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I have been jumping a Oxygn A3 for about a hundred dives, and I must say that I really like this helmet. The fit and quality are very good, the flip up visor works great, and I have had no problems with it staying sealed. I have a Pro Dytter in the port provided on the helmet and it fits perfrectly, the only thing I noticed about the Dytter in the port is it seems to go off a couple hundred feet lower than if I had it mounted in my leather hat. The other thing I noticed was that the visor had some marks on it . I called skysystems about this and they told me this was a normal situation as the marks come from the manufacturing process. Anyways I do not notice the marks when using the helmet. Also I really like this helmet as it gives me that little extra protection and provides some warmth on those cooler days at high altitudes. All in all this is an excellent product, and Troy and the folks at skysystems are doing a great service for providing such a great product line!

I have been jumping my Monarch 135 for over 200 jumps and am thouroghly and sometimes surprisingly pleased. From the 1st jump, the openings have been sweet but I do have to admit that the Monarch is notorious for end cell closures. If only one end cell remains closed, it can result in a rather interesting opening, creating a diving turn in the direction of the closure. After replacing the standard risers with three-legged, velcro-less risers, the flight characteristics are greatly improved, resulting in more responsive turns, quicker recoveries and longer surfs. My Monarch has been a pure joy to fly and with a brisk recovery from turns, has gottien me out of trouble I've put myself in by making a low turn. Though it has a quicker sink rate than allot of other canopies, it will beat most of the elipticals back to the DZ. If on a long spot, a slight input to the rear risers will almost guaruntee making it back. The Monarch's ability to literally SLICE through turbulence allows for smoothe control and landings when allot of other canopies are grounded. Easy to pack, easy to fly and a thrill to land, the Monarch is a great first ZP canopy and will progress with your canopy skills.

No matter how I packed it, the openings were soft and on heading. It's a canopy that will fly soft an slow, or fast and zippy, depending on what you do with it. Stay within one or two sizes of your weight range, performance isn't much improved with high wing loadings, and is sluggish when under loaded. I've jumped the 170, 190, 210, and the 230. I weigh 200 nude, and I had the best performance on the 210. All around, it's a great canopy that is predictable and fun. I'm a naval test parachutist, and we are converting all our PD230 to shilloute 210.

Just got my new VX and put 8 jumps on it last weekend. I have an 89, loaded at 2.43#/2ft. DZ elevation is ~1000MSL. Temps were in the low 70s and winds were 5-12mph most of the time. It took me 3 jumps to set the brakes where I was satisfied. Similar to the FX, you have to go fairly deep, with the first 6" being very soft. Once you get in the power band, it is very strong. I prefer to be able to front riser without any input to the brakes. The VX seems to be much faster than the FX or Velocity, but I jumped them at a lower wing loading of 2.2#/2ft. The toggle pressure seems similar to the other HP ellipticals that I have jumped(stiletto,jedie,velocity,batwing,fx). The front risers are initially fairly light and the dive is very steep. Speed builds very rapidly and so does the pressure on the front risers. I could not hold the riser down through an entire 360 turn. The recovery arc seemed a little shorter than on the FX, with more speed and a longer surf. The rear risers, as might be expected, are somewhat light. It is a real pleasure to release the brakes and then spread the rear risers. It takes very little effort and the canopy slows right down. It shocked me to see that I could float along with a Triathlon 220 loaded at about 1.1. My rate of decent at full flight was about 2000'/minute(wrist watch + altimeter). My experience with this canopy is still very limited, but I feel safe in saying that it is in a class of its' own. It has the broadest speed range and turns faster than any other canopy I have ever flown. It also has the largest pack volume/2ft of any canopy I have ever seen...but who cares! It has the highest list price of any canopy that I know of, $200 more than the Velocity. It is worth it. I expect it will take several hundred jumps on this canopy before most pilots will begin to realize its full potential. It demands your constant attention and respect.

This Helmet may be priced higher than average but you get great quality. This is by far the most stable camera platform that I have ever tried. It can hold. A large Video and a medium format without a problem. I have the 100.00 dollar carbon fiber option and all I can say is it cool. Also the Bonehead People are great to work with.

Currently I own 2 racers and I love them. They are by far more comfortable than other rigs I've tried. I like the fact that my reserve pins are protected and I don't have to worry about them when I put the container on. They flex making my arching more natural. Funny thing is some people at my dz say they suck....They have never tried one. When they try my one, they don't have nothing to say about it. If your rigger complains about the reserve repack, change your rigger and get a competent one.

This Helmet may be priced higher than average but you get great quality. This is by far the most stable camera platform that I have ever tried. It can hold. A large Video and a medium format without a problem. I have the 100.00 dollar carbon fiber option and all I can say is it cool. Also the Bonehead People are great to work with.

