Valkyrie 79 / Leia 79 comparison

[danielcroft 2]

(copy pasted from The Facebooks)

Firstly, I wanted to thank Kristian for letting me jump his Leia 79, I'm such a canopy whore so having the chance to compare so directly is super, super awesome.

I've put about 40 jumps on a VK79 demo with (weirdly) 300s and loaded at ~2.2. I put 7 jumps on the Leia 79 today. I'm no competition pilot so I can't speak for that environment. The Leia is Mox's personal wing and set up for him on 25" risers. The VK is a demo with brake lines from the factory on my personal 25" risers.

Overall, the wings are very similar, you can make yourself a tin foil hat and wear it proudly if you want but they each have their own character IMO.

The openings, for me are ball park the same. Both nice, generally smooth and on heading. They're about the same in that regard.

In deep control input, the Leia feels a little more stable - I mean I'm holding in deep brakes or rears until the wing starts to want to stall. The Leia wanted to sink whereas the VK started to seek a bit.

Rear riser barrel rolls are funner on the VK - seem to respond a little quicker or something, I'm not sure I can explain it very well but I enjoy doing them on the VK more than the Leia.

Harness is about the same, very responsive on both (compared to my VC84)

Front riser pressure is a little lighter on the VK than the Leia but I'd say that the Leia has a little more power on rear risers and yet the VK shuts down better.

I'm doing my 270ºs from the same altitude on both and getting similarly good results. Again, I'm not a competition pilot so I don't really need every single foot possible or a faster time that I might get out of one wing or the other if I had the chance to dial it in. My goals in swooping are to have good, clean landings that I can stand up.

As far as I know, it's the standard Leia, not hybrid but I'll need to check.

7 jumps on the Leia79: https://vimeo.com/album/3319470
All the jumps (so far) on the VK79 and 3 on the VK75 (orange risers): https://vimeo.com/album/3291688

Edit Both have the factory removable slider but not full RDS.

[Bufobufo 0]

Thank you for some awesome clips, damn sexy canopy.
https://vimeo.com/album/3291688/video/122951116
Scary flyby at 0m:50s into video 1410 as you wave to deploy :P

[danielcroft 2]

Bufobufo

Scary flyby at 0m:50s into video 1410 as you wave to deploy :P

I thought it was pretty fun...

[skydivah1 0]

You mentioned that you're using the same setup altitude for both wings - just curious what that is? Did you have to bump it up from the Comp?

[danielcroft 2]

I'm doing my 270ºs on the VK79 & Leia 79 from 850ft. I do my 270ºs on the VC84 from 800ft. That's at Skydive Elsinore, though which is at ~1300ft so, I drop down a bit for sea level DZs.

[Hantzt 0]

Thank you Daniel for this informations. I was waiting for that a long time...

So I think the end of the story is, that the canopies are nearly the same and there won´t be a big difference, if you are not used to one of them. Right?

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[danielcroft 2]

That's certainly my impression from the 40+ jumps on the VK and 7 on the Leia. 7 jumps isn't anywhere near enough to dial in a canopy (nor am I trying to max anything out anyway) but they felt very similar.

I think if you were a competitive canopy pilot, you could make the argument in favor of the Hybrid Leia but, I haven't jumped one yet (stay tuned!) so I couldn't tell you how much difference the sail cross bracing or power band (are they still doing that?) make for someone who's a fun jumper.

Either way, if someone's unhappy with either wing, I'm not sure I'd trust their opinion.

[danielcroft 2]

As it turns out, Mox's Leia is the HYBRID Leia.

[danielcroft 2]

Just in case anyone's interested, I've had the chance to jump a VK75 3 more times, twice with full RDS and, did 2 more on a Hybrid Leia 74 (also jumped the Optimum Main 126 which is always fun).

I'd say that the Hybrid Leia seems to be a higher performance wing as the loading goes up (I'm ~2.3 on the 75 & 74) but the VK still shuts down better. Had a lot of fun with both of these wings. The openings of the VK75 with the full RDS were super super nice and it was really interesting to see how much the full RDS changes the feel of the wing. I'm not maxing anything out by any means but definitely felt the difference. With a bit of help, I've been able to isolate some issues with my swoop technique that I need to sort out which is great as well.

Still happy to have the VK79 on order and really looking forward to having my own. Until then, I'm back on the VC84.