GoneCodFishing

It's a military canopy, probably a variation of the bt80 given the allowable weight. You could contact safran for info, they are the latest incarnation of pdf/zodiac/aerazur

Ah! I 'knew' i had read an article that went over the development of the Excalibur/cross bracing, but despite searching for years i never managed to find it again. Turns out is this video i had watched! Haha. Thanks for posting it

Do you know why they stopped being standad? Wrong balance of pros and coms against 4 grommets or some other reason? Ease of manufacture, cost and things interchangbiliy often weigh the balance but curious if that was the case

That it would still be a pilot7

Oh come on. Unless you are hoping for dick picks why don't you just share it with all of us? (And you can share those dick pics by pm if you want) Fwiw to the OP, the transition from dive to level before the flare works best if it's done smooth and slow. Put the earphones in that flysight set to ping you the speed, and work on levelling and staying level without losing speed. More often than not a too quick levelling just causes a lot of drag due to changing the angle of attack too much, when at that stage you want to change pitch while maintaining the AoA as much as possible.

Doesn't add up. If it really is an AFF jump that is not a level 3, if anything would be a level 5. Otherwise it may be a coached jump which would explain the inactions and distancing by the coach/instructor, and the fact he didn't hold onto the student for deployment.

Easy. Start doing a normal pro-pack, but don't spend too much making it neat and perfect. Leave it kind of loose and sort of where it wants to be, but not much more. Lay it down on the floor and squeeze all the air out. Then you will coocon it nice and tight, making sure all the air is out. At this point you will do like a psycho pack. So move the bridle/d-bag to the side, and roll the canopy from the top down like a spring roll, all the way to the lines. Sit on the canopy with the bundle craddled between yourr knees, and remove the d-bag from the attachement point. Then grab the canopy bundle and keep rolling it in the lines until you reach the risers, so that the lines wrap the canopy making it as compact as you can. Grab your hook knife and cut through the lines. Grab what by now should be a nice and tight bundle, and walk out the back of the packing shed. Locate the dumpster bins, deposit your canopy inside with a nice running kick. Grab your phone, call the Atair dealer, and tell him he won't be having that WinX back. Job done

Nice. Good info that. Do you know who they usually supply by any chance? As in is it mainly military cargo stuff they sell for or is there known brands using their fabric? Edit: I really wanted to word that as 'recognised parachute equipement manufacturers' but thought better of it. Ha, ha

Depends where you are in Europe. Albatros (Germany), Basik (France), Thomas Sports & XD Sports (UK), Wingstore (Luxembourg) or Sky-shop (Lithuania) are a few. Also extremtextil in Germany often have 'seconds' from Porcher which are good enough for patches as the main rejection reason is normally sections of crooked ripstop or spot flaws. Edit: They got PN1 at the moment which is Porcher's F111 for 9.90 eur/m which is a pretty decent price.https://www.extremtextil.de/en/ripstop-nylon-parachute-fabric-pn1-uncoated-calendered-30den-40g-sqm-2nd-choice.html

Pilots didn't say 'over'

Fuck it, just get an R3 https://www.tonysuits.com/shop/wingsuits/r3-wingsuit/

Got one here that has a second crossport between the c and d lines. 210sqft 1996 vintage

Sure is 210? https://gemapar.fr/Documents/Materiels/caracteristique/CA365.pdf

Ribs (as in parachute ribs, not pg ribs aka crossbracing. Getting complicated. Ha, ha)are already getting pretty threadbare in cases and don't particularly affect negatively, although it may have life expectancy issues in the long run. It's is more notable in BASE canopies which are not expected to last housands of jumps. For example or When getting the geometry right they work just like an upside down suspension bridge, where loads can be transferred effectively and thus only a certain amount of 'threads' are needed to support the expected loads and they seemingly cope well. Similar thinking is used with regards support tapes in PG's and some sky canopies, having them form parabolas instead of the classic triangles. That supports the load more evenly accoss the to skin and avoids the pinchpoints usually asociated with traditional supprot taping. NZA's kraken does have parabolic tapes and interestingly in their marketig they have photos of what could have been an earlier pre-production model without them (or mini-ribs) and the difference seems noticeable. Could also just be judicious photography work of the later model making it look smoother though ;-) Other more leftfield 'solutions' do exist, for example PdF techno reserve's direct attachements to the top skin via spectra line, rendering the rib itself more of a 'helper' in order to shpe the skin rather than supporting the load. Similarly single skin PG's have direct line attachements with no rib, ribs used as a bit of a fender to keep air in only, or parabolic tapes/lines with fabric only above between the parabolas and top skin to again, help shape the top skin and spread the load without pinchpoints. The amount of 'ideas' that have been put to use past and present outside the 'normal' stuff is pretty inspiring, so the 'lines only rib' thing does not look that far fetched in context, though it looks like a lot of faff and likely no possible benefit over other 'systems'? On a 'normal' RAM air canopy a rib of sorts is still needed at least at the unloaded bit even if crossbraced to shape the bottom skin and preventing it from ballooning downwards from the internal pressure. P.S. I found that website a while ago and have been trucking through it. It is excellent in a nerdy sort of way. Thanks Edit: This is one example of a single skin pg rib made wth parabolic tapes + fabric. It'd be the best compromise as opposed to using just lines i think, so as to spread the load evenly acroos the seam