I love my Alpha Z1 helmet (freeflying one, not the full face)! It is the most comfortable helmet I tried on, and trust me, I tried them all! It is extremely flexible, fits exactly as it should - contouring to the shape of the head. True that the material it is made of is not as hard as most of them, but it was difficult for me to even get some other helmets on, it almost gave me a head ache. This is a hard helmet on the outside with the comfort of a frap hat on the inside!

If you want a small rig, the Power Racer is the sweetest. Mine (with both canopies) weighs in at 11 pounds and is incredibly comfortable. Its so tiny I love it. Wonderful for experienced jumpers who also happen to be small. I don't even notice I'm wearing it.

I currently own 3 Racers, and I find that they're the best rig on the market. Especially for smaller people, they're by far the most comfortable. I love having only 1 inch of harness going over my shoulder, instead of 2-3 inches for most rigs. They flex in between the main and reserve containers allowing you to arch as much as your body allows, as opposed to other rigs which tend to be quite inflexible. I've got 6 reserve rides on my Racers (yeah, I'm a CRW dog) and the deployments are second to none. And they have excellent customer service as well.

Best CRW canopy out there. There's a reason all the world records are being set on it. Has a large variety of sizes so that "unusual" sized people can still have a canopy which fits them. I hate having to wear 30 pounds of lead because there's not a canopy small enough for me. I love my Lightning 113.

This canopy is a totally sweet. Openings are soft and on heading. Great stability in wind and all around canopy flight. You can mad swoop or just do a nice soft and easy landing whatever YOU choose. Packs itself, basically.

The Triathalon is a very versatile canopy that I highly recommend. They're very good for novices, and very forgiving. They're exceptionally stable in turbulence - part of the benefits of being 7-celled. At light wing-loadings you can do a full flare, or a light turf-surf, but the Tri still lands great at higher wing-loadings. The only thing that made me stop jumping my Tri 99 was that I got a Diablo 88. I used to jump all the various ellipticals, but I got sick of worrying every opening about line twists and malfunctions and all the nasty stuff that can go wrong . I bought a Tri, and now a Diablo as well and never looked back. Openings are pleasant now instead of worrisome. And the Aerodyne ZP fabric is so much easier to pack than the slick stuff I would hate to go back.

With only 13 jumps on my new 135 Diablo. my review is still a little weak , but here it comes anyway. Openings - always on heading without much of a snivel, the worst one was after a 4 second delay on a hop and pop, it buckecd from side to side for a few seconds but still opened on smoothly and on heading, It seems to like the terminal openings better. Stability - Watching other canopies landing after i had already landed over the weekend i saw a lot of canopies bucking from the turbulance , It didn,t bother me in the least." Very stable" ! Turns - whow! what can i say , This thing turns and dives like a fighter aircraft with a anti- aircraft missile locked on to it's tail. A lot of turns will get you to the ground in a hurry. Glide - On a long spot with a friend (150 Saber) on a no wind day i beat him back to the DZ easily. Landings- It dosen't take to much to land this canopy, the brakes are so powerful and want to stop you in a hurry , even on a no wind day. So far i haven't been able to surf this thing too far, Maybe i have been riding the brakes too hard, time may prove me wrong , (I hope so ) cus i like to surf. Front risers - Very heavy , it takes a hole lot of muscle Packing - I Psycho pack because i i could never seem to get my pro pack into the bag , there was always some material poping back out some were, Psycho packing fixed that in a hurry , but this canopy makes even that seem so easy. (Great packing material)

Alpha is the choise for those who want "Velocity"-class performance and don't want to spend that much money for new canopy. This is pilot's canopy. When flying the Alpha, you can constantly feel the canopy flying and it tells you all of time what it's doing. If you just want to cruise smoothly it'll fly straight and you can just enjoy the ride. But if you want to do a little hod-rodding, don't be suprised to see what you ate for breakfast that morning. It's all up to you, speed and performance of this canopy are gigantic. Compared to Stiletto, Alpha has much longer control range, and it's much more stabile sideways than Stiletto (or Velocity). You can bring it down on 1/2-brakes with shorter flare or blast your heart out with 300ft flare. Do what you want. If you have 150+ jumps with Stiletto 135 at wload 1.5, you can easily adapt to Alpha 99:s 2.05. Difference in design and in handling is that big. Material in Alpha is more packer-friendly that in PD canopies. Right from the start Alpha is VERY easy to pack. It doesn't slide or runaway from your hands. You'll enjoy watching you friends to get pissed off because of their new PD's slippery fabric. There's one negative thing in Alpha though. It doesn't seem work too well with wing-loading under 1.8. This baby needs weight to work with. Optimum wl.is round 2lb/ft2. Jump one = you want one. Be safe and don't hook too low. Peace, Riksteri

I chose a Racer because of it's design. I found Racer to be more comfortable than other rigs I tried. I'm a woman and especially liked the NOS (narrow over the shoulder) option. I also liked the reserve system, which is fun to pop before re-packs and watch it shoot across the room. Another nice feature is the scooped neck in the back. Unless other manufacturers come out with major design improvements, I would buy another Racer. Although I've heard rumors that some riggers don't like to do reserve re-packs on them, I haven't encountered this and actually had a rigger tell me he prefers to do Racers because they don't use a D-bag (another feature that contributes to it's comfort).

