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sheeks

Wouldn’t it make more sense if all sliders were less flat?

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That's a good point, it might be highly dependent on packing inaccuracy whether it makes a difference. It's hard to imagine a scenario where the wind blows the slider downwards because of a late track. I suppose you would have to test subterminal openings and awkward body positions with awful pack jobs, that's where the REAL magic happens.

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I had a brutally hard opening three years ago.  Knocked unconscious for a few seconds, broken left riser, out of sequence cutaway, but a safe reserve land.  I spent a lot of time researching hard openings and concluded it was likely bag strip.  I'm a big guy with a faster fall rate, jumping a sabre 2 230.  PD sent me a new sabre 2, and I took a little over a year off.  All of last year, my opening were brisk bordering hard.  Often I had a sore back for days.  It made me want to quit the sport.  I contacted PD to see if a larger slider was a decent idea, but I was already kicking around a pocket slider or a domed slider.  They said they could make me one, and had a brave test jumper lead up and put some jumps on it.  I've jumped it maybe 30 times so far, and it's been a huge improvement.  I've yet to have even a hardish opening.  My openings have always been longish, even when I was getting rocked a bit, maybe 900 feet consistently, and with the dome they are 1000 or slightly over.  I'm slowly getting over my trepidation of reaching for my pc every jump.  I think all sliders should have have some curve to them, and a solid dome mandatory for bigger jumpers.  I also think hard openings that cause neck and back damage are much more endemic than people think.  Perhaps some sort of slider attachment to the stops would work as well.  A snap system or magnetic connect seems promising.  I do wish this issue could be addressed by the manufacturers as opposed to it just being chalked up to poor packing and something we have to live with.  

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19 hours ago, Elpnor said:

I had a brutally hard opening three years ago.  Knocked unconscious for a few seconds, broken left riser, out of sequence cutaway, but a safe reserve land.  I spent a lot of time researching hard openings and concluded it was likely bag strip.  I'm a big guy with a faster fall rate, jumping a sabre 2 230.  PD sent me a new sabre 2, and I took a little over a year off.  All of last year, my opening were brisk bordering hard.  Often I had a sore back for days.  It made me want to quit the sport.  I contacted PD to see if a larger slider was a decent idea, but I was already kicking around a pocket slider or a domed slider.  They said they could make me one, and had a brave test jumper lead up and put some jumps on it.  I've jumped it maybe 30 times so far, and it's been a huge improvement.  I've yet to have even a hardish opening.  My openings have always been longish, even when I was getting rocked a bit, maybe 900 feet consistently, and with the dome they are 1000 or slightly over.  I'm slowly getting over my trepidation of reaching for my pc every jump.  I think all sliders should have have some curve to them, and a solid dome mandatory for bigger jumpers.  I also think hard openings that cause neck and back damage are much more endemic than people think.  Perhaps some sort of slider attachment to the stops would work as well.  A snap system or magnetic connect seems promising.  I do wish this issue could be addressed by the manufacturers as opposed to it just being chalked up to poor packing and something we have to live with.  

Appreciate the perspective man.

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This is a good example of some one off the center of the bell curve where a larger or domed or flag slider could be handy. A better question is are the openings with dome sliders more consistent? That's a different question to whether they can fix a problem under those conditions. Let's say you plotted opening shock for a hundred openings. You get a bell curve. What we want is to avoid the out liers at the top end of the graph, they hurt. Their are a lot of decisions you can make in design, including slider size, that can shift that curve right or left. Keeping in mind that you don't want it to open too slow as well. Are domed sliders better? The question would be if they can tighten that bell curve. Make it narrower. Avoid the out liers at ether end. No more hard openings, no snivils, smaller standard deviation. There is no question that we can shift that curve right and left. That's what we have been doing with these after market sliders for years. We just needed a higher drag slider on some canopies for some jumpers. They will tell every one about how great it is because it fixed they're problem. That is not to say that it's a fundamentally better slider design. A problem we had with the canopies for our system here is that the manufacturer tryed to build the slider too big. It's actually more complicated then that, the damn thing has 22 grommets but the point stands. I built things like this for people for years but what I was doing was shifting the curve. I have no reason to beleve that it actually reduced the spread. So I can't say that a domed slider is fundamentally better then a flat slider. I can just get a bit more drag out of it.

 

Lee

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I was looking over this thread again because I've put maybe 100 jumps on my domed slider and I'm very happy with it, except for the longish openings. I chuck at 4 and am open at 2700 feet.  I've been thinking about talking to PD about putting a mesh hole in the middle to speed up the canopy inflation. This strikes my as a good design.  A domed slider to catch more air and prevent the slider from slanting down the lines, and an air feed in the middle to speed up inflation of the canopy.  Anyone have any experience with this?  RiggerLee?  I've also wondered about the friction of the lines with hard openings and whether anyone has thought of a sheath or a different material for the first foot or so of line that would impede a fast slide down of the slider.  Something that would grab the grommets a bit and allow for a momentary hesitation of the slider and prevent a slammer. By the by, I had a premature opening fairly recently in a sitfly.  It was likely caused by a loose BOC, and a bit of fabric exposed.  I usually do maybe 165 in a sit, being the big anvil that I am.  The opening was pleasantly soft.  For a big guy like me, I consider a domed slider to be a needed safety feature, and I won't jump without one.