Skylarks approach is a really elegant solution to provide shaping and rigidity to a canopy, Atair's however i always thought it to be a pretty impressive feat given they probably didn't have much in the way of 3D software to get the patterns dialled. The amount of trial and error involved when sewing those must have been huge. (Edit: Thinking more about it, they probably designed it with ribs on and then just removed them?) The rib design in those Phantom paragliders are really interesting. A bi-cell bracing nested inside a tri-cell to give a quad cell. (Edit: I'm making the names up. Don't know if there's an actual name for that) Clever the way they run the fabric threaded through the holes! Interestingly the bi-cell type seems to run at 45 degrees tying with what Mark mentions above regards angles

Makes sense that. The Neos is the one canopy that i thought was closest to that 'missing link', in that by bracing the centre sells and A to C lines it tried to get the benefits with less complexity and cons so to speak. I assumed the lack of bracing on D's was due to it being purely unnecessary due to the lack of height of the rib on a narrow profile, but now that you mention it's very possible a bracing there wouldn't do anything or not much at all. With regards mini-ribs at the trailing edge i found interesting that of the ones i could inspect they are not equal height/shape to the corresponding section in the loaded ribs, but usually taller. I guess so as to reduce the thickness of the cell without actually pinching it as it will invariably balloon more compared to the loaded ones

Yes, i meant a 'normal' cell (2 loaded ribs with an unloaded rib in the middle and support braces from line attachement points to unloaded rib). Such as Proably overkill as you say, but also, in that configuration, necessary for symmetry? Although possibly other than the centre rib it'd work, (braces running only on one side) that is being done in cells 3 and 7 in the Gangster. Yes. That was patented by Atair some time back, but wasn't aware it had made it into production https://patents.google.com/patent/US20030209634A1/en It'd not be as efficient as a crossbrace as the path "line attachement>bottom skin>rib>top skin" is still longer than a crossbrace (line attachement>Xbrace>top skin) though still a shorter path than a normal height rib would produce. I suspect the effectiveness of the crossbrace might be relative to the angle of the crossbrace, so where a tri-cell would give a sharper angle trying to stretch the brace to the unloaded rib on a bicell might have too big of an angle which wouldn't do a hell of a lot to load the top skin with most of the 'shaping' being done from the expansion force from the canopies pressurization. But that's just academic, hence i'm curious why this 'step' was tried and discarded or bypassed altogether

Uh, good call. Never thought of airlocks functioning as a crossbrace as well. IIRC they were sewn on the bias which would then work better to support the diagonal loads. What benefits would be atibutable to each (the 'crossbracing' vs the airlocking) would be hard to tell, so back to square one. Ha, ha

Been doing a load of research into canopy design and construction and the absence of bi-cell cross braces in the design evolution is notable, and was wondering if anyone knows what happened with that? While the benefits of a tri-cell are obviously much higher i can't help thinking that a bi-cell would also run some pretty good benefits and afford middle ground of canopy rigidity vs pack volume/manufacturing complexity, and i'd have expected some bi-cells to have existed in the evolution line towards modern tri-cells, yet the Excalibur came out straight as the later. Was there a bi-cell excalibur proto before which wasn;t satisfactory? Going a bit more in-depth i found the original patent from Bill Coe listed bi-cell cross braces as the 'idea' and added tri-cell designs merely as an alternative https://patents.google.com/patent/US4930727A/en So what happened with them? Did they not offer the expected benefits? Was it deemed not worth it and preferred to go the full hog to tri-cells? Any thoughts appreciated

Removed (How the hell can you delete a post here?)

If the flag next to the OP's name is correct might be worth pointing out that there's some new incoming 'canopy rules' arriving into the UK. They are still a work in progress and unclear as to what's going to be, but the french system is being touted as the preferred base to work from. With that in mind, it would be good for the OP to think about "future-proofing" his canopy choices. For example, the writing is on the wall for a minimum of 2000 jumps for any crossbraced canopy, so really is no point for him to consider one neither now nor in the near future given his jump numbers. Non-crossbraced high performance wings may be having a closer look as well given the recent fatalities that prompted this review and the adoption of rules were on in Katanas. That is besides the wisdom of seeking to downsize or looking at more agressive canopies to fix a perceived problem which is likely more a technique issue that should be resolved with more practice and adequate coaching rather than a canopy choice issue. I mean, 6s double to single 90 degree turn in a xf2 @1.5wl in 230ft just doesn't compute and i'd put that to wrong technique hands down as it sounds like you are carving rather than diving. From a safety aspect I'd look at sorting that out as my first port of call, as in you dont want to 'discover' the right technique by chance in a random jump and suddenly have your 250ft dive turn into a 350 footer. But that's a conversation you really should be having with an experienced coach who can watch your landings and assess where you should be going with it

Closed for good with both the Hiper and pr-nitro sites/branches not in business anymore. As giacomo says you can try precision aerodynamics who make a 'copy' of it.

Pop into a go-outdoors and grab a bunch of these https://www.gooutdoors.co.uk/15911156/niteize-s-biner-microlock-black-15911156/

If i had read through this^ first it would have saved me some writing :-)