davelepka

When you say in front, I'm guessing you mean with your hands close to your body, right? The idea is to pull down on the toggle until they are just above your belly button, then if you point your elbows upwards, you're in position to push down on the toggle to complete the flare. Generally, this gives you more leverage/strength. Keep in mind that your student canopies have very high toggle pressure due to their size. It will become easier to falre as the canopies get a little smaller. This is especially true if you are a smaller person because everyone jumps the same student rigs. Once your instrucotrs start to downsize your canopies, you'll feel the difference. Keep hitting the gym, and sooner or later that and the smaller canopies will meet in the middle, and you'll have no problems with your toggle pressure. If your muscles are sore, that means that they're growing, so that's a good thing. DOn't mistake that for pain/injury, but sore muscles are a sign of progress.

Indeed, but unlike a future jury, I'm willing to give them the benefit of doubt and assume that it would have gotten out if this had lead to an actual incident. Even if they had tried to cover it up in the first place, I'd have to think that this thread might bring an incident to light in one way or another.

I wish I had read your other post before replying to the post you wrote to me. I would have just combined everytihg into one response, either way... Besides, are you about to claim you have never made a mistake? That you are perfect and knowone has ever been put at risk due to anything you have done? Knowingly or unknowingly you have made mistakes, will continue too, and have and will continue to put others at risk........ Your human! So should we all look back into your history and find something to make an example out of you for. Maybe at some point you pulled lower than the SIM allows for your license. So lets pull your ratings and license so that we can make an example out of you because if we don't then people will know that they can pull as low as they want and get away with it because you did a long time ago.*** This really the example you want to use? Pulling low can be a mistake. You can lose track of alititude, and end up in the basement. It can and does happen to almost every jumper at some point. This should not warrant any disciplinary action. Tandem CRW is not an accident. I couldn't accidentally pull high with my tandem, fly directly behind him waiting for him to kick himself into a half line twist, and dock on the tandem student. That doesn't happen accidentally, and it doesn't happen accidentally for three years running. That is preplanned, very intentional behavior, all performed with an unknowing, non-skydiver as a passenger, and you really think that a solo jumper accidentally pulling low is comperable? Just wondering, have you noticed any high-time, rated skydivers in on this discussion who seem to think this is OK? With the exception of their fellow staffers at STC, any other 'qualified' jumpers who think they should keep their ratings? Answer those two questions, and ask yourself is there's anything you could learn from the answers.

Look man, there are three years ('07, '08, and '09) of videos up on Youtube showing these guys breaking the rules, so we (and a jury of our peers) know for sure that they did engage in such behavior for three years running. You may claim that the DZ has cleaned up their act, but how would you prove that in a court of law? Let's keep in mind that this would only come up in the wake of an actual incident at this DZ (and this has always been my problem with the status quo). All you have is your 'word' that the DZ had cleaned up it's act, but the plantiffs attorney has three years worth of videos to establish a 'pattern of behavior' followed by the incident that brought the lawsuit itself. Who is the jury going to believe? I hate to break it you, there is no 'current' data to reference. No DZ anywhere documents it's every jump and action on video in order to prove their regular safety practices. What they do is rely on a lack of data to illustrate their safety record. No past incidents to reference, no student injuries, no disciplinary actions against it's instructors or pilots from their respective sanctioning bodies. This is what points toward a DZ that was the victim of a truely random accident. On the other hand, a laundry list of incidents or injuries, revoked ratings for staff or pulled tickets for pilots, or even video proof of established and long standing rule breakng are all the things that earse that 'lack of data'. The presence of data itself is what puts the DZ in the hole if an incident and the ensuing lawsuit should occur.

