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Hi, everyone!

I have a Flick 308 with 2 vents (c2 and c5) in an APEX DP container. With my clothed weight being between 85 and 90kg my current wing loading is roughly 0.71.

In my short career I have been unlucky to experience two off-heading openings: a 180 and a 120. Both were handled by a riser turns.

I managed to turn a 180 off-heading by 90 degrees before brushing the object (did not break anything, very lucky, it would have been one messy situation if I struck it head on) and the remaining 90 I turned while sliding down the wall. Flew away in the end. Super lucky not to badly hurt myself.

The 120 was also handled by a riser turn. Flew away, not even close to being dangerous but gave me a super-good scare.

So I sat down and watched the videos over and over again to analyse both incidents and work out what can be done to improve the situation. In both videos I can see that my hands are on the risers immediately after opening and I am providing a lot of input on the riser (with toggles still stowed). I can clearly see the slider grommet and the rear riser carbine at level with my shoulder. At the same time, I am not observing a sudden turn by the canopy. The turn is way too slow on both occasions.

The canopy turns pretty quick on the toggles but the riser turns are just too slow.

I hooked the canopy to my s/d rig and jumped it out of a plane. Did a lot of practice turns in the air. Comparing to my skydiving canopy -- a 7-cell 210 the Flick is like trying to turn a train. The 210 turns "on a dime" on either front or rear risers while the Flick requires GORILLA FORCE applied as high as possible on the rears and held down for two-three seconds or so before any turning movement is noticed. Front riser inputs on a Flick are close to ineffective because of the amount of force that I need to apply to them in order to get anything happening at all. I know, I know, I am probably unfit, but it can't be that freaking heavy, or can it?

I tried hypnotising myself and doing jedi-mind training to go for the toggles as a first preference. But there is an issue -- in both incidents my body had turned more than the canopy. During the 180 incident I actually had a "riser twist" with the canopy flying into the cliff and me staring at the beach almost which meant that I could not get to the toggles so had no choice but to use a riser. In the 120 incident, my body did a 180 while the canopy did 120. So I was close to a line twist, one of my toggles was too far to reach and I grabbed the riser -- the closest control I could get to.

So my conclusion is that -- Ok, while I am conscious of the slow turning speed of the canopy and the need to un-stow the toggles ASAP, there could and have been scenarios where getting to the toggles was not possible or was not the quickest option available.

And therefore not being able to "turn on a dime" and being able to avoid the object is a paramount safety concern for me and by using gear that has that ability diminished I feel less confident to jump, which in turn adds to the stress and in turn increases the risk of bad exist, imperfect BP and therefore –- off headings. I therefore would like to find an optimal solution.

I am considering downsizing the canopy to a 280 OSP. My wing loading would therefore become 0.79 or 0.8. So my other questions to ppl who understand canopies better than me:

-- Has anyone been in similar situations? What have you done?

-- Would there be a noticeable difference between 308 and 280 (WL 0.71 vs. 0.79) in how quickly they turn? Or is it a negligible difference?

-- Is there a point to get custom risers with "swooping" handles to improve my ability to apply force on the riser? Or are those handles inappropriate in BASE environment?

Cheers!
Thank you for your input in advance.

Can you define "slow" in the context of this turn?

Slow could mean:

• More seconds of time consumed per degree of heading turn

• More feet of altitude consumed per degree of heading turn

• More feet of horizontal movement made per degree of heading turn

And probably several other things.


If you are evaluating the first (seconds consumed per degree turned), I think you are looking at this wrong. It doesn't matter how many seconds it takes to execute the turn. What's important is how many feet of forward travel (toward the object strike) you experience, and (secondarily) how many feet of altitude you consume.

If a turn takes 5 minutes to complete, but consumes no altitude and doesn't move toward the object, it is FAR better than a turn that takes half a second but moves 30 feet forward and consumes 200 feet of altitude.


Is your perception of "turning on a dime" related to time used? Forward space consumed? Altitude required? Or just the feeling of the g-force on your body as you turn?




