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dhammons

Mals on Cobalts?

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The causes of malfunctions on any canopy are
1 unstability at pull time
2 poor packing
3 worn out gear

Maybe he should refer to these before blaming any canopy.


You forgot one:

4. Pure random chance.
Sky, Muff Bro, Rodriguez Bro, and
Bastion of Purity and Innocence!™

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That's funny. He's never had any problems with any of his other canopies. What I DO know, is that no two canopies are alike and maybe this one is doomed. B|

----------------------------------------------------
"Never eat more than you can lift!" Miss Piggy
"Never fall faster than your Guardian Angel can fly."

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I have about 400 jumps on Cobalts and for the most part I was very happy. I did have one that opened really hard, but the others usually opened well. The bad one that I jumped can be seen on the beginning of this video (kinda large file)

http://www.auburn.edu/~huntmic/freeflyvids/sdafreefly.mov

Right click and save


Edited to add: I did have 3 cutaways due to linetwists. Although, I think that some of this was due to body position and NOT the canopy. Just goes to show no matter how "big" a canopy flies ( it was a dream to fly) an elliptical canopy can be sensitive on opening and therefore should be treated with respect. (As the second opening in the video shows).

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now i have never jumped a cobalt, but lost a very close friend due to a number of things, birdman demo and a cobalt demo, just a bad situation.

some of the things i've noticed though, one our of regular jumpers has given up on this cobalt because of it's inconsitant openings. he's scared to dump below 4000 because he never know's what's going to happen. also, i forget what site, but i was looking at a mal site that showed pics, and of the line twist pics, more than 75% were on cobalts...

now either 2 things, cobalts have a high mal rate, or cobalt owners generally jump with video...

so just be careful i guess, advise him
<--- See look, pink dolphins DO exist!

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Has anyone here actually jumped a Cobalt 170 at a decent wingloading? I am considering getting one, but I'm having a nightmare trying to get hold of a demo...Atair basically told me that I had no chance...
I have 800 jumps on a Sabre 190 at wing loadings between 1.3 and 1.55, and I feel ready to move up (down!) in the world of canopies...(I would be loading the 170 at just under 1.5...)

Thanks advance for all opinions...
---
Swoopert, CS-Aiiiiiii!
Piccies

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***Has anyone here actually jumped a Cobalt 170 at a decent wingloading? I am considering getting one, but I'm having a nightmare trying to get hold of a demo...Atair basically told me that I had no chance...
Quote



save yourself the trouble. i had one, i won't get into details. get a Heatwave of a X-Fire2.

--Richard--
"We Will Not Be Shaken By Thugs, And Terroist"

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I have a Heatwave and a Cobalt and i think the Cobalt is by far a superior canopy .



you must have missed the point i made abou it being a 170^2 parachute. there are signifigant differences between the 170^2 and the 120^2, which is a crossbraced competition canopy with very different characteristics than the 170^2 Cobalt. you cannot compare the two. go jump a 170^2, we'll talk to you after your cut-away and reserve ride. as for the Cobalt being superior to the HeatWave, both being 170^2, the HeatWave is by far a more reliable and predictable canopy.
--Richard--
"We Will Not Be Shaken By Thugs, And Terroist"

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Would you go into details for me on PM?

It's kinda hard to accept total dismissal of a canopy without something backing it up...

So far I've heard mention of (Edited to add:) Samurai, Heatwave, X-fire2, Vengance, and Nitron canopies as alternatives...

Does anyone jump these 170s at a decent wingloading? ie >1.4
---
Swoopert, CS-Aiiiiiii!
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The spanwise triangulated braced nose reduces airfoil distortion on the most important part of the wing.

Quote



o.k. so i misspoke, just the nose is braced. here's the spec of of Atair's website.

Matches and exceeds performance of cross braced tricell canopies while providing the sweetest "multistage" openings, 15-20% smaller pack volume, and lower cost.Ultra high performance canopy designed specifically for competition swooping. The high efficiency wing is optimized for extreme distance.

this is the rest.
--Richard--
"We Will Not Be Shaken By Thugs, And Terroist"

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I saw its video of your bad line twists
I think that in spite of everything your cobalt showed reasonable good behavior with these asymmetric line twists.
If you acquired that bad opening with another "reputed " canopy maybe you would not get to clear the twists anymore.
The cobalt is eliptical canopy and, like all eliptical canopys need good body position for opennings, good pack job and good conditions.

Roq

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Yeah, the video shows the 135 first (hard opening) then the 150 (line twists). Most of the time the Cobalts that I jumped tended to open well, but compared to the Xaos, Nitron, and Stiletto that I have jumped they seemed to open really hard a disproportionate amount of the time.