This is true, but you do get to choose who is allowed to board your airplane, and this is where my original point come into play. You have prior knowledge of the activities these jumpers engaged in (establishing a pattern of behavoir) but you continued to fly those jumpers so they could continue to act as tandem instructors. If there is an accident, even one that it truely accidental, that 'pattern of behavoir' is not going to be helpful in the courtroom. In terms of your 'responsibility', you are responsible for ensuring that reserve repacks are all in date. If there was a ramp check, and it was discoved that several rig on board were out of date, you might get off with a warning. You could plea ignorance, and offer up that manifest i ssupposed to check that sort of thing, and you just plain didn't know. If there was another ramp check the next year, or an actual incident involving an out-of-date rig, your plea of ignorance isn't going to get you very far. The first time was one thing, but there is now a public record of the first time, and you have no defence for the second occurence. Let's be clear on this - nobody is pointing any fingers at you (yet), and I am not suggesting that you, the DZO, or the instructors invovled are bad people. I'm just pointing out the tough spot that they (the instructors) have put you and the DZO in, and the fallout from that position if an incident should occur. To be fair, there was no harm done in the course of their behavoir. They did it, and pulled it off without incident every time. However, they did film it, and allow it to become a part of the public record, and that is the problem you have today.

What you need to do is call the rigger and see if he's available on Sat morning. You may be able to arrnage to meet him at the DZ at 7am or 8am, by which point you could be in the air by 10am. You may also find, that much like yourself, he was hoping to spend Sat jumping, and not going to be able to help you at all. In those cases, many riggers will do rigging Sat night and early Sun morning, so they still get to jump Sat/Sun. You may find yourself in the air on Sunday. The rigger may also have a full book for Sat. A good portion of rigging work is, much like your assemble/pack, done on a 'schedule'. Almost everyone needs their stuff done by a certain time. I wouldn't discount the value of bribery. An extra $50 might get the rigger to skip a few loads, or bump your rig up to the top of the pile. Just buy the Cypres. Ever since they put the limited lifespan on them, the aftermarket value has been set in stone. Buy a new one, and it will cost you $175-ish per year for 12 years. Anytime you want to sell it during that time, you'll get our money back minus the $175/year for however many years you've owned it. Have a look at the market for used Cypres, and you'll see that the supply is slim. People buy and keep their Cypres, and any that come up for sale are gone in a hurry.

You're talking about two different things. The top comment is in reference to leaning forward in the harness during landing. Leaning forward in the harness is primarily for swooping. For the purpose of this discussion, 'swooping' includes any landing with a plane out across the ground of more than 20 feet or so, even if it's the result of a straight in approach. The idea is that you're moving at a high rate of speed, and going to attempt to transfer from flying to running/walking. The natural position of a person running is to be leaning forward, so if you replicate that in your harness, the transition will be that much smoother. The previously mentioned benefit of drag reduction comes much further down the line on much smaller canopies. There are 10 different things you need to do right before leaning forward in your harness is going to get you any further. That's no reason not to practice it, but in reality it's just one drop in a bucket full of things you have to do really nail a swoop. This doesn't apply to larger canopies because the touchdown speed will be low enough that your posture at that time isn't a big deal. The other issue, of loosening your chest strap under canopy applies to all canopies, but like anything having to do with canopies, the smaller ones will respond more to this than the larger. Unlike leaning forward in your harness, larger canopies will benefit from this, regardless of the pilot's level of performance.

I'm sure there are lot's of great suits available out there. In reality, most suits only see a couple hundered jumps at best, so the ability to last for 1000 jumps might not be all that important. Either way, Flite Suit always takes good care of me, and their products have always exceeded my expectations, so I support their business and reccomend them to anyone looking for a suit. I do the same for PD canopies and Infinity containers. Great people and great products all around.

The pilot in this case was determined NOT to be careless, reckless, or against industry standards by a jury of his peers, in accordance with the legal process of the US. Please do not attempt to catagorize him as otherwise.