My bottom line advice is to NOT downsize. That sounds like a really, really silly idea to me. Why would you want things to move _faster_ during an emergency correction? I'd prefer to keep things as slow as possible.

The advantages of a larger canopy (lighter wing loading) in this sort of situation are very large and include:

Lighter wingloadings have a lower stall speed, and therefore can be made to fly slower, giving more reaction time.

Lighter wingloadings move forward slower, giving you more reaction time and a slower impact speed if/when you do strike the object.

Lighter wingloadings have a lower descent rate and therefore if you do hit the object and crash/slide to the ground, you will be moving slower and are likely to be less injured.

http://www.basetroll.com/index.php

Atair is made in Slovenia by Stane & Andrej
attached are the seven canopy sizes they
offer, please note, their canopies run big.

90 KG is 198 pounds, so you would need
a 285, which is about 301 square feet by
parachutists' standards. 7 square feet is
not enough difference for you to notice.

Tom,

Thank you for a quick and helpful response. The "slow" I refer to is the amount of time it takes for a canopy to alter its horizontal flight heading.

What scares me is that while I am applying plenty of RR input, the canopy is flying into the object faster than turning away from it. So option A: "More seconds of time consumed per degree of heading turn".

I jumped a 280, 285 and two different 308 canopies and found the smaller canopies more comfortable to control. Although both incidents occurred on a 308.

Why is it moving forward?

If you are executing the riser correction correctly, the canopy should make very minimal forward progress. If your brake settings are appropriate, it should actually slide backward during that turn.

The objective of a riser correction is to stall one "wing" (side) of the canopy and move it backward (make it go parachutal). You should be deflecting the riser as far as possible. Reach as high as you can and pull it down as far as possible. When it starts to turn, _don't stop_. Keep pulling it down further to induce the stall on that side and make it slide backward.

Depending on your brake settings, this may give you some forward motion, a turn in place, or some backward motion. With appropriately set brakes, my preference is to have the overall flight path of the canopy move backward during the turn.

Tom, I remember you posting at some point that the OSP doesn't fly backwards (parachutal stall) as well as other canopies and that most people choose toggles for object avoidance on an OSP. Does that mean that on an OSP, a stationary turn is about the best you can do with risers? I assume a stationary turn is also about as good as it gets with toggles, but you use up less altitude?

My experience has been that the OSP doesn't slide backward well because the parachutal rearward rate is extremely low. Turn in place is about the best most of us can do in a normal situation. I expect that the Outlaw will perform roughly the same in this regard, because I think the slats are the major factor. I ordered an Outlaw for myself the first day they were available (based on my experience with one of the prototypes last summer), so hopefully I'll have more feedback on that once mine is delivered and I have a chance to work with it.

Honestly, the altitude loss on the riser turn with the OSP is a lot less than you might expect, and I tend to see most people moving forward a bit on their toggle turns because you really have to be one with your canopy to make good object avoidance toggle turns well.

But everyone should try out different strategies on their own gear in a relatively forgiving situation and then decide what avoidance strategy they prefer. It's definitely one of those things that you want to work out for yourself, rather than just accepting the word of some "expert" or listening to the voices in the internet.

I think your brake settings might be too deep and making your riser turns less responsive. Use toggles or adjust your brake settings.

If the canopy is flying forward faster then turning on the RR -- isn't it the opposite -- break setting is too shallow?

Honestly, I'd want to see top video of the turn to say.

If the brakes are too deep, you'll get poor (or zero) riser response. The canopy will just waffle and sink out without turn response. If the brakes are too shallow, the canopy will drive forward during the riser turn.

I don't believe so. Rear riser turn with shallow brakes should be very responsive, like on a skydive canopy with a high wing loading. He was saying the turn was "slow", to me meaning, less responsive because of too deep brake settings. You'd still have forward movement as long as your not stalling, but hardly any control.

That is the question. I made a suggestion re wing loading being too low but perhaps break settings could be part of the issue. I pack with standard standard DBS.

Is there any benefit to un-stowing only one toggle for an evasive manoeuvre? For example, if the o/h is 150-160 to the right to put the hands on the toggles, un-stow left toggle and pull it down as far as possible (ie. to crotch). Would this turn the canopy sharper?

