RiggerLee

Do you mean dipers? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Actually falcons were good flying canopies. People today tend to talk a little trash about the older f-111 canopies but there really wasn't any thing wrong with the later designs, falcons and PD's among them. Keep in mind that a PD reserve is from the exact same era and no body talks shit about them. Falcons if any thing have an advantage over a PD or optimum in that they are nine cells and have a higher aspect ratio. The bigest limitation on wing loading is the increase in porosity over time. We tended to jump them large because at 600 jumps on the canopy you didn't really want to be jumping it at over 1:1. F-111, call it 0-3 if you like, is very tight when it's new and flyes quite well. Don't get me wrong. I don't want to say that there hasn't been evelution over the years but I don't understand the fear that some people have of older gear. as to wing loading. I don't think you need to be loading an optimum at 2:1. I'm a vocal proponent of people jumping bigger reserves to beguin with. And lets not forget the basic idea behind the optimum. That you could put a larger reserve in your existing container. The very concept was to allow you to jump a LOWER wing loading then you were curently jumping which frankly I thought was great. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I've never acually seen one packed as a reserve but what's wrong with it? It's just a bit bulkier but older gear is often sized more appropreitly any way. If it's in good condition I see nothing wrong with "older gear". We jumped the hell out of it in it's day and it's perfectly good for what it is. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

That's pritty much it. It look just about right. The question of whether the bottom skin is rectangular or not is a question of what line in space you rotate the rib around to create the pannel. In this case and in the example I sent you that line happened to be paralel to the bottom skin of the canopy. That does not nessasarily have to be the case. If you rotate the airfoil you can rotate it around to create a constant angle of attack around the line of rotation. Damn I'm not saying that very well. As you have it there if the canopy flies along the direction of the line you are rotating the canopy around it will be at "zero" angle of attack all across the span. Not to say that it's not makeing lift, keep in mind where your zero lift line, seperit angle, is. So if you want it to fly at a greater or lesser angle then the bottom skin will not nessasarily be a rectangle. I am so not explaining this well. Dork around with it a bit changing the angle of attack. It's ment to rotate the airfoil around a stream line to create the panel shapes. Now what it doesn't do is to tell you any thing about it's performance at that angle of attack and where it will want to fly. The line lengths it gives out are just an after thought based purely on an "assumed glide angle that you enter. It's ment as nothing but a starting point. From which to do a first cut. Once you play with a number of trims and phisically measure the glide that it wants to fly at and from there the AoA of the airfoil you can then feed those numbers back into the program to improve you're panel shape for where you are really flying. Does that make any sence at all? In any case what you have there is exactly what you have created. If you feed your corordonents into the basic airfoil shape at the very begining it should proliferate through out the document. It will actually let you smush the airfoil around moveing the leading edge points for the top and bottom skin to change the nose cut. You can move the thirty percent point on the airfoil forwards and back to control the location of the greatest thickness/camber of the airfoil. and you can change the total thickness. The other nice thing is it will do patern shapes for an eliptic canopy. I just put in a simple rule to allow you to easily change the taper but you could easily set the rib lengths manualy to what ever you want. It rotates the 25% cord point so there will be more taper on the trailing edge then the leading. It basically unrolls the panel off of the wing as a section of cone. It's broken into a bunch of triangler panels to spread it out flat into the pattern it gives you. All in all it's a good bit for a couple of nights fucking off. I'd almost have to walk you through it. You might have to give me a call. I don't supose you have skype on your computer? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

depends on your aplication. Some times there are temp issues. We're dealing with mach numbers. We were useing nomex ripstop but we've actually had to move on to a kevlar fabric. I'm cutting it this week. Odd ball thing that doesn't apply to most skydiving but just saying, it's out there. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