Just a few words of caution for you. If there was to be an incident involving a tandem student, you as the pilot would be personally named on the lawsuit. Given the past events, and that between Youtube and this thread, they are all now public record, if the incident invovled any of the players mentioned in this thread, or involved any sort of other behavoirs counter to the written regs, that lawsuit would be VERY hard to defend. In either case (invovling the players in this thread, or counter to other tandem regs) the presence of this thread would indicate a pattern of willfull disreagrd for the written rules, and safety in general. "Ted the tandem instrucotor can be seen on YouTube in several videos engaging in dangerous behavoir in years past, yet the DZ kept Ted on as an employee, and now Sally the student is dead" or "STC has a proven history of breaking the rules, and it's all up on Youtube. That rule breaking contnued on until the incident that brought us to court today. These people believed that their customers safety had no value, let's prove them wrong." In either case, you can see that this thread has put you (the DZ) in a position. The prudent move would be (of course) toe the line, and do everything by the book. Additionally, distance the DZ from the players identified in this thread. Even in the case of an actual 'accident', the groundwork has been laid for a slamdunk lawsuit involving these employees. This thread identifies them as 'rule breakers', and this would surely not be missed by the plantiff's attoney. You might be right, don't pull their ratings. Fire them for sure, and hope that any future DZs they work for realize the risk they are taking employing any of these people in the future, not because they are unsafe, or bad people, but because they have already lost the 'benefit of doubt' a jury might afford an instructor who does not appear on Youtube repeatedly breaking the rules. Remember that you, as a commercial Twin Otter pilot, have far more time and money invested in your ticket than any of the other employees at the DZ, please do whatever you need to protect that.

Just something to keep in mind, I have a Flite Suit that I still jump that I have owned longer than any of those other companies have been in business.

That's not the message. The message is that if you're going to accept a piece of advice, just accept it and be done with it. Every time you add any time of caveat to your acceptance, it makes it look like you don't really believe the advice given, and that maybe you're just accpeting it to 'tell them what they want to here'. Let's say you do have a problem understanding how swoopers can have a whole discipline, with it's own forum, based on what you see as a practice that is counter to USPA reccomendations. What you do is go to that forum, and ask that question. Then it seems legit. When you throw that in with this discussion, and you suggest that the adivce being given is somehow tainted because the people giving it are swoopers (and for the record, I'm not sure how you come to the conclusion that every person advising you is a swooper) it does seem like you're trying to discredit the advice. It's right back to, "OK, I guess that's the way it is, BUT......". The rules in skydiving are made for everyone. If someone with any sort of status in a given discipline offers you some ground rules for that discipline, listen and follow that advice. There are those who think the rules are for evreyone esle, and we call those guys DGIT, which stands for Dead Guy In Training. What make sit worse, is that we all know a DGIT or two that are still breathing, and some that are even still jumping. All they do is add fuel to the fire for the future DGITs to carry on as if the rules aren't made for them. I'm not saying that your a DGIT, but some of the things you say make you sound like you're teetering on the edge.

For starters, don't jump a new suit that doesn't fit. Any reputable manufacturer will alter a brand new suit so it fits properly at no cost. Bite the bullet, and ship it back. I always pay the rush charge for new suits. It's like $40, and it gets you your suit in a week or two. At that point, if it doesn't fit you haven't been waiting that long anyway, so sending it back isn't a tough choice. I've also found that after paying the rush charge for the suit, they tend to rush the alteration as well. Next, external pockets only owrk if they have a zipper and a snap to hold the zipper tab shut. Anything less than that will come open sooner or later in freefall, and eject the contents. I'm a fan of Flite Suit. They make good stuff.

Here we go again. You almost get it, but then you have a 'but this is why it doesn't seem right' to toss in there. Low turns are stupid, and swooping is not making a low turn. A low turn would be one that your canopy cannot recover from before impact, or one which requires more input than the pilot intended to prevent an impact. Properly executed swoops don't fall into either of those catagories. I know my swoops certainly don't, and if you have jumpers at your DZ who claim to be swoopers, but their landings fit the above description, then you are 100% correct to be weary of any advice they give you. They are particpating in a dangerous activty for which they lack the skill and understanding to do it properly. How do these people end up in this situation? By not listening to the adivce of others, and insisting that long standing norms don't apply to them. Get the hint?

