wetswooper

Disagree.. The main advantage of velo is the capability to maintain the wing efficient with high wingloads....with low wingloads, it might be a little bit more efficient but nothing more. And....openings are a lot worse (velo at 1,3.......how long is it going to take to get the slider down....and how many turns the canopy has time to do during that...) and harder to handle, it costs more, packs bigger etc... I see no reason to jump a velocity at anything less than ~1,8

Stop that, you obviously don't have a clue You may see below you, but you definitely don't see on the sides or above. Can you realize that anyone under 2+ wingload comes down about the same speed (or faster) in a slight turn than you in a max. spiral with the wingloads you have, they might even come down faster in full flight than you spiralling. Than means there are many people in the sky who have the same decent rate watching "what the hell is this guy doing???", you might come down straight in front of them without seeing them at all, and they have to make turns to avoid collision with you. (and you probably don't even notice you were close to having a collision) Even the people with extreme wingload canopies don't just spiral down in traffic (if they don't know exactly where all the other jumpers are). They know nobody is going to collide them from above, but somebody might come under you so fast from the side that you barely have time react. Also if you spiral straight down to start of the landing pattern, you might end up in a situation where there are other jumpers starting the landing pattern at the same time. Now you have to build your vertical separation in the landing pattern! That should be done a way before Think about that there's someone with high wingloading (let's say more than 2..) at 1000 ft hanging on brakes waiting for empty airspace to make their swoop landing. Then some spirals down just to get below them. it's like driving a bus in front of a ferrari just before the highway starts and blocking the way when the ferrari would like to go a little bit faster than your bus. This means they have to abort their turn (I hope they see you before..) At least expect some punch in the face on the ground. Why do you care whose fault it is if you're dead... I wish you luck with your first canopy collision.

There's actually an easy way to test if you can gain enough speed to make a canopy recover all the way level flight. All you need is some datalogger Take your velo (or any canopy) up high and make spiral to it's max speed, then stop the turn and lose all controls. On the ground you can download the data from some datalogger (neptune or pro track might be accurate enough) and see if you lost altitude or gained it after the dive. I can't get to any DZ for a couple of weeks but if somebody tests this it would be interesting to see how close we can get.

Not exactly that way... There's a big difference by saying that a canopy recovers or that it levels out. I've never jumped a canopy or gained so much speed with it (100mph isn't enough with my velo) that it levels out to level flight with no input at all. Maybe the speed of a velocity with a navigator at .8 would do the trick. A very little input (i.e a short tap on rears...or only touching the rears) during the natural recovery will do the work and "throw" the jumper enough forward to let the canopy level out to level flight on its own with no input. My point here is that every canopy has a natural tendency to recover.....to it's natural full flight, or even a little less steep angle...until it gets back to it's natural full flight when the speed slows down. But none of my canopies has leveled out to level flight even for that short period of time. It just isn't enough to let the canopy recover...you have to do a little bit more, to make it fly level.

You have some serious misunderstandings here.. If you are low, (I don't know what you mean by a little..) use your brakes. .....especially when you're not used to using your rears on every jump. If an experienced swooper is a little low, he can level out with the rears, but anything more he knows to use the brakes. When you have enough training and knowledge, and everything goes just excellent on your recovery ARC, then it's the time to apply some rears. And btw, if you don't know what are the benefits and dangers of using rears, you shouldn't be nowhere near using velocity. Actually reading your post doesn't convince me that you should be jumping even Katana. Sorry about this, but it's about basic understanding of the canopy flight that everyone under anything considered a high performance canopy MUST have. And then your question, Main reason for using rears is that it doesn't distort the airfoil (i.e. not causing so much extra drag) as much as using the brakes. This means you maintain your forward speed better. Think about the shape of your canopy, rears vs. brakes.... BUT, there's a lot more .... Get a canopy coach before doing anything with the rears...He will tell you. I hope my post makes you get some information about these things...and a canopy coach. This is not the right place to study these things, a canopy course is.

