Rear risers

[airdrew20012001 0]

In looking at pictures and talking to fellow swoop fiends, you notice a lot of guys going to rear risers before toggles on landing. Makes perfect sense, flatten out the whole back of the wing, less drag while moving from the dive to the plane out phase. I assume that it doesn't take much input, am I correct? Obviosely I am going to try it a ton up high, but just curious what the deal is.
"hey, how about them downwinders, huh? Goooood times.."
Drewfus McDoofus

[freeflir29 0]

From what I have seen...some do...some don't. Depends on the canopy and pilot. I would have to think it is more efficient than toggles. Yep...doesn't take much input on rear risers to slow down. I would like to learn this technique but I know it will take a lot of time and haven't been willing to give that up just yet. Some day....
"Here I come to save the BOOBIES!"

[SBS 0]

You are correct. When most people have accidents when trying to use rear risers, it is for one of two reasons...they have not executed a good approach (the rear risers should not be used to try to pull someone out of the corner), or they use the rear risers like toggles, in giving a lot of input.
It's amazing how little input you have to give on your rear risers. I litterally hook my thumbs on the risers, and barely give a little pressure outwards. Honestly, when I release the rear risers, it doesn't feel much like they move, and when I am coming into my swoop, my thought is always that I can't possibly be giving enough input, cause I barely feel it in my hands.
What I am doing at this point, is adjusting with rear risers before the swoop, and carrying it through...meaning that I am not waiting until the last second, so that I can get a feel of landing on the rear risers and still leave myself the time to stab out of a situation if need be.
Landing on rear risers is dangerous, and I have known plenty of people who have had incidents in attempting to do so...people with thousands of jumps. It's something that is, as far as I am concerned, an extremely advanced technique, that should be tried only after a great deal of experience, and then only after the best of the best approaches to start. That's the only time that it is really going to show benefit anyway.
When I say experience, I mean experience landing. Canopy control up high is great, but there is no substitute for judging an approach for landing, and doing it time and time again, and that is exactly what we are talking about...a lot of judging before and during an approach, and during the swoop itsself.
Steve

[LawnDart21 0]

I agree with SBS, while I was at Perris at the Evolution Canopy School, they emphasized that alot of people get mained and killed trying to land on rear risers. Forgive me if I butcher the explanation, but as I remember it, it went like this:
"Landing on rear risers requires very little input, yet jumpers are conditioned from their first jump to give big inputs with toggles, so they transfer that same big input philosophy over to rear risers, which is completely incorrect. Over amping your rear risers will result in a rapid change in the angle of incidence of the canopy, causing it to take on a nose high/tail low attitude, which causes a drastically higher stall speed of the canopy during the swoop. So, instead of a toggle stall at say 8 to 15 mph on a high performance landing, the same landing on a botched rear riser attempt, the canopy stalls (touches down to the ground) at 30+ mph, too fast for the jumper to run it out, hence the maiming, etc, really nasty tumbles. For any aspiring pro swoopers out there (myself included, emphasis on the "aspiring".....lol) check out Brian Burke's Canopy Flight essays on Skydive Arizona's website, it's free and it deals with angles of incidence/angle of attack, camber, etc and has a section dedicated to high performance landings. (Chapter 5).
Wow, that was a marathon post!!
"safe swoops to all, and to all a good flight!"
Tom

[SkydiveMonkey 0]

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