But wait, there's more... Make sure you leave extra time in the plane to check your wing attachment points, swoop cords, and that everything is properly routed. On the first few jumps, when you don't have a camera, use the time you would use to check your video gear. Once you bring the camera back, just plan on the extra time. Swoop cords ALWAYS go over gloves, never under. In truth, I don't even like them over gloves because the gloves can make them harder to slip off when needed, but if you must wear gloves, swoops always go on top. On that subject, when you set your swoop cords, make sure you can reach up and grab a riser, or even a toggle with them still on. If you have a brake fire, and need to counter steer or unstow the other one, or if there is traffic and you need to make an avoidance manuver, you need to be able to reach your risers immediately. Many large wing suits will have an adjustment at the lower buckle. If you find that you cannot reach the risers with the swoops set long, try to lengthen the lower adjustment until you can get to them.

This is as wrong as wrong gets. Combined with the other comments you have made in this post, I'm hoping that you have been pulling everyone's chain, and you know that what you are saying is incorrect. If you honestly believe the things you are posting, I would urge you to take some sort of basic aerodynamics class, or a canopy control class. Your ideas about how things work up there are incorrect, and it would benefit you greatly to be operating with a correct set of ideas. No joke.

Where to buy them? Any good suit manufacturer will offer a range of sizes for camera wings. Tony, Bev, Flite Suit, etc all make good stuff. Finding a set of big wings is one thing, flying them is another. Things to think about - You may not be able to buy a jacket. The largest wings will all attach below the harness, down on your leg. You might be able to strap them to a pair of freefly pants, but that would be a mistake. Get a full suit, and get the booties. Your a bigger guy, and will be able to use the drag/drive of the booties. If you do get a jacket with wings that attach to the harness, you will be giving up a lot of wing area, and the booties as well. Beyond that, you need to keep in mind that a suit with big wings and botties will represent a MAJOR change to your skydive. Your range, and the speed at which you can move around within that range will be much different. Start off by donning your suit and rig on the ground, and have an experinced camera guy help you set the length of the swoop cords, and any other adjustments available. Make sure you do this with the legstraps/cheststrap tightened down in jump configuration. Next, do practice touches, and pay attention to how the wing interacts with your arm/hand/hackey during the process. Note the 'hole' in the wing that goes from below the rig's lateral down to the lower wing attachment point. You need to be sure that your pull technique is such that you are always careful not to reach through that 'hole' when you grab your hackey. That situation will quickly turn into a nasty pilot chute in tow, or horseshoe malfunction. Repeat the procedure with your emergency procedures. Note how the wings could interfere with your handles. You may not even be able to see them at all depending on the postition of your wings at the time. Look at the wing attachment points, and figure out how to unhook everything once you're under canopy. You'll need to take the swoop cords off, and unhook the wings. Not doing this will negatively effect the flight of your canopy. Now you need to do a few jumps with the suit. No camera. No other jumpers. Spend your time doing practice touches, and practicing your emergency procedures. Note how you have to collapse the opposite wing of the hand you are using. You cannot reach for your hackey with your right hand, and have your left wing inflated. It just won't work. Do some solos where you work the range of the wings. Just get used to the feeling of opening them up and floating, and then tucking them in to speed up. Going slow is easy, just like with out a suit, big open body position. Speeding up is a little different, more or less you touch your elbows to your ribs. This will fold up the wings and keep them out of the wind. Every speed in between is just a matter of pulling your arms in or out. Don't make the mistake of trying to speed up by arching harder with the wings out. You won't win that battle. Keep a relaxed arch, and tuck the wings up to go fast. Do a few jumps with one, experienced jumper (1000+ jumps). Have them lay a base, and you can work the suit in front of them to see what it looks like in relation to another jumper. Also work on swooping down to them with the booties and see how they make you go, and how the wings can make you stop. These jumps are still without a camera. Now do a couple jumps flying the camera slot for a small RW group. 4 way or smaller, and all jumpers should be more experienced than you. Stick with this until you can fly the slot, in control, from exit to opening, still without a camera. Now strap on the camera (video only) and stick with the small RW groups until you can produce a solid video from exit to opening. Now you're ready to set yourself loose on the rest of the world. Understand that the suit is a major factor, and one you need to account for. It will take you 8 or 10 jumps to move through the progression I've outlined above, but it's well worth it.

