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skydiverek

Are there plastic snaps on new Velocities?

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also could someone give explanations on the use and the reason for these snaps



There are plasic snaps on the bottom skin of the canopy and also on the four corners of the slider. During packing, with the slider all the way up and quartered, the snaps line-up and snapping it into place just helps to hold it in position.

As to why, and why only on the Velos, I have no 'official' info, and haven't even 'heard' anyting, but I have a guess. My guess is two-fold, for starters, in case you didn't know, Velos have fairly large sliders in comparison to the size of the canopy, and that's because they would hammer open with a smaller slider. So in order to prevent them from hammering open (even occasionally), they snap the slider in palce.

My other guess is that it has something to do with the nature of an 'uncontrolled' opening on a highly loaded, high performance canopy. A high WL and HP canopy will 'magnify' any problems during the opening, and a spinner/mal on a little Velo can be a big deal, so the snaps are other layer of 'protection' from that.

Back to confirmed, PD approved news (at least as of last year) you can have snaps added to a Velo that was built without them. I was offered snaps during a reline this time last year, I declined, but the offer was there.

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Actually, it does help people who don't pack carefully enough to keep their slider in place - and you'd be surprised how many of those there are.

So, maybe it DOES work for them ;)



So it works for you, then...


:D
--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

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Actually, it does help people who don't pack carefully enough to keep their slider in place - and you'd be surprised how many of those there are.

So, maybe it DOES work for them ;)



I think Ian's talking about me. King of the trash pack, but still never packed my own mal.:o

I guess I should be glad my new 103 has snaps.
Chuck Akers
D-10855
Houston, TX

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When I started demoing Velos last summer I got a demo (Standard Velo 111) from PD that had the snaps. I used them on some jumps, didn't on others. Didn't notice any difference. I wound up buying a 103, have an RDS slider for it. Snaps on slider, not on canopy. I talked to PD, they told me the snaps were developed for the Comp Velo and that they had started putting them on all the Velos now. As a rigger I suspect they started this due to the extra weight/stiffness of the RDS (cutaway cables in the lead and trail edges) slider. In my experience (30 plus jumps with the Velo 103/RDS setup) it is (somewhat) harder to control the silder in the packjob because it doesn't like to lay flat inside the canopy. I have had one hard opening out of all of them, I know it was because of lacking slider control. The easy answer is taking care in packing, the snaps don't contribute a lot in my opinion. PD knows a hell of a lot more about Velo's than I do, though-so whatever...

-Harry
"Sometimes you eat the bar,
and well-sometimes the bar eats you..."

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If you used the Lookma RDS instead of the one PD "forces" you to have (when you buy a comp VC), then you wouldn't have any of them problems to begin with, thus no need for snaps. Plus you'd be able to remove it quicker under canopy due to it having only 1 handle in the middle. :P

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