Flat Turns - Rear risers vs. Toggles

[Stumpy 256]

Quick question – I was playing last weekend with rear riser turns and flat toggle turns, which would be “flatter” losing less altitude? The riser turn felt flatter to me but it seems the general advice when you need to make a turn a little too low is to use the method in Bill Von’s article with the toggles. Is this better or is it a speed thing (i.e. the riser turns have a slower rate of rotation so therefore aren’t so useful in an emergency?)

Cheers for your advice

Never try to eat more than you can lift

[johnny1488 1]

I've found (on my canopy) that I do the flatest turn in pretty deep brakes and the turn done with the harness.

Johnny
--"This ain't no book club, we're all gonna die!"
Mike Rome

[Rdutch 0]

Turns done with the toggles definitely loose a lot less altitude. Pull your toggles down till you almost stall, you are decending at a slow rate. Now Pull your risers till you almost stall, your moving forward at a higher rate than with the toggles, but decending faster. Risers stall with a lot less input also. The advantage of the risers is you have a faster forward speed, which helps in a bad spot, but if your low enough to need a flat turn, you should be concentrating on your toggles anyway.

It feels different when you do a high speed turn, Toggles definitely will turn your canopy faster and steeper than rears, but the extra power they add to the turn, also is power you use to slow your decent.

I suggest you play with all your control's, Toggles, rears and fronts, learn what you can do and then learn how to use it. But as far as flat turns when needed stick with toggles. The advantages of using all your controls efficiently definitely helps when flying your canopy with other people under canopies. But that is a different area all together.
Good luck.

Ray
Small and fast what every girl dreams of!

[parachutist 1]

Quote

Quick question – I was playing last weekend with rear riser turns and flat toggle turns, which would be “flatter” losing less altitude? The riser turn felt flatter to me but it seems the general advice when you need to make a turn a little too low is to use the method in Bill Von’s article with the toggles. Is this better or is it a speed thing (i.e. the riser turns have a slower rate of rotation so therefore aren’t so useful in an emergency?)

Cheers for your advice

Brake toggles slow you down (hence the name "brake"). So when you're doing braked turns as a part of a Braked Flight approach, you have the added benefit of your flight speed being slowed down... When your flight speed is slowed down, then everything is easier to predict, and problems are easier to deal with because you have more time to react.

Rear risers do not slow you down nearly as much as brake toggles... and if you pull them down far enough to actually slow your flight speed down, then for most canopies you're already at the stall point, and this is not a good place to be when you're landing off in an unfamiliar area in an emergency situation. *thud*
Chris