Even with different XB canopies there are huge differences. And the range of different wingloadings is big. Someone flying a xaos21 (one of the xb canopies which is considered "a bit more relaxed") at 1,8 is under a totally different wing than someone flying "new?" velocity or all sail JVX with RDS system (the most popular competition class wings) at more than 2,5. With the most radical competition swoop machines, I'd rather compare those to nascar, indy or formula1 cars. My mom can drive a lamborghini, but you can't manage to make a full lap with a formula1 car if you aren't a skilled racecar driver, propably you can't even get it going. That's the thing with fast XB canopies....with little experience, there's almost no change that you could make it to the ground in one piece with no injuries. With some experience, you sure....MAYBE can land the canopy safely in good conditions, but what's the reason to fly such wing if you don't have the skills to take the traction control off. That's like buying a ultimate supercar for driving around the city 30 mph, struggling to keep it going, very careful with the throttle not get out of control and trying not to crash anything. A way too many skydivers do that anyway....never swooping, having problems to do stand up landings, and still flying a velocity. That's like crashing your lamborghini to a lamppost every now and then when cruising in the city..cool hah?

It's like driving a racecar....with no brakes. I just love that.. and my JVX They are simply so much faster (than a 150 sabre) in everything...in good and bad. (But there's similar difference when you compare a 150 to a student canopy) The biggest difference with that is that those are canopies that you have to "drive" all the time. You can't just hang in there. And your thinking has to be a way ahead of your canopy. Otherwise you are going to end up in a situation where there's not enough time to think or even react and save yourself. The canopy's speed increases dramatically but it still can't brake down any better than your student canopy. ...'cause there are no better "brakes" than in your student canopy.

That's maybe the best sentence I've heard from a person at an early stage of his swoop career.

Yep, thanks. Seems that I was the one that didn't think first.. But still, doesn't it matter drag of the canopy increases by 8 and the drag of the body by 4? The ratio remains the same but the absolute drag forces of the canopy increase more.

Now there is something seriously wrong... Did you think before posting that.. In any normal situation the canopy makes more drag than the body (except maybe Luigi if he gets an even smaller wing..), and when the speed increases, increases also drag of the canopy. And because it has more drag, it increases faster than the drag of the body. For example, if the drag of the canopy is 4 and drag of the body is 2, when the speed doubles, the drag of the canopy is 16 and the drag of the body is 4. This means that when the speed increases the body under the canopy is shifted forward making the canopy less divey. This is why the canopy wants to level out at the end of the swoop, and its harder to keep the canopy diving when the speed increases. I wouldn't want to swoop a canopy that gets more divey as the speed increases... I'm not sure about this but I think theres also a problem with Yuri's calculations. When the speed decreases from 46mph to 25mph, it reduces the drag of the canopy too. So IMHO you can't use that 28% in the slower speed calculations..

The old school means here initiating the turn (preferably a toggle whip) 4 seconds before you would hit the ground. This can also be done with the fronts, but the rule is not to grab them until you have 4 seconds left before you hit the ground. There's nothing wrong in releasing the fronts 4 seconds before the ground level. 4 seconds is a long time. (watch some swoop wids from PST or CPC comps and count the time the pros have between releasing the fronts and levelling out )

