Calvin19

the comments to that video are hilarious. "get these in the military" "how can you shoot something so small going so fast?" Awesome.

That is a good article. I do not compete or even participate in PG racing or any (legitimate) XC, but some of the controversial statements made in there I agree with. Governing bodies should make decisions and rules based on evidence and thought, not rash PR efforts. -SPACE-

Maybe for those who have no clue that the canopy will do exactly what it is commanded to do. Not everyone is a gifted pilot. Some are just payloads playin "what does this button do". Sept 24th ITW. Take care, space I guess I see your point, there are students and less than gifted people. Either way, we throw IAD students out at 3000' or whatever, right? I also know more than a few skydivers that are unsafe on anything but a tandem who are convinced that DEPLOYING a parachute below 4000' is a safe maneuver. Homeslice here had his shit sorted out above some safe jumpers' hard decks. He obviously has the skill and foresight to be able to mess something up at even a lower altitude than that. He had his rescue parachute out and in control at a very reasonable and safe altitude, even after fighting the induced mal for a while. Also, it should be known that playin "what does this button do" game is how a lot of the coolest moves to ever be done are invented. -SPACE-

I think Luigi's wl was 4.25 on 39 ft2 while Pal T had 7.4 kg / m2 which equals wing load of 1.51/ft2 Is there some different calculation? No different calculation, the difference is those maneuvers at that loading is just as impressive as merely landing. Obviously there is no issue being able to walk away from landing it. 12.5m for a paraglider makes a pretty twitchy control. This is not a speed glider, and it is amazing what agility Pal got out of the load research project. Normal acro loading is between 4.5 and 5 kg/m2 Pal is bumped it up a handful of notches. Pal is increasing the load by 25-35%% and doing things better as well as things that nobody has done before.

Pal is easily the best in the world. Extremely creative and skilled. If you want a cool documentary, find "Adrenaline and Turbulance". This is true canopy flying. http://adrenalineandturbulence.com/ -SPACE-

I don't even think the fun police are that jealous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ0AuE-enBM (watch the whole thing through the landing swoop) This is Pal T on a 12.5m thriller. (the paragliding equivelent of Luigi landing the 39) Edit to add : Pal does not get started acro for a bit,, so unless you want to watch two minutes of a bad ass in an afro pretending to be on a radio talk show, skip to 2:00 -SPACE-

Seem to be a lot of haters here. I don't know if you are an idiot or not, but you seem like you like to have fun under (or over) a glider up high, so you have my respect. I fly an all sail JVX 79, never taken more than 6 seconds delay on it and never less than 10k. I do not swoop. You should get into acro paragliding if you are not already. WAY more fun, dangerous, and time consuming than skydiving. -SPACE-

It actually kinda sounds like you did a SAT entry, not usually possible to do a clean one on skydiving canopies. here is a similar thing I did jumping one of my OZONE Bullet speed gliders a year or so ago. http://vimeo.com/16226960 -SPACE-

a full mile off the ground is too low to do acro on ANY landable canopy?

I am assuming the issues that you have run into are similar to those of chest mount deployments and the body folding. I have never had a problem with either on my design. Proper staging will reduce the forces to bearable levels even if the attachment points are lower down on a harness. I like my harnesses really balanced, very low hang points. But you are correct, if you get the deployment speeds down it it no big deal. -SPACE-

deployment is easy, the forces on the body are nasty. I got around it, but a transfer works WAY better.

Photo? As you'll know, having risers come together to one point is perfect for a symmetrical opening - can't have one riser pulled down vs. the other to cause mals or off heading openings. Yet it also provides zero resistance to line twists. So you get the best of one world, the worst of another.... An interesting design issue. sorry, i got the idea from this rescue parachute I use for acro flying. (picture should be there now) I made the same conclusions. -SPACE-

While testing out deployable paragliders, I toyed with a cool "anti-roll" riser equalizer that prevented significant "weight shift" in a seated harness. (In the photo it connects the top of the risers, mine involved a releasable cross-brace on the harness) I obviously did not invent this kind of harness/riser system, but It turned out to be moot because deploying a seated harness system is NASTY. (but do-able) -SPACE-

I am curious to see that. I had a similar idea years ago, but after flying a bunch of acro and finding out that if you get more than 2 or three riser-twists you're f*$(#$ anyway, I didn't pursue it. (Any less than that and you can still use the brakes a little, the trick is to not get into twists even when messing up flips and twists) Also, in PG I always want shorter risers and lower hang points, My idea involved a brake line housing that was independent of the risers and toggles but "floated" on the brake lines until they were entrapped by twists. -SPACE-

Speed over glide to penetrate a headwind or get through an area of sink. There has been entire textbooks written about that subject, check out the wiki page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_to_fly

Correct. Within an area of constant lift. Generally soaring involves traveling between areas of lift. It's still soaring, i guess, but at that point there is nothing to it. Sorry, my post was poorly worded. I do that sometimes.

