What a great canopy! My experience has been amazing with the Sabre 3 line, I've jumped them almost exclusively from 230-135 sqft with some demos and rental days on s-fires, safires, and sabre 2s. I'm loaded at 1.35 and I feel like this is where the wing starts to wake up, it doesn't have any of the muddy feeling inputs the larger sizes had, the harness feeling starts to develop and you can really get it moving in a dive!
The Opening: I would say it opens reasonably well, it typically opens pretty quick, 600ft. is probably average. Sometimes, I get crazy off heading openings, I've had the usual 90° off heading with the occasional wild 360°, I don't know if they are body position induced, packing, or a variety of things working together but the wing is controllable so quickly you can just make the appropriate input while checking your surroundings and it will do whatever you tell it. It's also not out of the ordinary to have to manipulate the rears to get the slider all the way down.
The Performance: In just one word, Versatile! The rears have gotten me back safe and sound from some spots that I KNEW I wasn't making it back from. It's extremely predictable which is confidence inspiring. The brakes have a ton of range and slow flight performance is impressive, it can hang in deep brakes forever without sacrificing controllability or risking a stall. When inducing speed with the fronts it builds speed quickly and can be forced to keep diving if you need a little more before the fronts get too heavy. The rears have a lot of power and made it easy for me to make my first of many rear riser landings! When you transition to toggles there is immense stopping power, you can always get a nice tip toe landing even in no wind conditions.
The Conclusion: I love this thing! I think it has been and continues to be a wonderful platform to learn basic up to high performance skills and maneuvers. I look forward to progressing further and seeing what else this wing has to offer at the next step!