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17 hours ago, Elpnor said:

I was looking over this thread again because I've put maybe 100 jumps on my domed slider and I'm very happy with it, except for the longish openings. I chuck at 4 and am open at 2700 feet.  I've been thinking about talking to PD about putting a mesh hole in the middle to speed up the canopy inflation. This strikes my as a good design.  A domed slider to catch more air and prevent the slider from slanting down the lines, and an air feed in the middle to speed up inflation of the canopy.  Anyone have any experience with this?  RiggerLee?  I've also wondered about the friction of the lines with hard openings and whether anyone has thought of a sheath or a different material for the first foot or so of line that would impede a fast slide down of the slider.  Something that would grab the grommets a bit and allow for a momentary hesitation of the slider and prevent a slammer. By the by, I had a premature opening fairly recently in a sitfly.  It was likely caused by a loose BOC, and a bit of fabric exposed.  I usually do maybe 165 in a sit, being the big anvil that I am.  The opening was pleasantly soft.  For a big guy like me, I consider a domed slider to be a needed safety feature, and I won't jump without one.

Here’s a question, as for the domed slider PD gave you, how different are the dimensions? Meaning is the length and width the same as the original, and how much extra fabric did they add in the middle to make it domed?

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3 hours ago, sheeks said:

Here’s a question, as for the domed slider PD gave you, how different are the dimensions? Meaning is the length and width the same as the original, and how much extra fabric did they add in the middle to make it domed?

I still have the original slider sitting in my skydive bucket.  I'll take it out and measure them both and get back to you

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On ‎3‎/‎13‎/‎2019 at 2:22 AM, Elpnor said:

".......  Perhaps some sort of slider attachment to the stops would work as well.  A snap system or magnetic connect seems promising.  I do wish this issue could be addressed by the manufacturers ....."

Performance Designs already installs slider snaps on their Zero precision landing canopy and a few tiny swooping canopies.

They are tiny plastic snaps that hold the slider against the bottom skin until line stretch.

I thought about installing magnets, but could never figure out a way to have them consistently stay attached to the proper bottom skin magnet versus each other.  

 

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On ‎9‎/‎22‎/‎2019 at 5:06 AM, Elpnor said:

"I was looking over this thread again because I've put maybe 100 jumps on my domed slider and I'm very happy with it, except for the longish openings. I chuck at 4 and am open at 2700 feet.  I've been thinking about talking to PD about putting a mesh hole in the middle to speed up the canopy inflation. This strikes my as a good design.  A domed slider to catch more air and prevent the slider from slanting down the lines, and an air feed in the middle to speed up inflation of the canopy.  ......."

 

PD already does something similar with Katana sliders. Katana sliders are slightly domed, but they also have two strips of mesh (running fore and aft)..

 

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7 hours ago, sheeks said:

what was the verdict

Sorry, Sheeks.  I didn't mean to leave you hanging.  The old slider that came with my sabre 2 230 was 22" x 30".  The new domed slider is 26" x 30" with maybe 5 inches or so of dome to it in the middle.  I wish the opening were a bit quicker though.  They always take well over a 1000 feet with typical being 1200 to 1400.  Anyone want to chime in on how to speed up the openings without sacrificing the pleasant initial hit?  5 inch hole in the middle?  Smaller domed slider?  I wouldn't go back to the original slider.  That thing would bite.

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(edited)
4 hours ago, Elpnor said:

Sorry, Sheeks.  I didn't mean to leave you hanging.  The old slider that came with my sabre 2 230 was 22" x 30".  The new domed slider is 26" x 30" with maybe 5 inches or so of dome to it in the middle.  I wish the opening were a bit quicker though.  They always take well over a 1000 feet with typical being 1200 to 1400.  Anyone want to chime in on how to speed up the openings without sacrificing the pleasant initial hit?  5 inch hole in the middle?  Smaller domed slider?  I wouldn't go back to the original slider.  That thing would bite.

That’s interesting especially considering that the sabre 2 is supposed to come with the 26 one stock, it seems like they had just sent you the wrong original slider

 

https://www.performancedesigns.com/docs/linetrims/SA_190-260_P01_P02_LTC.pdf

 

Have you tried pulling on the rear or front risers during opening? That should get the canopy open much quicker, if you haven’t tried it then go for it next time. Just “flare” the rears 2 or 3 times while it’s sniveling above

 

One question I have though, is with the domed slider does the slider often get hung up?

Edited by sheeks

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Well.  Now you got me wondering whether the big problem I was having was just too small of a slider, compounded with being a big guy.  Hmm. I'm thinking about talking to pd about it.  Still, I like the idea of a domed slider.  I think having more curve to the slider is a huge insurance to preventing hard openings.  And no, I don't ever have a problem with the slider getting hung up. It comes down alright.  It just takes a few moments of a snivel before it decides to make it down the lines.  There's been times when my slider comes down with a little too much gusto, and gets past my slinks and i have to push it up over my brake lines.  I have the standard wide risers.  I've been looking into getting pilgrim hat stops like the mini risers have.  Currently no one makes them for the wide risers, but I'm sure I'm not the only one with this problem.  

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fix for a sabre1 has long been a dome slider.  i have bought 3 from mel (mark lancaster) for different people. sabre1 is a great canopy still but first thing i would do is get rid of the existing flat or pocket slider and talk to mel.  my comp velo has a domed slider as standard.  icarus tandem canopies also.  my option is they should be used as needed.  you should only have one hard opening before making the change.  do not let the canopy hurt you.

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