No, Soaring in any condition other than a fixed area of lift like a ridge, wave, or convergence (or a single thermal) are the only way you could soar a low glide ratio/low airspeed/low sink rate canopy. good slow sink rate with a good glide WITH speed is the best way to soar. the most efficient soaring machines have a sink rate of 100ft/min, glide at over 50/1, and at those glides and sink rates fly 60mph with the ability to dive at 150mph+ http://vimeo.com/19877748 -SPACE-

Shit... I have been in four plane crashes. Luckily I watch a lot of free porn.

Awesome info. morris goes into the more complicated inertial energy retention of a glider, and I did not mention any of that. Also, my posts are mostly discussing un-accelerated flight. Obviously, one can change the center of lift and center of mass of there canopy/pilot machine by manipulating risers (front riser diving turn). This would move both the center of lift and the center of mass forward. (The center of mass would still be directly below the center of lift, not accounting for form and induced drag). In un-accelerated flight, the COL is ahead of the CG in a balance between form drag, induced drag, and lift. in accelerated flight these vectors will all change, but still be in the same orientation. "leaning forward" without manipulating the airfoil (pulling on front risers) will only change the form drag of the pilot. Pulling on the front risers, pulling legs to chest and leaning to one side is in part leaning forward, but all you really are doing is changing the AOA of the wing by pulling down the nose. If you could lean back while pulling down the front risers it would do the same thing. -SPACE-

Like I said earlier: Really not that complicated. In acro/XC paragliding (like high end competitive swooping) these tiny things like .1% drag degrease that are discussed at length on dorkzone actually come into play. In paragliding, we use glide ratio and sink rate benefit factors religiously. SO: If it were a benefit to the flight characteristics of a canopy/pilot machine, paraglider engineers and competitors would be doing it. AND: the best paraglider and "ground launch" pilots in the world "lean forward" to launch, lay WAY back in a custom aerodynamic harness to fly long distances (or WAY forward like a pro swooper does). the reason for this in paragliding is a significant decrease in parasite drag/form drag. For acro we sit upright giving the most nimble harness inputs and acceleration ("G force") rigidity. -SPACE-

I'm open to a mathematician telling me I am wrong, but the way I understand physics and aerodynamics, Newton and Bernoulli usually win. There are two different "CGs" we can talk about. There is the overall pilot/canopy aircraft CG that is located, depending on the kind of canopy, about at the pilots upper chest or higher. (we could also go into inertial mass CG because our airfoils are filled with a neutrally boyant fluid, but lets draw the line at the first example) The center of mass (CG) is going to be directly underneath the hang point, this is entire principal of a suspended load. No matter how you change your body position, the center of mass/CG will be suspended directly below the center of lift of the wing. If you have no riser or brake pressure this will be directly underneath the harness hang points. (Of course, air drag will come into effect, but at trim speed this would be negligible, let's keep it simple) One thing I did not mention was we could change the distance between the COL and the CG. If you lean forward or backward, the center of mass of the pilot/canopy will be shortened. Batsch mentioned "flatter" glide while leaning forward while ground launching. The basic PG/ground launching idea for launching is leaning as far forward as possible and charging head-low to power the glider into the air with maximum speed. This "torpedo" position allows the pilot to get ahead of the lifting force of the glider to allow them to use the remaining tread friction they have from the remaining weight on their feet. A pilot runs until the lift of the wing equals the force of gravity and there is no available weight left to power the pilot forward. The opposite of this is the "half assed" launch where the pilot hesitates on the launch run, possibly getting off the ground in a more vertical or even leaned back position. Obviously the initial glide on this flight would be of significantly steeper angle. -SPACE-

The only effects a hanging harness body position can have on any canopy is: -variable parasite drag. -lateral riser spacing. -accessibility to riser inputs - feelings of brake and riser inputs. Any claim that "leaning forward" in a harness affects canopy flight is most likely true, but it uses one of the above to do so.

As far as low pulling goes, what did you learn that makes a statement like that possible?

I might be proving your point, but I thought that was pretty damn cool myself. -SPACE-