You already knew that, you just didn't apply it to parachutes. In your jet, you don't corss your arms and put your feet flat on the floor once the wheels touch down, you keep flying (driving?) the plane. I'm sure you're on top of it until you set the parking brake, but you especially pay attention until you're slow enough to get on the brakes and stop the thing in less than 50 ft. Same thing with a parachute. If you're moving fast enough (or there is enough wind) that the canopy can still lift all (or most) of your weight, you need to keep 'flying' the canopy. It's not just for swoopers either, after you land on a windy day, you need to fly the canopy into the ground and make sure it's contained before you take your attention away from it.

Best guess on paragliders would be the flat trim with less weight hanging on the front risers. Also, I would have to think that the high aspect ratio isn't helping either. If you think about the difference between the span and the chord, pulling a riser will have that massive span being pulled down against the short chord. If sort of makes sense that you could overpower the chord and fold the leading edge under. As far as speed wings go, I'm not sure. I know they have trim tabs, but what I don't remember is if the canopy is trimmed flat and the tabs make it steeper, or the other way around. Either way, when in the flat trim config, it would be the same as the PG canopy, with light front risers and rearward weight bias. In terms of the aspect ratio, they're similar to skydiving canopies, so that shouldn't be a factor. It's possible that the manufacturers are used to that condition (they do build the PG canopies) and never sought to address it. If they're building these as an offshoot of PG, they're probably doing it using PG type techniques in mind.

If you allowed the canopy to actually stall, that would just be pilot error. If you touched down (even on roller skates) before it stalled, it wouldn't stall because the WL would drop off dramaticly once your weight was on your skates. You would have to shift your focus from piloting the canopy to kiting the canopy. If you watch the videos of guys landing on the back of a truck or boat, any situation where the pilot stops moving but the canopy still has airspeed, you'll see that they imediately put the toggles all the way up and some times even apply just a touch of double front risers to keep the canopy flying and overhead.

Of course. All of the aircraft info was just for reference, in reality ram air canopies are very limited in their capabilities. If you look at early ram air wings, and the JVX, they are more alike than they are different. Same concept, just different shape and materials. The real problem is the deployment. In creating a wing that can withstand the deployment, and be reliable in the deployment, you really put up a lot of barriers in other areas. It's a life-saving device first, and fun-creating device after that. While it would open up some possibilities, the general idea in swooping is to go as fast as possible close to the ground. Because of this, you have certain limitations in terms of safety and reliablilty that you would be wise to heed. Keep in mind that the state of swooping today is a 20 year long progression from toggle whipping a Sabre or PD 9-cell to where we are today. If you want to rewrite the rules by making a major change to the game, those can be dangerous waters. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by getting away from skydiving, but if you're suggesting that swooping should be based on some ground launched basis, I have to disagree. This is based mainly on the fact that I live in Ohio, where the land is as flat as can be. Without a plane, there's no where in the state you could get enough altitude for me to 450 my Velo, and I'm not ready to accept that.

