Spraying F111 fabric with silicon?

[fudd 0]

How did anybody dig up this old thread

Anyway, I got myself a brand new Hornet instead of messing with silicon stuff. Recently I sold the Hornet bought me a brand new Sabre2

There are only 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

[nael 0]

I'm going to bring this old thread up for a third time just to see if anyone else can add anything to it.

I did a canopy course with Brian Germain on the weekend and although my landings are good, he told me it was obvious I was jumping an F111 canopy and suggested I spray it with food grade silicon. He explained that it would be flying like a ZP, different flare point and all that.

As for my canopy, it's a PD 170 with about 180 jumps on it. It flies ok and lands ok but obviously that's not going to be the case for too much longer. This sounds like a good idea and I trust Brian's judgement, I just want to know other people's expreiences with this before I decide if I will do it or not.

For other people's info Brian told me he and a few other people did this years ago with some old student canopies and they got another 10 years out of those canopies. He said it will make the canopy fly and flare like a ZP but has been known to cause harder openings but modifying the slider seemed to fix that problem in most cases. He also said to test the silicon on some old F111 fabric before applying it to the canopy as in some cases it turned sticky and stuck the canopy together which is obviously not a good thing at pull time.

Any personal experiences would be appreciated.

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