I Watched Andy Farrington and Shalan Alman jumping the XAOS 27 today. They were also ground launching them off a ski mountain this week. Rad video of that. They are heading for the bladerunning tomorrow, then to Venezuala for the swoop thing.
Cool parachute. They seem to like it, think it has a longer surf, good openings too. They were dinking around, changing the trim a bit today. Just seeing what it would do if it were trimmed up a bit more. In that config, at similar wingloading it seemed to out drive the VX, in rear risers.
That prototype is currently with Bryan Harrell at Skydive Elsinore. Eric was loading it MUCH too heavily to do any real evaluation. That canopy will not be flown in the Blade Raid.
I checked it out. It isn't a "quad" cell. It has one rib per cell, same as a standard 7-cell. The crossbracing attaches between the center rib and the load bearing rib. If you took out one rib per cell on an FX and centered the other rib, leaving the x-braces in place, it would look like the new Atair canopy. I didn't get to see it fly, Eric chopped it and it spent the weekend on the floor.
"Sort of like if you put cross members in a standard 7 cell, without the square non loaded cells?"-
Right, put cross bracing in an elliptical 7 cell that attaches at the bottom skin at the load bearing rib and at the upper upper skin between the load bearing and non-load bearing rib. That is the design. I'm not buying the "quad" cell stuff.
