I recently had the opportunity to demo a Katana 120 (loaded at 1.81:1) and put 40 jumps on it during that week. The weather conditions ranged from 18mph winds to no winds and even some beach landings with lots of hot turbulent air surrounding the beach and parking lot.
Even during a few cross counrty jumps where we opened at 13,000ft, I knew the Katana would get me back to the DZ.
In every aspect the Katana performed great. Using rear risers it got me back from some very long spots, which I had my doubts about. The Katana proved me wrong.
In high winds and turbulence the Katana behaved very predictably and still cut through the air very well, which provided me with some great swoops. In no wind conditions this canopy really comes alive, it build speed very quickly using harness turns and some front riser input to fine tune my approach. Even when I was too high, with the light front riser pressure it enabled me to keep it in a dive much longer than the Stiletto ever could. The shutdown speed impressed me the most, even though this canopy has the ability to go very fast during the dive and swoop, when your feet do eventually touch the ground it is a very smooth transition to a slow/medium jog.
The openings were a little disappointing, they were not very consistent, but this may have been due to the crisp new ZP fabric that did not want to get into the bag without a fight. After about 15 jumps it seemed to settle down. I found that if you packed it like the manufacture recommends, and do not push the nose in or pull the slider out I had much softer openings. The openings did get even better by jump 30 thru 40.
All in all this is an awesome canopy, be careful if you are jumping a stiletto as the Katana has a much longer recovery arc.
Great job PD.