I sold my Cobalt 135 and the new user has some video of the openings
Hard opening

line twist cutaway

Interesting perspective of two stage opening

Unfortunately I don't have video of my other cutaways, but I agree that my lack of experience played a factor in most of my cutaways. I think that all in all the Cobalt is better than most, but not the best opening canopy that I have jumped.

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I just watched the video of the line twist openings.

This looks to be the fault of the jumper. It looks like he instantly grabed and hung on the risers. grabing your risers during deployment will induce uneven force, no matter how symetrical you think you are.

grabing your risers can induce twists and make for hard openings as it aborts the two stage opening.

this is detailed in the instructions on using the cobalt.

sincerely,

dan<><>
atair aerodynamics
www.extremefly.com
Daniel Preston <><>
atairaerodynamics.com (sport)
atairaerospace.com (military)

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why then would the HeatWave NOT demonstrate the same behaviour? same jumper, same wing load, both elipitical canopies, no problem with the HeatWave. i think there is evidence to support poor opening and proper deploying sequences with the Cobalt^2 i had anyway, i can't speak for any of the other canopy sizes. the Cobalt is the only elipitical canopy that has demonstrated this bad behaviour. observation and personal experience only, nothing more, nothing less.
--Richard--
"We Will Not Be Shaken By Thugs, And Terroist"

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This looks to be the fault of the jumper. It looks like he instantly grabed and hung on the risers. grabing your risers during deployment will induce uneven force, no matter how symetrical you think you are.



I agree.

In the user guide on the Atair website it says to look at the canopy and watch it deploy. I did this for quite a while and would overcompensate and give myself twists (never had to cutaway from those self induced twists). I started watching the horizon and concentrating on keeping level by feel and visual input. No more line twists, for me anyway.

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you must have missed the point i made abou it being a 170^2 parachute. there are signifigant differences between the 170^2 and the 120^2, which is a crossbraced competition canopy
Quote


I have not jumped anything that big for a while , My cobalt is a 120 with an H-Mod but last year it was a plane old stocker and in my opinion was still a better choice, My Heatwave is a 135 so they are fairly similar in size , My Cobalt opens much better and yes i have had a cutaway on it, just 2 weeks ago but it is a highly loaded canopy and sometimes shit happens , I like to do 270 front riser turns and transition to double fronts to finish off , This is easy on the Cobalt and very hard on the heatwave, it dives hard but does not stay in a dive long enough for me and it builds up too much pressure in double fronts , but it carves nicely,

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Man, I would like to see these video's but I can play an .mov file. Is there anyway you can upload a .avi file?? :)

Thanks

----------------------------------------------------
"Never eat more than you can lift!" Miss Piggy
"Never fall faster than your Guardian Angel can fly."

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Dan.. I don't disagree that riser input helps any parachute but I looked at the same video you did.

It was twisted from the get go not from grabbing the risers. Take a look at the interesting perspective video. He's already being set up prior to grabbing the risers.

Agreed, helping any parachute open with riser in put is not good. Doing nothing instead of grabbing the risers and "STEERING" truly helps the openings

Disagreed. He didn't induce the linetwists by grabbing the risers.

Agreed, what happened after opening MAY have been jumper induced. I've seen it on a spectre as well.

What are the openings like on the small comp models now? The 2 stage opening on the one I jumped was a lot like a streamer....then a completely inflated canopy no matter what speed or body orientation. In other words After much experimentation, I'm certain it wasn't me.

Several jumpers at our DZ have no opening trouble at all. I'm the only one that jumped a really small one, and I only jumped that particualar small one.

I'm not knocking your parachute. Just the wording you're using in your reply.

The 2 stage openings are a double edge. For comparison, My old stiletto could handle a head down opening, a stand up opening and every thing in between.

So any way one day I hope to re-jump the small comp to see what it's like. It flew great but my body was very angry with me.
-
My grammar sometimes resembles that of magnetic refrigerator poetry... Ghetto

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It flew great but my body was very angry with me.



This is similar to my experience flying a Cobalt 170 a few hundred jumps ago. The canopy flew GREAT, but the openings were hit and miss, mostly miss. :S

-
Jim
"Like" - The modern day comma
Good bye, my friends. You are missed.

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i have never heard the phrase "poor body position" so many times in my life when referring to the poor openings on the Cobalt. or does everybody else just have excellent body positioning on all other brands of canopies? at some point, and some time Atair will have to address this issue. your jpeg looks REAL familiar.
--Richard--
"We Will Not Be Shaken By Thugs, And Terroist"

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