You can spot them a mile off. 

Everyone else has landed and is heading back to the packing area but they’re still up there, hanging about on half brakes making sure they have bags of airspace and probably a bit of an audience too..

And then they arrive with a wssshhhhhhhhrrrrrrr, smoking along the ground for absolutely forever with energy left to flare after yet another icebox canopy ride.

We think that’s great. A cool surf is still where it’s at in the UK. But there’s far more out there – jumpers in the US are not only pushing the envelope, they are exploding out of it to leave the remains in a charred, startled heap!

Just look at these guys – is that vapour trailing off their heels? Are they having a blast – or what?!

  
PARA-PERFORMANCE PRO-TOUR
In the States, this whole new, exciting aspect of our sport is being pushed forward by the Para-Performance Pro-Tour. This organisation is running the canopy flying event. The Para-performance Pro-Tour guys have shaken out the bag and set up some ultra-cool, exciting and spectator-friendly competitions. These comprise three main events; speed, distance and accuracy with a course set up over a man-made swoop pond. One of the ponds used at the autumn Para-Performance Games 2000 at Skydive Houston, for example, measured 270 feet long by 45 feet wide! The Para-Performance Pro-Tour is the only organisation in the world which is currently ranking canopy pilots.

Speed competition
That’s negotiating a 175 feet course over the swoop pond with eight airblade gates.

Just imagine 30ft wide gates at the entry point, narrowing to 13ft wide at the exit!

The idea is to negotiate the course in the fastest time without any blade strikes or penalties. The fastest at Houston's Para-Performance Games 2000 was Vladi Pesa with a 1.89 seconds run.

Just think of Rickster trailing his toes downstream for absolutely forever and kicking out for a bank landing. That’s what they’re looking for and then some. The ultimate accuracy swoop at the Para-Performance Games 2000 was by Jim Slaton, a 270ft toe drag with a bull’s eye target strike. Yahoo!

Distance competition
Eight airblade gates are set up over a 400 feet long course. Pilots have to score the entry gates and travel the furthest distance possible within the course. A distance round is measured from the entry gate of the course to the pilot’s first point of contact with the surface. That’s big pirates and crocodiles stuff! There are not a lot of straight bits – remember it’s a 400 feet long course in a 270 feet pond!

First place in the distance competition 2000, went to Jim Slaton with a 321ft swoop! 

Cut the Cloth
This is exciting, ground-breaking stuff. These aerial performers are taking this new aspect of our sport to amazing levels. But these boys and girls are not exactly flying the average canopy. Nowhere near it! They’re seeking the perfect wing loading for that ultimate canopy ride. Currently, that means cutting back on the cloth over their heads...

WING LOADING
Wing loadings? Wing loading is what it sounds, how heavy the pilot is under how large (or small!) a canopy.

Wing Loading = weight / area

So, say you weigh 144 lbs and have a 120 square foot canopy, that’s a wing loading of 1.2. Bear in mind that the weight is total, all-up, ie, it includes your rig, weight vest, hat etc.

Extreme Wing Loads
When they say extreme, these pilots certainly mean it. A low wing loading is 1.2. A medium wing loading is 1.6, a high is 1.9 while an extreme loading is a mind focussing 2.0 and above.

But these extreme flyers don’t simply buy a smaller square footage of a high performance canopy – Stiletto, BT or whatever. They fly specially designed extreme canopies which are made to be flown to the limits. The Icarus Extreme and the PD Velocity come to mind. These are NOT the latest ‘trend’ in canopy design, rather they are specifically designed just for Extreme Flying by highly experienced canopy pilots who do a mind-boggling 1,000+ jumps a year.

To relate to how radical the Pro-Tour is, the average wing loading for the professional canopy pilots on the Tour is 2.2. The highest wing loading on record is 4.7 by Luigi Cani on his Icarus Extreme VX 46!

Jim Slaton, Para-Pro Tour Director, said "There comes a point with aerodynamics that you start sacrificing one type of performance for another. A pilot can continue to increase his wing loading for more speed (downsizing the canopy or adding weights) but this does not mean the wing will swoop further or better. Lift and drag increase in geometric proportion to speed; twice the speed means four times the lift – but you also have four times as much drag. So high performance canopies at high loadings perform well to an extent but then the wing starts to lose efficiency. "

We all need lift for a safe and productive landing and parachutes flown at very high wing loadings don’t always land well. But they can be landed safely. "Technological advancements in canopy designs have opened new doors for pilots flying at higher wing loadings with smaller wings. Future designs will make this opportunity even more epic" said Jim. He feels one of the top extreme pilots, Luigi Cani, could successfully land an Icarus Extreme down to 35 square feet, Luigi already holds the record for the world’s smallest canopy jumped, at 46 square feet. But Luigi makes over 1,000 jumps each year and trains daily in high performance canopy landings.

Wing Loading and Canopy Choice
You can use wing loading to choose an appropriate canopy size. Take your all-up suspended weight (gear, weight vest and all) and divide it by a recommended wing loading for your experience level (such as the 1.2 mentioned) to give you a recommended canopy size. Adjust to a lower wing loading than recommended if you like a pretty chilled-out canopy ride or if you aren’t always as on the ball as you would like.

SAFETY IS PARAMOUNT

Jim Slaton stresses the following points:

Mistakes can be deadly
Jim points out the importance of having an excellent understanding of basic aerodynamics. "Pilots need to know why canopies act the way they do when they do. The wind is never constant, turbulence is always waiting and the pilot has to deal with all this during his final approach". The most fundamental advice he gives is: Never, ever, ever initiate a turn you won’t be able to complete before you hit the ground.

Think it looks fun?
It does look fun. It is fun. But hurting yourself isn’t. And, at these speeds, it won’t be minor, it will be a close call between paralysis and death. A worryingly high and increasing amount of serious injuries and fatalities are caused by miscalculated canopy control input close to the ground. Take advice from people who know what they’re doing and don’t try this for yourself unless under expert and close supervision from the right people.

The BPA has looked at the whole area of swoop accuracy competitions and has run tests in the UK. The results – it will be a while before we have BPA affiliated competitions in the UK. "Safety first", says the Competitions Committee and quite rightly so. The BPA’s main concern is to prevent injuries and not encourage extreme canopy flying before jumpers are capable. Canopy pilots in Britain tend to be not as current, so extreme swoops are inherently more dangerous. Our not-so-fantastic weather makes it impossible to do the number of jumps in the UK that are required for such extreme flying. The BPA emphasises that jumpers need to get proper and intensive tuition before attempting to surf a canopy.

Right on. Don’t go there! But, if you can get to the States to watch one of these competitions, you will undoubtedly be impressed, entertained and informed. This can only improve your own canopy flying and, ultimately, make you a better canopy pilot.
 

Photos:  Janine Hill and Karine Leblond

Article by: Jo Malone
johomalone@hotmail.com

Adapted from information from Jim Slaton and Karine Leblond

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