I'm not sure what you're getting at, but increasing the AOA of the canopy will increase drag, regardless of what input you use. Rear risers may induce less drag, but there is a drag pentaly none the less. Also, keep in mind that increasing the AOA on a canopy also has the affect of reducing thrust. Canopies use gravity to create thrust, and they do it by virtue of their trimmed glide angle, whatever that may be. It's essentailly the hill the canopy is flying down. When you increase the AOA (nose up) the grade of the hill is reduced, and so it the speed (thrust) the canopy will have in going down that hill. To a degree what you are saying is the reason swoopers start off on the rear risers. They do operate in a higher speed range than the toggles, and at the outset, will provide a greater lift at a smaller drag penalty. Eventaully, you are pulling so much of the rear half of the canopy into the airstream, that the drag level increases very rapidly, and you apporach the stall. Keep in mind that when you pull in the rears, it's not the entire wing pitching up the AOA. The canopy from the A lines back to the B line does not move, it's the canopy from the B lines back that is introduced into the airstream. So in addition to creating drag, you're deforming the wing along the chord line. In theory, if you didn't have B lines, or if the B lines were attached to the rear risers, you could apply rear riser input, the AOA would pivot around the A line attachment point, leaving the wing more intact during the input. Of course, this would create all sorts of other problems, but it would eliminate the chord-wise distortion you get with rear riser input. The basic idea is that with an unpowered craft with only one flight mode, there is no free lunch. If you want to build a faster canopy, it will be fast in both high speed flight and low speed flight (as in a high stall speed). If you build a slow canopy, it will be slow across the board, especailly when setting it down in the middle of the peas. This is why airplanes have flaps, slats, and in some cases moveable wings (think F-14 or B-1 bomber). In order to make these planes do everyting the mission required, the size, shape and position of the wing needed to change mid-flight to achieve those requirements. To get a plane the size and weight of an F-14 on and off of a carrier, and then have it break the sound barrier in between is quite an accomplishment, especially 40 years ago when it was designed.

Yes, it has, but it's not really used in the manner I was discussing. I've flown speed flying wings with the trim tabs on the riser, but my impression is that they are not intended for use during flight, or if they are, it's only for adjustment at non-critical phases of flight (as-in not close to the ground at high speeds). Although I'm not familiar with the details, I know that paragliders take it even further, but again, these systems are more complex, and not designed for adjustment mid-landing. There are all sorts of things you could do with a canopy up high. CREW guys have used trim tabs on front risers for years, and I know a couple of CREW camera guys who use toggles on their feet attached to the front riser to allow them to stay with formation without bruning out their arm muscles. What I'm talking about is an adjustment that could be made to shift from a high speed config to a low speed config mid-swoop, to allow the swooper to take advatage of that speed range and convert it to distance. Everything you can do at altitude doesn't really interest me. If I want to go faster, I'll jump smaller canopy. If I want to go slower, I'll jump a bigger one. In either case, I'll be making a comprimise when it comes to my swoop, but that's life. Now if there was a way to extend my swoop, now you're talking. Better yet, what if you could deploy and fly back to the DZ in a low speed config, shift into the high speed config for the dive and first part of the swoop, then switch back to the low speed config for the extended swoop and shut down, that would be the best. I could get out last with a tandem video, make it back to the DZ, and lay down 500 footers all day long. It's fun to dream.

No. When you use both fronts, you do re-trim the canopy for higher airpseed and a longer dive, which is good, but as soon as you release the risers you return the standard trim of the canopy, which in terms of utilizing speed is bad. To really equate to a 'flap system' you would need to be able to take advatage of the high speed configuration into the swoop (plane out) itself, and then switch to the low speed configuration. Any inputs you apply to a standard trim canopy during the apporach/turn itslef is just a regular swoop on a regualr canopy. You can achieve greater speed/range by simply becoming a better pilot and flying a better approach/turn. The idea of a 'flap system' and building a canopy with a high speed config and a low speed config is taking it to the next step. If the pilot is already performing at 100%, the 'flap system' would serve to offer a canopy with a greater speed range. Even then, it would be up to the pilot to perform at a level high enough to take advantage of the new capability of the canopy, which in itself might actaully be another 'problem' to add to the others I outlined in the other post. All in all this is really just theoretical, as the idea itself goes against the grain of so many basic rules of safety. The old 'keep it simple, stupid' principal is one that always seems to come out on top in skydiving, and any sort of in-flight canopy retrimming system would be anything but simple. Beyond that, the idea that it would need to be operated (and counted on) at a very critcal phase of flight (low altitude, high speed) makes it a bad idea in general. I would be VERY interested to see anything close to this anyone has built or tested (even at high altitudes) and even more interested to see the guy with the giant nutsack who would actaully swoop with it.

