Gary73

Canopy sent to Aerodyne for testing. Should be educational, one way or another.

Aerodyne.

Hi, I just re-lined a Solo 270, and on the test jump, at full glide it constantly turned right unless I pulled about 15" of left toggle. Wing loading was right around 0.8 PSF. Then, as I slowed the canopy toward full brakes, the right-turning tendency slowly went away and disappeared at full brakes. Inspected the canopy and everything looked fine, inside and out. Compared every line to its mirror line, and every pair is within 1/4 inch. Can the canopy fabric be so distorted as to cause such a turn with no visible damage/asymmetry? Any suggestions? Thanks!

I did that once for a Heat Wave 170 with the same problem :). Minimal results. Re-lining didn't help either. Eventually gave up and replaced the canopy. Real shame; loved that canopy until it picked up that habit.

Yeah, definitely an older, unsupported canopy, but with plenty of life left in it if we can solve this problem. The club has limited funds, so I hate to give up on it. Yes, FCI is gone. I think that Parachutes Direct was just their online marketing arm, so they're gone, too. I might try adding a new cat's eye a couple of inches above the existing one to see if that helps.

Maybe a little old fashioned, but if the slider doesn't come down, I call that a streamer. Is there a better term? The slider is factory original. Several different packers and jumpers, so if it's that sensitive to exact packing technique, it's probably not a good canopy for a club rig. WRT line length, some are short and some are long. The FCI manual allows +/- 1 inch, but some are a little outside that each way.

The lines that aren't right on spec are all over.

Got a customer with a Sentry 190 that comes out of the bag fine, but then streamers until you pull on the rear risers a bit. Once it's open, it flies just fine. Checked some of the line lengths, and while the brakes are good, a lot of the others are near or a little beyond the factory specs. Any ideas for a quick fix? Thanks!

Anybody have any experience with the Icarus "Sky" canopy?

Dacron 600.

So if a canopy with maybe a thousand jumps on it opens hard 10 - 20% of the time and flings the jumper all over before settling down to normal flight, what's the most likely cause?

When did MarS start producing the m2 multi?

Does anyone have any experience using the Tile Pro trackers to find cutaways? Thanks!

By "full frontal", I meant that the wire was oriented top left to bottom right, as if he had tried to fly straight through a door with a wire strung from one corner to the opposite corner. And he was only about three feet up when he hit it, so there was little or no sliding. Also, some of the worst damage is 4 or 5 feet back from the leading edge, and is on both top and bottom, but the damaged areas don't line up.. So the "sliding down the wire" theory doesn't seem to explain what I'm seeing.

It was a direct frontal impact with the guy wire, just a few feet above the ground. And the damage was on both the top and bottom of the center cell. No damage to the suspension lines.