The Skytronic Pro has some great features. I like not having to calculate freefall time, being able to see freefall speed and opening altitude. I also like being able to set warning altitudes in increments other than 500ft. One down side I've encountered is battery problems. If the battery is low, it may still give you alt. warning alerts on the ride to alt., but then fail in freefall. I like my skytronic, but I never rely on it. Buy one if you want the features, but don't rely it, and don't expect it to give you a low battery warning.

The nicest thing I can say about my Z1 is that it has a cool paint job. The visor is frequently hard to latch. The helmet is snug in freefall, but uncomfortable in the plane and under canopy. Unfortunately, the liner only comes in set sizes. I think with some design improvements it could be a great helmet, but until then, I would recommend buying something else. I'm really sorry I chose this helmet.

I have also encountered the bug mentioned by a previous reviewer. The protrack logged a 16.2k dive as a 7 second freefall! I have heard reports from others regarding this bug. Having paid $285 for this item I expect solid performance and this is a little disapointing.

I jumped the Spectre 190 over the weekend and I must say I was totally impressed. Not only does it open very smooth and soft, but it handles like a dream. I was a little concerned about landing a 7 cell, but after this weekend I won't dare look at anything else (atleast not for awhile anyways). The Spectre is incredible canopy...if you haven't tried it yet, then you owe it to yourself to call PD for a demo. You won't be dissapointed. Blue skies to all....

Seeing as there is no option to review the Skytronic Pro by Parasport Italia, I'll do my comparison/review here... The Skytronic Pro has a digital display that reads out in 30ft increments so you can set it to the nearest 30ft - nice. It also displays your current altitude on the way up which is useful if you don't wear a visual alti. The alarms signal at the set altitudes on the way up - I prefer this because it's more reasurring to know that's it's gone off at the right altitude on the way up and therefore should do so on the way down. My batteries lasted around 300 jumps over a year and a bit. The time warning is nice for filming skysurf and freestyle routines to give you a cue for your ending. The Skytronic is simple and good value for money. All I really need is a warning or two on the way down. Number of jumps, exit and opening altitudes and freefall speed and time are nice to knows but I don't need to pay twice the price for even more interesting yet useless extra info. The only draw back in my book is that you need to tape it up or put it into a pouch to attach it to anything. (eg. Your goggles or the outside of your Gath.) Fortunately I can just pop it into my sidewinder and I'm away.

Very soft openings, excelent for the beginer that wants to experiment flying cameras; glide ratio ok. You will feel lucky if you ever get caught pulling without slowing down after a freefly jump. You can load it, turf it and surf it. Very stable on turbulence.

This is a wonderful helmet. It fits great, and looks really cool. Definately get the Platinum (carbon fiber) version. I ordered the white at first and was disgusted :) I love my carbon fiber version of this helmet though!!!

The Pro-Dytter is a very nice audible alti, it's easy to set, almost impossible to accidentally change the settings, loud and very compactly built. I've used mine for over 100 jumps and it's worked perfectly each time. The battery life is perhaps not as long as claimed, the manual says 1-2 years or 200 jumps; my batteries needed replacing after about 80 jumps over 8 months. This may have been affected by the fact that the Pro-Dytter cannot be turned off. It turns itself on when it detects the pressure change of increasing altitude. This is however very sensitive; I was driving over a hilly stretch of road once and it must have turned on at least a dozen times. One feature I like a lot is that unlike some other audible alti’s, the Pro-Dytter signals the height of the first alarm by sounding an appropriate series of beeps at 1000 AGL. Other alti’s wait until the alarm height is reached. With the Pro-Dytter is doesn't matter what height you've set it for, you only have to pay attention at 1000 AGL to check it's alarm height. Overall, a first rate audible altimeter.

I have jumped a Javelin since I started in the sport over 7 years ago. It was, and still is, the most comfortable rig I have ever jumped. Now with over 3600 jumps, AFF and Tandem instructional ratings and a senior rigger's ticket in hand, I work for the company that makes the Javelin. This is just a quick post to let anyone reading these reviews know that Sun Path Products is here for you! If you have any questions you would like to ask us directly please feel free to contact us at [email protected]. We listen to suggestions that we hear from jumpers to continually improve our product. Drop us a line, and give us your feedback. Sincerely, Doris Pfister Marketing Sun Path Products