They're not really sepperat. The main tray and the riser covers are sewn together along the sides. If you look at the top flap of the main tray, it's almost covered by the side flaps when it's closed, you should see that it has a wrinkle in it. It's actually not "tight" or it shouldn't be if you are in the center of the size range. As the loop gets longer that flap extends as you put a larger canopy in the container. As this happens, As you put a longer loop in the main the stack of grommets moves away from the reserve tray. If a sence the reserve tray moves up in the closed container. Actually what is happening is a hinge efect acting at the bottom edge of the reserve tray/top edge of the main. When you close the bottom flap up tight you are basically closing that henge. Loop too long you open it. Thjat contributes to the tension along the top edge of the riser covers. That is part of the reason why it seems to be trying to pull the tuck tabs down wards into the back of the slot, the end towards the reserve. If the loop is too long you can also develop problems with the main tuck tab. You can get too much tension there too. This is a trade off for the ability to fit a wider range of canopy sizes. It also allows you to tighten the loop on a smaller canopy. Other containers with a verry short loop in one flap lack the ability to compress the pack tray in the same way. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I have actually seen some very comfertable microns. Durrand had a pare of rigs, I don't recall the exact size combonation, that were very comfey, easy on the shoulders, and soft on the back. Before any one stand up and screams bloody murder and raises a linch mob to hang me for my lies let me say that it was the sizeing. I'd have to go back and check but of the sizes, soft, med, and tight it was eather soft or med. In any case it was the only pair of reasonable sized vectors that I have ever had the pleasure, and it was a pleasure, to pack. I'd have given the guy a discount, but he was just such good bissiness. Guy had more reserve rides then... don't get me started. It didn't have any thing to do with the rig. I was concidering makeing up some buy four repacks get the fifth one free cards just for him but I was makeing so much money off him and I thought there should be some sort of... penalty for his rate of malfunction. In any case I financed a trip to Baffin off him and his crossbraces. the point is it's about compatabillity. And it only stood out in sharp contrast to the vectors around it which were all at the very top of the chart and some times above. They were all bricks. Horroble fucking bricks on your back. God only knows how they could stand it. They did not get discounts. They got the evil eye glare when they brought those things up into the loft, and no it wont be finished to day, you can come and pick your POS up tomarrow after it settles over night so that I can close the last three flaps. Yes, they were that tight and that was the standard penalty I imposed for sizeing your stupid shit one size over the recaminded maximum. Point is that a lot of the "problems" assoceated with containers actually don't have any thing to do with the container. There's nothing wrong with the risercovers, or the main flap or the comfert, and they don't naturaly have ugly wrinkles in them. Beleave it or not all of the people out there that design these things, Booth included, are actually pritty smart. What they can not control what they are fighting against is what happions to there shit after it leaves the shop. All the problems above are dirrect produts of compatabillity and the quality of the pack jobs. They are not infact flaws in design. So when you try some thing on, before you judge it, don't just look at the brand of the container and it's size, also look at what's in both the reserve and the main and keep in mind what they were really designed to hold. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Why a ring slider? It would probably have eliminated the ossilations in drag. It would have lowered the peak opening forces allowing them to use lighter lines risers and ancker points. They could have remover their anti inversion net. And I think it would have led to a lighter over all system. Mass is a big deal. I just don't think they had any expereance or data on ring sliders. Personally I like them. I've had good luck with slider reefed rounds on smaller projects. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

How tight is the main? Javelins with a toung change geomitry based on loop length of the main. If the loop is too long the stack of grommits on the main will shift down wards pulling the side flaps down wards putting more tension on the riser covers. If you can try to pack your main fully with in your main bag, not hanging out. Try to shorten your main loop if you can. It should take a good grunt to close it. If you can close it a little tighter you'll get less tension down the sides of the container. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Loops a little long. Other then that they look fine. As to how long the loop... good question. I think there are a couple of issues. One argument says that the lines should not be able to slip over each other. If it sets on top of another line the bump of the lower line can be a sharp enough radious to cut the lin on top of it under load. Note that this is some thing you see in really heavy test drops, cargo weights. On the other hand if the loop is to tight around the shaft of the link it can pull apart hard enough at the Y to tear the mouth of the opening causing the line to fail at the junction rather then at the end of the finger trap which is the normal failure point. I've seen that too when you start to get above about 1,500 lb. I've also hear it said that the loop should not allow the line to slip over the barrel of the rapid link assuming you are useing one and size it based on that. You'll probable wind up with a 1/2 to 3/4 inch loop depending on line and link. and of course cut the line off at as shalow of an angle as the weave will permit. Heavier lines you actually cut yarns at intervals along the line to smothly form a taper. Like the heavier line/"rope" of a sail boat. You can actually do this with braided core line by finger traping the core and the sheath into each other and the that junction actoally winds up inside the line above the loop. That's cool but I don't think I can explane it over e-mail. I only learned to do that a few years ago when I started sailing. I'd always wondered how they did that. I was jumping up and down with excitement when I finally learned how it worked. Other then that it looks fine. Sewing looks good. Don't feel you have to sew right up to the junction. Is that you're nylon line? How's it's stabillity? Streachy? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

