Landing a canopy
Warning: this post contains the "s" word (skydiving) and is full of stuff you either already know or maybe disagree with. Feel free to skip it. The PC sizes thread has a lot of great discussion about how PCs affect canopy flight and there is some thread drift about landing a canopy. I'm posting this to pass along some great info I got that has made my landings better (and they were fine before).
In the "s" world I am a CRW dog and jump a PD Lightning. It is a low-aspect ratio 7-cell canopy with a lot in common with BASE canopies (tailpocket, dacron lines, mesh slider). The Lightning is widely regarded as being difficult to land. I was not having any problems but I was around when Chris Gay (CRW dog extraordinare) was coaching someone on how to land the Lightning, and picked up a great tip.
This technique probably applies to nearly any ram air canopy.
A common technique in landing is the "two stage flare". This technique is mostly used on higher aspect ratio canopies, e.g., 9 cells, and goes something like this: "Do your flare in two stages. Start by flaring just enough to flatten out your glide. Hold your toggles in the same position, watch your sink rate and forward speed, and gradually complete the flare as your forward speed slows and you start sinking. Stab the toggles hard at the end if necessary.
Works great on canopies that have a lot of flare power but the problem is that on the kind of canopies used in BASE and CRW and particularly at the lighter loadings used in BASE, the flattening of the gide is nowhere near as pronounced as it is on a high aspect ratio ZP skydiving canopy loaded at well over 1:1.
Here's a better way.
The trick is to find what is called your canopy's "sweet spot". The typical BASE jump is not the scenario to be trying this--canopy time is way too short--so try this on a skydive (sorry, there's the "s" word again).
At altitude, after clearing your airspace, look up at your canopy and notice the way your body is hanging in relation to it. You will see that the leading edge of the canopy is out front and you are hanging at a bit of an angle toward the rear. Your canopy is, in effect, dragging you.
Pull down both toggles very slowly while you are watching your canopy. Find the point where your canopy comes back a little and you are hanging more vertically.
I'm not talking stalls here. You will be nowhere near the stall point.
If you watch your canopy, you will see that during the first part of flaring your canopy comes back and you are hanging more vertically, and as you continue flaring, that angle does not change much more. The "sweet spot" is where you first reach that more vertical position.
*That* is the position where your canopy's glide has flattened out. You don't find it by watching the ground--it's just not obvious enough on low-aspect ratio 7 cell canopies. When you hit that sweet spot your rate of descent is dramatically reduced but your forward speed is not, which leaves you with plenty of airspeed to translate into more lift as you continue flaring.
Ok, so back to the two stage flare. You begin the flare at your normal altitude, but begin the flare by bringing your toggles down until you hit the canopy's sweet spot and then finish your flare in a continuous, smooth motion basing the speed of that motion on your sink rate. If you are sinking slowly, flare slowly. If you are coming down fast, flare faster.
Time it so that your feet touch the ground as you are finishing the flare.
I was not having any problems landing my canopy because I jumped 7 cells for years before any 9-cell canopies were available. So landing them as always felt natural to me. Using this technique my landings are noticeably better now.
Most skydiving canopies these days have a very powerful and forgiving flare so many jumpers are really not very good at flaring because they don't have to be--their canopies compensate for their lack of skill. You can see this at any DZ watching people land on hot, no-wind days.
Anyway, sorry if this is overly long or too basic or mentions the "s" word too much but I have found it to be a highly effective technique and wanted to pass it along.
Walt