I wouldn't recommend anyone to try to learn to swoop like Pip...It isn't safe unless you have more than 15000 similar landings. (Even though I heard he hasn't been doing the old school swoops anymore and is using the fronts these days..) Also I think that for bigger turns than 90 you should have some canopy with longer recovery arc than sabre. There's no reason to whip 180's or 270's as low as they have to be done with sabre or similar recovery arc canopy. I usually go with 630 with my velocity, but I hate (and am scared of) doing anything more than 90 with my sabre. I did 270's with that when I started swooping and now I have no idea how I had the balls.. there's no way i'm going to turn that low.. And to the original poster. Get a canopy coach, talk with him, get another canopy coach, and talk with him too. You are not going to find the right answer here. You can find a lot of useful information here about many things in skydiving, but you are not going to find the answer if katana is an OK choice for YOU @ 450 jump. Generally I wouldn't say its ok if the person has to write on dropzone.com to get some acceptance for his choices. If you go on with the katana, be careful. You have to realize that if you end up with the decision that you get that katana, you have to be extremely careful with it. Even people with 5000 jumps have to be careful with their new canopies, luckily they have the experience to know to be careful. Unfortunately its usually inexperienced jumpers who change to a new canopy without any canopy jumps before moving back to for example freefly. Plan your jumps well, make the first 10 or 20 jumps hop'n'pops to train to fly and land that canopy safely. Get instructions for those jumps from some experienced canopy coach. Seek actively information about the effects of higher wingloads and elliptical canopies. Also, how does it affect the openings (better opening position required), what are the problems on big ways or camera jumps. How to train safely canopy piloting up high (not always that easy to find your own "slot" during some busy days). Keep in mind there are many things that you don't know you don't know.

It would be extremely hard to do anything about those old school bad habit jumpers, but it's a completely different problem which doesn't make it any less valuable to have rules for those how have less than 500 or 1000 jumps. For those oldschool guys (if are there any old school girls with bad habits...I want one..), IMHO it's the problem of DZO's to make them follow the rules about landing areas and general swooping rules on that dropzone. If some old school JM does toggle turn swoops on areas where swooping is allowed and not in the traffic, it's their own problem to stay alive.

There's the problem in all of ours attitudes. Yes, we are never going to make it perfect or make it such that everybody likes it. But it doesn't require so much to make the situation better than it's now. I'm only looking forward to improvements! I'm neither a brit or american but IMHO The Brittish Parachute association has done at least something about it with their canopy system. http://www.bpa.org.uk/ That's one of the stupidest reasons I've heard not to make any new rules and there are many solutions. For example 2 years period when those who already have some jumps on HP canopies fight the S&TA like before and the rest go with the new rules. After 2 years there are no exceptions. And for those this is not ok, life is hard, once again. Id they couldn't get the jumps or training required in 2 years there should be no reason to complain. Dropzones will always have those stupids who will want to fight every rule they encounter.

Thanks, Yep, IMHO the 1,8 wingload is high for that experience, but also the requirements I proposed to get such a radical canopy are quite extreme and not easily reached. It requires serious commitment to canopy piloting already from the beginning. ("if he/she has passed the basic and advanced level exams in "higher wingload" and "swoop basics" categories, taken at least 3 canopy courses, has at least 200 canopy training jumps with at least 60 jumps under supervision and signed by a canopy instructor. ") These are only guidelines presenting the idea, the actual limits clearly need some more thinking. Actually it would be even better to have some skill requirements and test jumps passed to get that. For example X accuracy landings, braked landings, "emergency toggle input" practice up high, opening position etc. i.e. evaluation jumps that you don't pass if you have not learned the skills. There should be clear requirements for those jumps and they shouldn't be too easy. (It is not for everyone, and not every jump should be signed as ok.) This way we could encourage the newbie wingload wannabies to learns those skills and to realise that maybe they really should learn some more before moving to higher wingloads. It's much easier to say no to them if there are clear skill requirements on evaluation jumps that they should pass. There's some background for saying that he/she is not skilled enough. No student is blaming you for not giving him a license if he didn't pass the jumps required for it...Also everyone else would sleep better if they knew that the guy having that extreme wingload with low jumpnumbers has passed the evaluation jumps and really has commitment for learning canopy skills. At least he/she is skilled hotshot with commitment. Some might say that on some smaller dropzones it's hard to get that kind of training...LIFE IS... but if you really want it you can travel somewhere to have that coaching.