Kind of, sort of, and not really. Flaps on an airplane effectively increase the wing area, and accordingly decrease the wing loading which, as we know, also decreases the stall speed. I think the technical name for them is Fowler flaps, and they actaully extend to the rear as well as deflecting downward, and it's this rearward extension that provides the increase in wing area. When you pull down the toggles on your canopy, there is no rearward extension, only downward deflection so there is no increase in wing area. Also, when you deploy the flaps on an airplane, you retain control of the pitch attitude via the elevator. The flaps only control the airspeed aspect of the aircraft, and while they do have an effect on the pitch attitude, the pilot can counter that. As such, the pilot retains the ability to flare the aircraft seperate from the flap deployment. With a canopy, the tail deflection provided by the brakes is more similar to the elevator of an airplane. Unlike with flaps, you do not have continued control of the pitch attitude after you have employed the flaps. Pulling the brakes causes the canopy to slow down due to the drag of introducing the tail into the airstream and from the increase in drag due to the increased angle of attack as the nose pitches up. With an aircraft, the flaps are deployed well before the flare (ideally), allowing the airspeed and pitch attitude to stabilize well up the final approach. Now the airplane is a different flying machine, with a slower top speed and a slower stall speed, just what you want when you're landing. I have thought long and hard (as I'm sure may others have) of a way to incporporate an actual flap system into a canopy. I ran into several problems, with the majority of them being related to swooping. Non-swoopers have no use for flaps. Indeed it would allow them to fly at higher airpseeds up high and then slow it down for the landing approach, but you could get the almost the same result by just developing the skills to fly a faster canopy and then downsizing. So now we're left with the swoopers. The only way a flap system would work is if it could be deployed at some point during the swoop itself. You would want the canopy to fly in the high speed configuration during the approach, the actual turn itself, and the early part of the swoop. Once you approached the stall speed of the high speed configuration, you would deploy the flaps, and switch the canopy to a low speed configuration. Now you have a canopy with a lower stall speed (which would fly further and longer before reaching that speed) but you would retain control over the canopy with your risers/toggles. The idea is very similar to using the rear risers to land. You begin your swoop with the rear risers, whcih provide less drag but have a higer stall speed. Once you apporach that speed, you transfer to toggles which may introduce more drag but with a lower stall speed. So where the rears were getting ready to stop flying, the toggles have another chunk of airspeed to go before the canopy is ready to stall. The only way to do 'flaps' on a canopy would be some sort of trim tabs, probably on the front risers. The trim would be steep as hell for the high speed configuration. It would allow the canopy to dive longer and build more speed. Once you build that speed, and get the canopy down on the deck, you would release the trim tabs, and allow the front risers to extend. Now the canopy would be trimmed flatter, which would allow you to fly further with less input. The distance you went before adding input would be the benefit of the system. The major problems, and they are major, are twofold. One, is how to activate the system itself at the right time. It would be at a busy time during the swoop when the pilot is already busy and has both hands occupied. The other is that if the release wasn't symetrical in any way, now you're on the deck going fast as hell with a canopy with a built in turn of some degree. This is why the flaps on an airplane are deployed well up the final approach - the pilot has the time to do the work, and if there is a problem, they have the altitude to do a go around or otherwise deal with the problem.