No. This can be compared to a turn with one toggle to the crotch and one toggle to the shoulder. You'll turn sharper with a toggle high on one side and deep in the other.

Edit to add: Try it! You'll see.

I am a hopeless dyslexic, obviously having one toggle stowed and the other un-stowed would not turn sharper than having one in full flight and the other to the crutch. This configuration is somewhat similar to a flat turn.

What I meant to ask was: if one toggle is stowed, the other is down to the crutch, would this allow for a turn to occur with making less forward movement then with one toggle un-stowed and in full flight and the other down to the crutch? But I guess the answer is: no, it wouldn't. The turn would be sharper with both toggles un-stowed. But the turn would eat height quicker than a shallow turn.

I think if you were a ninja and could unstow both toggles and have one up and one down, you'd turn away in a split second. I'm an untalented middle-aged white male, so i choose rear riser turns after I've verified the riser turns are responsive on a bridge.

I don't think so.

I've seen two cliff strikes result from a jumper doing this in a 90 degree off heading. The canopy tends to veer toward the side with the toggle stowed as you pop the other one, which is generally the opposite of what you want to happen.

I'd prefer to use both the toggles in my hands and have better control over them and better feel for the canopy.

Thank you, everyone, for your input. Very helpful.

I have 2 fliks, a fox, and 2 blackjacks.
The apex canopies are almost totally unresponsive to riser input (front or rear, regardless of toggle setting) but very responsive to toggle input.
The blackjacks are kind of the opposite, much more responsive to riser input than the apex canopies, but less so with toggle input.

I have all of the lower control line lengths and brake settings tuned to me. The brake settings i put as deep as possible without stalling the canopies (reliably).

So i have different emergency plans with my different canopies. With the blackjacks i use risers for heading correction and with the apex canopies i use toggles. I never ever use risers on my apex stuff.

As far as canopy size and wing loading, i agree with Tom 100%. I prefer lower wing loadings on solid objects. Too many of my friends have had wall strikes, i figure the lower wing loaded canopy will be moving slower before (more time for avoidance) and after a strike (won't hit the rock as hard). When the shit goes down i want as much nylon in the air as possible.

That is exactly what I am finding! Precisely. I am glad it's not just me.


Ok, so what is your plan for a scenario where you pitch, falling reasonably flat, keeping shoulders levelled, waiting for the canopy to come out, then -- bang canopy has a 160, you swing around more than 180 and now the canopy is flying into the wall, you are facing away from the wall and you have risers twisted around where the toggles are because you over-rotated in your harness more than 180.

This was my scenario exactly. I had about 1.5 seconds before impact and managed to correct heading by riser input but only by about 90. Still ended up contacting with the wall. It was not pretty. I then untwisted the riser twist and managed to get a canopy away from the wall and flying at around 30ft of height, softly landing using RR on a fully inflated canopy. It was more luck than anything that the canopy did not get ripped to shreds on the wall, that I had those 30ft to spare and that I didn't get knocked out in the impact.

I now sometimes get paranoid about not having adequate tools to correct heading if the toggles are not available. Do you?

In my off headings, I have never over rotated when the risers are untwisting. Every time it has happened, i'm waiting what seems like an eternity to untwist (maybe 1 second?), and when i turn to face the object i grab toggles or risers as soon as i can then turn away.

Yes, off headings are my biggest concern when i'm jumping solid objects.

You need to push harder. Or take a longer delay

this.
push hard, delay long

LZ accommodating pull low enough that with a 180 and zero correction you hit the ground befor the object,

object scrikes be gone.. shhh about pc hesitation

The 4 second club does that

What would happen if you used a 48 or a 46 on a 4 second delay? Obviously the opening would be less comfortable, but you are giving yourself a finer control range for when the parachute deploys. Is this sustainable? Is it reasonable a couple of times from a particularly technical object where a short delay would be dangerous and hesitation deadly?

Can it be done? Sure, I've jumped a 48" terminal once
Should it be done?... No