptable however the rest of the canopy's performance was actually quite good. I made some changes to the line sets and have made additional changes since my coming aboard at Aerodyne and I believe the canopy is far better than it was originally. The Mamba, was designed from scratch with none of the designers who originally designed for Aerodyne (originally from parachutes de france) nor any of the previous test jumpers. This canopy was designed not to compete with either the cross fire or the katana, but was more designed around what i found to be a common wish list amongst experienced jumpers not wanting to own or deal with a cross brace. Having 17 years of experience of being associated with PD & their canopies as well as their excellent test program. I have started a totally new R&D department at Aerodyne, and besides test jumping myself, have had some excellent feedback from others that I entrust to test jump for me. My advice is demo one. Only you will know what canopy is best or suits your flying style best. Make sure you don't change canopy model and canopy size at the same time and be safe in trying new canopies. Kind regards & Blue Skies

http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=146 Kind Regards

I would rather see detailed (cell by cell) specs on the canopy, including other factors such as trim angle, frontal surface area, etc. And then offer downloadable articles on your website explaining the effects of differences for all the different factors. You will be surprised what new and old skydivers will read to learn more about their equipment.

Do you have a suggestion on a format to give you something that is easy for the layman to understand and measure? Regards Bushman

I'd be very interested from people who have read this document as to if they think it is something that we (the industry) could use as a method for measuring a canopy as to it's ellipticity. The initial reason for this document was to aid some jumpers in countries where it is not permitted to jump an elliptical canopy till they have a "D" or equivalant license. The ideaology was that if we gave a method of measurement, it would allow those countries to make some determination as to if a semi tapered canopy was too aggressively tapered or elliptical for novice/intermediate use. Blue Skies Bushman

-------- Hi Bernard, I am unable to reproduce your jpeg attachment. If I log into the site, I click stock list (one of the bottom tabs on the home page) Choose Pilot and I get tons of stock. Was this perhaps only the case from a newsletter. Let me know I'd be interested in if other users are suffering from the same problem so we can attend to it at once. regards Bushman

They can probably spell flare too. ;-)

Hi Bernard, that isn't quite the case at all. During the summer months this year we had a major manufacturer of fabric, that used to supply about 75% of the industry go bankrupt. This meant that there was a delay on fabric colors etc, and we opted to build our customers orders before our stock in an effort to give those customers who had already ordered their canopies on time. Our stock list is currently quite full actually. With tons of smarts, pilots, triathlons, A2's in stock. We just got another shipment in today so there will be more stuff added today through the weekend. Please let me know if there is something specific you are looking for and we'd be pleased to help you out. kind regards and blue skies

Hi Jeff, Sorry to hear you are having a problem with our website as it requires flash. However if you look at the bottom of the entry page we also offer a light site that is html only for those users who don't want to or cannot install flash. [Edited to add to one of your other posts in this thread] The site supports Explorer, Netscape, Firefox, Safari Hope this helps you kind regards

Other things to take into consideration is that Benji Reffet, their marketing representative worked for them and then came to work for us for 4 months. Then went back to work for them. Having picked up some of the improvements that we were working on at the time. Michel Auvrey (former design authority at Parachutes de France) was the original designer together with Dominic Hayhurst (Technical Director) Since my involvement with Aerodyne (October 2003) I have become the design authority on all products. I work in close conjunction with our R&D and Design team headed up by Dominic Hayhurst (Technical Director) to make sure that what our customers and riggers want is thought about and included or at least considered in design change and improvements. Since the launch of the ICON We have made over 200 changes to the product most based on customer & rigger feedback. Some of these were entirely cosmetic, others were geometry based in an order to tighten the design parameters around our users/customers needs and wants. Kind Regards and blue Skies Bushman

One of the best Pink Floyd albums IMHO that is not very well known is "The Final Cut" Basically a protest of the Falklands war (1982 Britain against Argentina over the Falkland Islands) Of course the largest selling Pink Floyd Album of all time "Dark side of the moon" Isn't bad too! 4th & 5th tracks on "dark side of the moon" are all time classics..... many a person has left home and followed their dreams after listening to the lyrics of track 4 "Time" Evidently, "dark side of the moon" was at one point the largest selling LP in history. (it no longer is) Bushman

having been and still an avid Mac user since the late 80's I would recommend 2 things that you will never regret when buying any computer. 1) Get as much RAM as you can afford and the machine will hold (buying it online will mean that it will come configured as you ordered it and you will not end up with one dimm in your hand that you have no use for and have paid for already) 2) If you can afford more HD space get it. Using things like itunes and modern apps like that, you can never have enough HD space. kind regards

Howzit, is the most universal way to say hello. hoe gaan dit? is how are you doing. Pronounced "who, ggg (like you are trying to cough something up) aahhn as in say ah at the Dr. ... dit as in zit. that'll keep you going for right now. :-) Bushman

Not sure you are going to love the unreasonably quick openings associated with the foil either. Personally I am only 40 and hard/fast openings are not something I consider comfortable. I'd suggest contacting a couple manufacturers for a demo which would: a) open nicer for terminal openings (this canopy was designed for accuracy) b) land nicer again, this parachute was designed to sink onto an accuracy tuffet and may not be best suited for regular fun jumping. That said, the foil is probably the best accuracy canopy ever made and is still the choice of 90 % of all accuracy jumpers out there. Kind Regards