The CG is going to hang underneath the canopy at a point dependent on it's AC and moment. Glide and AoA chase each other to stabillity. Yes we control where that settles through the line set. None of that is under debate. Maybe my first attempt at the post would have been clearer but the machine ate it. The question was how cascades effect the canopy. And that is not through a grose change in the CG but through the abbility of the cascade to float forwards or back dependent on it's loading. That is where the trim change, change in the line set, it's really to maintain the same trim, comes from between the two types of line sets. Unforenently it can only be optimised for one mode of flight and will lead to distortion in others. As to how big a problem this is depends on the angle of the cascade and how critical the wing is. He has mentioned stabillity in deep breaks and it is noticable even in conservitive canopies on deep break approaches. In fact it was one of the things people would tweek on older acceracy canopies. This has degenerated into a little bit of a debate between us. Part of it I think is symantics. Writeing is not my best means of comunication and I'm not sure you're always understanding me. This is to some degree my failing. I think that although the things you say are not wholley wrong I beleave you are missing some of the suttaller issues as to how and why these things work. This is a good example. You're statement that the trim changes between a cascaded and non cascaded line set is corect but I take issue whith your statement as to why this is. I'm not trying to give you lessens although I will debate points with you. I was a little verbose not so much because I felt that it was nessasary for you but in hopes that the guy in question would more clearly follow what we were arguing over. But right now I need to get back to sewing. I'm behind. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Mother fucker. This stupid computer just erased my entire long ramoaling post. Man, I don't feel like typeing all that again. I'll be brief. Sewing finger traps at line attachments. I told the whole story before but I don't have the patintce to re type it. I'll just say that I've got hundreds of jumps on canopies like this as we test jumped them. It works fine. If you are refering to cascades, yes you note that I mentioned that they were dependent on the main line tension to hold them. 825, Yes that's correct. I do tend to use the terms interchangable depending on who I'm talking to. PD has almost become a standard in the industry to the point that there nominclature has become almost a standard. It's the easyest way to comunicate some times. I also ask for a klenex when I need to blow my nose not a faceal tissue. Sue me. I don't think this guy has descovered CSR yet. If he had I'd have called it 9512-725. You know what that means but he wont. Red has a very nice bartacker... now. That wasn't allways the case. Or at least furries old one must have been defective because it changed length randomly from line to line on a line set. In fact I beleve I remember when they baught it. I remember they were kind of excited. We all have nice toys now, the industry has come a long way. but asking the boy to buy a $5000 pattern tacker is probable a bit much. I stand by the process I described. If the boy wont's to sew line sets on his mothers home maching that's his best bet. Cascades. I'm very aware of the diffrences between a cascaded and and uncascaded line set. Based on your commit I think I have a better grasp of the math then you. That is in fact why I recomended that he beguin by playing with a non cascaded line set. It's actually much simpiler. What you are trying to say is... half right. It's not about the CG of the canopy. What it's actually about is the pressure distrobution across the airfoil. If you look at the coeficent of pressure across the airfoil you can basicly look at the lift distrobution along the cord line. This can be set of in a statics model if you were so inclined but mostly people do it by rule of thumb. The bitch of it is that the Cp changes across the airfoil as you change angle of attack. This can change the load on the cascade and bend and destort the airfoil. Cascades are actually a bad thing. We really shouldn't have them in our canopies but it's a compermise betweed drag and a lot of spigetti and the stability of the wing. That's what we're really talking about. As you go from a non cascaded line set to one with cascades yes, the lengths do change. As an example when you cascade a line set the B line is almost the same but the A actually gets a bit longer. The B actually has a bit more load on it in flight and pulls the cascade to the rear. The down side of this is that when the canopy comes to a higher angle of attack, eg. durring flare, the pressure distrobution changes and the load on the A line increases and it actually tips the nose up by distorting the airfoil as the cascade shifts. The CG does not chang relitive to the 1/4 cord point of the canopy the airfoil just bends in a bit of a z. It's suttle but there. It's enough that you can actually improve the performance of a canopy at higher angles of attack by removing the cascades on the A/B lines. Yes, this means tweeking the trim in the revers of what I described before. A lines get shorter. But some times it can be worth it to do this at least on say the center part of the canopy. Again it's a compromise. Is that a bit clearer? Would you like me to send you a presure diagram? I was trying to avoid confusing the poor guy. So Like I said. Maybe he should just start out with a nice non cascaded line set. Nice and simple. Easy to adjust. Easy to play with. If I've been unclear I'l be happy to explane further. If you want a debate of design I'm down for it. But if you want to get it on you better bring the math cause I was busting the curve in partial courses as a freshman. By the end of the semester it was down to to the grad students and me, and I think one senior was still hanging in there. Can't spell for shit but I could always do the math. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I think the sewing is over rated in it's importance. Remember that as long as you have a decent length finger trap most of the strength is in the finger trap it self. Length varies by line and weave but 4 inches is a good round number. The stitching is more then any thing else to prevent it's slipping before it has good load on it. The truth is a little more complicated. Some joints are more problimatic then others. As an example a casscade really likes to have a little tension on the A line to help with the strength of the B line junction. So we sew things. Don't over think it. You could almost get by jumping the canopy with out sewing any thing. The line attachments that I described earlier as an example and you'll want to to play with trim so make those finger traps long or leave tailes hanging out. Long finger traps shrink line. Some times just finger trapping a section of line in to a suspension line is an easy way to treak the trim on a canopy. As to sewing. We've done every thing over the years and it's all worked. With just a little home machine and a test bed canopy I'd just do a relitively lose zigzag say an inch and a half to two inches long. Make it lose enough that you will be able to take it out if you have to. Glide path did some thing like this for years on dacron line. Remember, Test bed. Best way to sew it is to make a "Line Jig" Take two peaces of webbing, weight depends on line say type eight for 825 spectra, About 5 inch long. Spread them to the width of the finger trapped line. Put two peaces of type four tape across the ends. sew them across the ends to keep the spaceing. You have a window. Place the line on the machine. Place the jig on the machine on top of it webbing down so it stadels the line. It will hold the line centered as you sew it and lit you feed it much more smoothly. The jig and line all feed through the machine as one. Slide the line out , put a new one in and repeat. Once you've done that set. I like to chain link the lines leaving a gap and then starting again below the cascade so that all the sew points are there togather. Move on to the next group. You can count and inspect them all togather right there. Remember, if you do a non cascaded line set for now you can do all the lines sepperatly and then larks head or sheet shank the lines onto the canopy rather then sew them with the whole pile of canopy in your lap. Your going to be fuicking with this so you don't need a lot of complexity slowing down the evelutionary process. And when you're pre planning you're trim changes that you're going to make in the field when testing. Remember It's easier to make lines shorter then longer. Pre mark all your trim changes with diffrent color sharpies. Buy a box with a whole rainbow. Basically I'm saying that I'd build my self a set of non cascaded "test lines" pre marked at various trims. Left unsewed at eather the top or bottom. Mark them with various colors of sharpies and just chang them with a little wire fid. I'd take this out and tye it down at the risers or a little longer. One straight peace of webbing or line at the base will let you make a dirrect measurement of glide angle. I'd measure glide and play with stability at a viriety of trims and then go back and feed that back into my model. So at that point doing the math you've got a spread of glide angles at various AoA for the canopy. As go back to computer you can incororate that into you're next plane form to optimise you're next panel set. Then the cycle repeats till you've got some thing that a nice smooth wing with good lift across the canopy, about the right trim you want, and some idea of it's stability. Play with you're break as well. For each of those trims measure three or four break setting down to half breaks. As you play more with it out of the airplane You'll be able to start equateing that data to how it pitches and setts up. Withen two possable three generations you should have something that you're willing to at least test jump if not yet ready to land. Don't go and do some thing silly like comit your self to landing a new canopy till you think you're happy with how it pitches and it's stability. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Now things start to make a little more sence. Couple of things. First. If you want to feel good about your gear, don't hang out in the loft talking to riggers. Especally if they're drinking beer. You'll lean way more then you want to know and little of it will be reasureing. Remember that they are skydivers and inharently morbid and the faverat topic of conversation is always the last fatality or gear failure. Haveing said that skydiving gear is on the whole safe. The truth is that you are by far the most unreliable element in the system. All you really have to do to live a long life in this sport is to simply chouse to not be unreliable. Second. the 6, 66, and 69 refer to compleatly diffrent things. third. The parachute industy is actually pretty big. You're only seeing the tip of the iceberg in the sport industry. Most of it is millitary and very active. It's a growth sector right now. Millitary cargo drops are big right now and the mil is looking to expand it's capabilities in that regard in the future. I know some of the guys over at waymore that build the guidence units for percision airdrop systems they are useing. People are reallizing that the only secure supply line is through the air. They are going through canopies like nobodies bussniss. and the plan on opperateing that way in the future. You may allready be in this bussness with out even knowing it. I now see where you're comeing from. we would all like to get some one to pay for Our toys. I do wish you luck but I'm not optomistic. But you never know. You might stumble into something. I've got some friends that scored a sweet scam as a demo team for Black Water when they were big. Best of luck. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Honestly it kind of sound like a Gee whiz idea come up with by some guy in your marketing department. I'm not saying that there isn't room in the industry for you but you make it sound like this whole idea of branching into a new industry is based on a one time marketing idea to promote your company as a whole. This approach does not exactly inspire confodence in an industry that has been plaged by quality control problems. It's a bussness based on trust between companies that have been doing business with each other for many years. And frankly it's taken that long for every one to get each other "trained" to meet our needs. There's history here that you're probable not aware of. This industry has been plagued by problems some going all the way back to the very yarn it self. I'll give you a few examples off the top of my head. Mystery Bulk. This was in fact a yarn problem. We'd been buliding canopies for years. Every thing was butter flys and bright sunny days. Then our of the blue suddenly the canopies will not fit in the containers. I mean you can't pack them. A Raven I, that's a canopy, fits into a Vector II size xx, that's the container. But now some one orders a new system, brand new in the box, and pays a lot of money for it. Doesn't fit. No way. Rigger can't pack it, he can't jump it, he's screwed. So just go out and buy the next smaller canopy you say. Not only is this a good peace of change but it's SMALLER I know you're a Woofoo, look it up do a search, but you don't want to jump too small of a canopy, it's a safty issue. Can't sell the canopy to some one else. They don't want to jump a larger rig then they have to for that size canopy, big bricks on your back suck. Every ones pissed. It was the yarn. And it proliferated through the whole supply chain. It was a big deal by the time it was caught. But that could never happion with us you say. The suppiers in question had been weaving this same product for years. They were established. They were good. We're talking tighter tollerances then you've ever worked with. It was a rude awakening for us all. And it's still there. Not as bad as the event that I refer to but canopies are still not equal and some times you get a system in that was only supposed to be tight and you just can't pack it. I'll give you another example. This doesn't applie dirrectly to you but I'll through it out there any ways. Canopy fabric is not just fabric. It's actually specal. It's almost magic. Or it had better be other wise the "magic" will not be there in the canopy. Now the lack of this can manifest it self in a number of ways ranging from really anoying to death. Yes I said death and I've got a whole list, longer then my fingers and tows of friends that are dead. I'll give you some examples. Canopy turns with no toggel in put. It's like a car that just pulls to the right all the time. This can range from very annoying to barely controlable. This can be a fabric issue. The fabric of a canopy has to bee almost like the wood of a base ball bat. The tree that it's taken from has to be grown from a seed from the very begening to be a bat or it will crack. Another example is a violin. You can't just make it out of any wood. In this eample the problem is in the weave. The fabric must be straight. The fill fibers must be 90 deg to the warp of the fabric. This is really an issue with the mill that weaves it but you're asking them to comit to a run in which they will have to learn how to do this with a compleatly new yarn that they are not familure with. Yes I know. What ever specs they want. Well the specs and qc are really fucking tight and if the run, they tend to be long, doesn't come out perfect they will not be able to sell it. Canopy manufacterers have run a 60% rejection rate at times. Perrosity and weave. Perrosity is a big deal. How tight it is and how well it maintains it's tightness. This is an issue with it's flight caricteristics. It can make a noticable diffrence in performance. It can even be a safety issue. Designs have become more extreame with smaller inlets. Perrosity in the fabric and the seams can affect the stability of the airfoil. I'm not talking about a minor change in performance. I'm talking about a catistofic leading edge collaps ending in a fatality. Even just the air leakage through the seams as the ribs pull on the seams over time opening up the sewn holes can lead to problems. Part of this is a weave thing but there work depends on your yarn. And people would be hessetant to put an unknown yarn into the system. And all of this is based on your wish to do a one time promotion for your product. Or at least that's how you make it sound. Don't get me wrong. Every one is always looking for new suppliers. But if you want to work in this industry you might want to try approaching them honestly about makeing a serious comitment to working with them in this market. Not some cheap promotonal gimmic that your sales depart ment came up with. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Air foil looks reasonable if a little thick. What's the thickness ratio? Has the panel spreadsheet worked for you? I think you could reduice the lengths of your cascades, ie I think the point could be higher. Just for convenence of construction I'd make the B and D lines the same length. Now haveing said all that I'd lose the cascades entirely for now. It's easier to monkey with the trim with out them. And you don't even have to sew the tops. Just do like a sheet shank and the fingure trap it. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Absolutely nothing good can come from it. I'm not sure of all the mecanisems involved but there is a certin amount of salt in sweat and the problems with that are well known. If you land in salt water and fail to wash the salt out of the canopy, pertiularly the lines the salt will crystalize between the fibers of the yarn from which the line is woven. From then on every opening will streatch and saw those crystals back and forth between those fibers. Back when we jumped dacron, a salt water landing with out washing ment you would start poping lines in about 100 jumps. The lines caring a consetrated load show this most sevearly but I'm sure the same thing is happening in every thing else. Not to mention the corosion on the hard wear. We've seen all of that on pilot rigs, pretiularly sail planes. Harnesses are so over built that they don't break all the time but none of this can be good for it. Any one want to chime in on other chemical properties of old sweat. I know it has uric acid in it but it also has an organic component the degrades over time. I'm rather cueous what you do wind up with? And how it would effect things. I'm not sure how much shirts help. Perhaps it keep the sweet on you and lets it dry there like a wick so the crusty salt stains you have by the end of the day stay there on the shirt. Can't hurt. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

What do you mean? Bad idea? How do you think every body else got started? Ya think PD just sprouted out of the ground fully formed. No Thouse guys started out sewing building canopies in their spare bed room. The guy is curious. He wants to learn. Not saying he wont die during the learning curve, especaly if he keeps up doing silly shit, but he's allready learned more about canopy flight, construction, and design then most will ever know. And if he's half way smart about how he goes about this there is no reason why he should have any problems. I'm proud to chear him on. I wasn't much better off whet I built my first base rig. Now I'm building supersonic drogues for sub orbital recovery systems. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Who jumped ino Baffin? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Can you emagion getting some thing caught under the back of it? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I'm not sure I see this as an issue. Magnetic deveation can come from a lot of sorces. It's also very dependent on the mounting and location of the compass. When we replaced the compass in my airplane we looked at changing it's mounting location. There wasn't enough athority in the adjustments to allow it. Every system on the aircraft affects it in one manner or another. Generally speeking it's set and calibrated in one perticular configuration ie. with the systems turned on in the configuration you would expect for IFR flight. Any change from that for example not haveing your nav lights on or not haveing all of your radios powerd up or turning the landing lights on will create an error. Even then in the best case there is ussally a writen table of corections in the plane, generally on a sticker under the compass. Basically I don't see where this is such a big deal. Skydiving is generally a VFR activity conducted in a famillior local enviroment. Just deal with it. In the rare event that you are traveling cross country with jumpers on an extended flight, ferrying an air craft in IFR conditions just ask them to stow the rigs in the back. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Ok, here's at least some thing you can play with. It's not perfect. In fact it's a little awkward to work with like all my stuff. I'm not a computer guy so there's some anoying little things in it that I don't know how to fix. Like how to make the graphs stay in proportion. But I think it's working right. Play with it and see if you can find any bugs. It should produice rib and panel shapes for retangular and eliptical canopies. this took me longer then I'd planed but I wanted you to have some functionality. It's got a clark y in it right now but you can put other airfoils in. It lets you mush the airfoil around a bit. Opening up the nose by moveing the leading edge points up and down for top and bottom and forward and back for the bottom. You can change the thickness and the location of the thickness. Between all of that you should be able to smear it around to come close to other airfoils used on canopies. The cord line is the bottom axis along your bottom skin. It's set at 0 AOA right now. That gives you about 6 deg of AoA from your 0 lift line. Play with that you might want a bit more. You can set the estimated glide angle and it will rotate it around the free stream line going through the top of your riser keeping a constant AoA along the canopy span wise. As a place to beguin. Take your best guess. Monkey with it till it looks more or less like an existing canopy. Line the thing and then take it out and peg it down and kite it. play with the trim and get a feel for it's real glide angle, lift curve, and dynamics. Once you think it's workable go back to the computer and work the revised trim and AoA into the model and then start over. At least that's how I would approach it. This is what it is. Two nights of fucking around. It's straight out of my ass so take it for what it's worth, every penny your paying for it. but it might give you a starting point to beguin playing with. And to all thoes who know better feel free to laugh at it. I'd strongly advise saveing it as is and then playing with another copy. You can bugger it up easily. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSxkmDOsdw0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSxkmDOsdw0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdE5DyqfUCg&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfHF0lRvm0M This one's a staight up stall http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfHF0lRvm0M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SzsItkSeRw&feature=related An example of recovery http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeqcH0YUDIw Damn it. Couldn't find any really good carnidge videos. I guess people are squemish about publishing fatalities. But you get the idea. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I'm not sure exactly how you're going about this. Are you a para glider pilot? Ever done any towing? It's actually a bit more complicated then it seems and it can all go fine and you think that every things cool til it's not. You don't hard point some one to the vehical. There's a wench or more like a spool. It's not just that they're trying to feed out more line so that they can get hight it's a safty thing. The canopy wants to fly at a certin glide angle. But it's just as happy 90 deg to the side as it is above. You can get into some thing called "Lock Out" Basicly it happens when you get too far to the side for what ever reason. Cross wind, collapsed cell, inatension doesn't matter. The rope beguins to pull you out from under the canopy and it can excead the athorith of your control input. At that point it bitch slaps you into the ground. Bad scene. The only way to recover is to lower the tension on the rope. Let the pilots body swing back under the canopy so that he can turn in and get more back on to center. That's what the wench, or more accerately the spool with the break is for. The driver can not react fast enough. Don't be stupid. Have you noticed that I am not one of the naysayer that shit's on crazy ideas? When I tell you you shouldn't do some thing... translation: imanent death. Yah you're getting away with it. Only a mater of time. Use a better set up. Did I miss some thing? It was low res so maybe I'm not seeing it. WHERE'S YOU FUCKING HELMIT? For that mater I'd recamend knee and elbow pads and any other armer you have. Whrist braces is you have some clean enough. Ever seen a lock out? Don't know you but you seem a little too cool to be added to my, rather long, list of friends that have died. I'm almost done with a spread sheet for you. It seems to be working fine but you and others here will have to go though and play with it looking for bugs. Busy now. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Depending on the angle of attack of the bottom skin and what line you chose to rotate the airfoil around the bottom skin may or may not be a rectangle. If the airfoil is flat on the bottom side, and a rectangular canopy, then it will be some form of trapizoid. Could be a rectangle but only if that bottom skin is parallel to the line of rotation. The top skin will just be bowed outwards a bit. It's just a bit of work when you make the patern then it's all the same and it will give you a much nicer spread on the top skin of your canopy. How important is it? That depends on your span width and line length. But right now you're bowing something that doesn't want to be bowed. The top skin, angle of the ribs, every thing gets... funky when you try to do that. The earlier comments relate to whether you try to bow the canopy at all. The earliest canopies they actually tryed to make as flat planes by varing the line set spanwise. The probblem is that this actually wants to make the canopy collaps spanwise from side to side. This led to the really low aspect ratio long line set canopies that you see in pictures. By makeing all the lines the same length you direct the lift outwards all along the arc of the canopy. What you're doing right now is trying to take the first canopy and bend it into the other. Not only does this mess with the wing but it also messes with the angle of attack spanwise across the canopy. This isn't super high speed race car shit that we're laying on you. It's actually pretty basic and comenserit with the level of tecnology that you're playing with right now. Do you have good patern paper? It feels almost like poster board. Are you hot cutting around it? Even with just a paper patern you can get away with that if you have good paper. You may have to buy a pretty big roll to get it. Ask the indutreal sewing guys. I don't recall the proper term they use a lot of shit as well but you might be able to get or order a smaller quantity. It's not hard just knuckle under and do it on your next design. I'll try to put togather a little spread sheet for you that will help you with your panel shapes. Bit busy right now but I'll see what I can do. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com