The Smart reserve is designed and manufactured with 4 Slider Stops. The Slider Stops are on the B and C line attachment points. The Smart reserve was tested and approved to TSO C23D with the designed 4 slider stops. The Smart’s TSO C23D required 3 Strength tests of 360Lbs @ 180 knots. The TSO C23d requires 3 strength tests. The Aerodyne Test Team performed 8 successful Strength tests. This was deemed to prove the strength capabilities of the Smart and certainly the reliability of the 4 Slider Stops. All TSO C23d and development tests prove without doubt that 4 slider stops are reliable. With Six Slider stops you have a Slider stop on the B, C & D line groups. This means that there is 1 (one) slider stop on the A & B Line Slider Grommet and 2 slider stops on the C & D Slider Grommet. One slider stop on the A & B Slider Grommet has been proven to be successful. Every Main Canopy out there has a single slider stop on the A & B Grommet. So why do you need 2 Slider stops per Grommet? One slider stop per Slider Grommet has proven to be more than reliable over 1000’s upon 1000’s of jumps! If you followed this theory that 2 slider stops per Grommet were required then you would need 8 slider Stops. This would require that you put a slider stop on the A Line. We have also asked the customer who originally posted to send this canopy back to us for further inspection and have shipped a new canopy off to him as a replacement. We feel that this is the best course of action and customer service. Respectfully

Aerodyne offers both rigs and canopies and we do custom embroidery on the rigs, as well as custom artwork on our canopies. Allowing you to deal with a single company for your entire system. Our appliqué method is the same as PD's and in most instances we offer extremely competitive prices on the artwork. We would need a high resolution jpeg, or eps file to give you a quote on the artwork. As unbiased advice I would suggest you send the artwork to the different manufacturers and get it quoted on. This would give you the chance to make a more informed choice. Kind regards

Hopefully I'll get out there long before nationals bud, At least I hope so. :-), waiting for you guyz to dry out after your put too much water in that swoop pond. L8R Bushman -

All discussions and opinions aside, and if focusing on the fact who was first. Bill Coe owns the patent to cross bracing and was awarded a US patent for the cross brace. Like it not, that is who theoretically has legal rights to it and it can be searched on the US patent office's website. It is a US patent only and therefore can be built outside of the US, however would be totally in PD's rights to protect themselves should it be sold or marketed in the US. Most people using cross brace technology today are in actual default of patent rights and royalties owed to PD and could theoretically be sued for not obtaining a licenesing agreement. Paul Martin (jyro) had a gentlemans agreement with PD to build cross braces for the NZ market only. It was when he went into business with Precision and started selling into the US that the drama unfolded. Precision and PD reached some legal licensing agreement and were then permitted to build them under license. Jyro's a decent lad, ask him what happened and who was first, I was there and so was he... :-) I think it is great that there are companies pushing PD, and in return that PD is giving us smaller companies something to aim at... It fuels our fire. As for Paragliding... there is only one company that builds canopies for both markets succesfully and advertises as much and that is Aerodyne....and I can say this much...... We will be bringing some of that technology to the skydiving market place in the near future. Competition is a great thing.... it stimulates the market place and pushes us to develop better equipment and in the end the end user is the one that benefits the most. kind regards

Hi Dave, perhaps I didn't make myself clear in my original post. I'd be happy to measure it the same way as PD, if that method was published so that everyone knew how it was measured and also so that it was relatively easy for the average rigger/jumper in the field. kind regards and blue skies Bushman

To give people an idea of why these reserves pack smaller: The Fabric industry has released a fabric (exclusively to PD for a 2 year period, meaning no one other manufacturers can get their hands on it till end of 2006) The fabric is still the same fabric but 20 Denier, instead of 30 Denier. This means that the fabric will pack slightly smaller, however due the fact that the fabric also takes longer to make (smaller thread means more passes of the shuttle on the loom) It will probably be quite expensive. Initial guess are that there is a 15-20% reduction in pack volume. This is countered some what by the fact that the tensile strength is not as strong as 30 denier, thus needing more reinforcing. However lines and tapes are lines and tapes and they don't change too much. I am sure that PD being as progressive and as technologically advanced as they are are working on lighter weight reinforcing tapes to counter this as well. Bill Coe has amazing experience with materials and is responsible for a lot of introductions in the current market place. Not to mention he is an incredibly smart man, who has proved his knowledge of parachute manufacturing over and over again. 15% on a 113 is not really that great, but on a 250 or a student canopy that would be quite noticeable. The question will still remain that the fabric costs twice as much as current F1-11 and therefore will be dramatically more expensive..... the gain is probably an inch or so in your container size in the reserve. PD also has an exclusive on the zero porosity version of this fabric although, it doesn't seem to have the same advantages as the F1-11 for some reason. The Silicon coating still makes it pack large and the reduction is not that noticeable. Aerodyne has been offered samples for testing but not enough for production of canopies so that when the market opens up that they'll be able to sell to more manufacturers. However till manufacturers start measuring their canopies using the same method. You will never know how big your reserve really is. hope this helps people understand a little more of why and what is being offered out there Kind regards Bushman

Great Idea Bill, I'd totally be in favor of such a proposal. However, until we can start measuring canopies in the same manner and obtain a standard with regards to that, the number on the side of your canopy is merely a number. In order to establish a wing loading standard, one would need to be starting from a mathematical constant. Todays canopies are not measured equally, providing a host of problems to riggers, distributors and instructors alike. It is impossible to guide someone correctly without the correct information. Perhaps Aerodyne should start measuring their canopies like PD does, due the fact that they own about 75% of the current sport market. However that information as to how they measure is not actually a documented item that we can adhere to or adopt. I would prefer to have a measuring technique that is easy for the layman in the field to measure, and easy to understand. Which is exactly why I have chosen the method used by Aerodyne as our measuring method. Kind regards and Blue skies Bushman