Icarus NZ story (Icarus Project)...

[CanopyPiloting 0]

The Icarus Project...

In 1988 Bill Coe of performance designs designed the Crossbrace Tricell canopy called the "Excalibur". At that time Parachutes de France had released the Blue Trac, the first ZP Elliptical canopy available on the market. These were the most significant steps in parachute design in a long time and started a whole new addiction called, "swooping". Since then several other canopies came out lifting the bar a little each time. Notably the Sabre, the Jonathon, then in 1993 the Stiletto...the most popular sport main of all time.

NZ Aerosports had been building canopies since 1985 starting with making a few Pegasus copies for friends then slowly trying to get more performance out of the designs of the day. NZ Aerosports had a passion for high performance canopies and after the Excalibur and Bluetrack came out an obvious move seemed to be towards development of a ZP XBTricell. NZ Aerosports built a couple and the performance was amazing, but the openings were totally unworkable. NZ Aerosports headed off in other directions for several years trying to get more performance out of conventional canopies they could make open good enough to sell on the market, PD eventually pulled the f-111 Excalibur off the market for similar reasons.

The most significant performance gain was the Tricell canopy NZ Aerosports had built in 1989. Elliptical ZP canopies were the norm in HP now and NZ Aerosports had just installed one of the first computer cutting systems in the industry. They had their own software written to generate the shapes they needed and then built a ZP Elliptical Crossbraced Tricell canopy. The new design was hard to make and bulky but they knew it was miles ahead of everything else on the market.

NZ Aerosports has only ever been a very small business. They had this awesome canopy but it still wasn't opening well enough. They believed they could get even more out of it. The next 2 years included many sleepless nights, every idea they could think of to manage the openings and optimize the performance from it was tried. They also did a run of wind tunnel tests and just about went crazy building more prototypes than they could afford knowing they had a winner if they could just figure it out.

In 1995 NZ Aerosports released the Mk1 Icarus EXTreme, Since then this style of canopy has revolutionized our sport. Canopy flying competitions were just starting out and the extra performance from the Mk1 Extreme showed up clearly in these controlled and measured environments including the early Bladerunning events in 1996. Soon NZ Aerosports were licensing their designs to other parachute manufacturers like Precision Aerodynamics and CIMSA in Spain. In 1997 NZ Aerosports createed the "Icarus Project" and released an up graded version of the Mk1 called the "FX" which had a smaller pack volume and a closed nose universally seen today in almost all crossbraced canopies. The Icarus Project soon became Icarus Canopies and in 1999 the giant in the industry PD ,the original designers of the crossbrace, released the Velocity based on the same format Icarus had developed in the FX. This really made people take notice of NZ Aerosports/Icarus canopies, the well deserved industry leader Performance Designs was following lead with a 21 cell tri-braced canopy just like the 21 tri braced FX. The same day PD released the 21 cell Velocity Icarus released it's 27 cell "VX".

NZ Aerosports/Icarus has learned a lot designing High Performance wings over the years. Much of what NZ Aerosports had learned was transferred into a complete range of canopies. The Tandem, Omega, Safire, Crossfire as well as the FX and VX. These canopies were to be manufactured and sold under license by Precision in the US and Cimsa in Spain, as well as, directly by NZ Aerosports (Icarus New Zealand). After some time Precision left the group and came out with their own versions of these designs. Icarus canopies became mostly manufactured in Spain for both the US and EU markets.

NZ Aerosports is now known as "Icarus NZ" in America and have always been on the cutting edge. Icarus NZ canopy design software has come a long way since the start, the cutting systems are now used by most ram air canopy manufacturers.

Now here's the exciting part... Icarus NZ hasn't been idle over the last 5 years, we have been in active R&D of some of the most advanced parachute designs thus far. The newest version of the VX called the "JVX" will be released next month. The JVX has already took first place at the 2004 US Nationals of Canopy Piloting and right behind the JVX comes the newest generation of HP wing called the "JSX". The JSX has been in testing for a long time and flown since last year. The JSX was displayed just prior to the 2004 U.S. Nationals and at the New Zealand Nationals. The JSX will also be displayed during several events in 2005 before its unscheduled release. The JSX is a 45 cell Ultra performance parachute utilizing a new cell structure designed by "Jyro" (Icarus NZ) called "NZ Bracing". The JSX also has a JVX type nose section, new trim, HMA lines and no stabilizers. Icarus NZ also has new models of HP canopies designed specifically for Bladerunning, canopy expeditions and ground launching. That's right...the GLX (Ground Launch Extreme) and the GLS (Ground Launch Sport) will also hit the market next month!

The new line of high performance canopies will be available through Icarus NZ/NZ Aerosports in New Zealand. Icarus NZ might be on the other side of the world but nowadays they are only a Phone call or E-mail away. Icarus NZ has their own support and distribution office in the U.S. Contact Icarus NZ at supprt@icarusnz.com

Coming soon!
[/url]www.icarusnz.com[url]

[LouDiamond 1]

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[riggermick 7]

Hi Paul,
How's it goin? Hope all is well.

Mick.

Quote

The Icarus Project...

In 1988 Bill Coe of performance designs designed the Crossbrace Tricell canopy called the "Excalibur". At that time Parachutes de France had released the Blue Trac, the first ZP Elliptical canopy available on the market. These were the most significant steps in parachute design in a long time and started a whole new addiction called, "swooping". Since then several other canopies came out lifting the bar a little each time. Notably the Sabre, the Jonathon, then in 1993 the Stiletto...the most popular sport main of all time.

NZ Aerosports had been building canopies since 1985 starting with making a few Pegasus copies for friends then slowly trying to get more performance out of the designs of the day. NZ Aerosports had a passion for high performance canopies and after the Excalibur and Bluetrack came out an obvious move seemed to be towards development of a ZP XBTricell. NZ Aerosports built a couple and the performance was amazing, but the openings were totally unworkable. NZ Aerosports headed off in other directions for several years trying to get more performance out of conventional canopies they could make open good enough to sell on the market, PD eventually pulled the f-111 Excalibur off the market for similar reasons.

The most significant performance gain was the Tricell canopy NZ Aerosports had built in 1989. Elliptical ZP canopies were the norm in HP now and NZ Aerosports had just installed one of the first computer cutting systems in the industry. They had their own software written to generate the shapes they needed and then built a ZP Elliptical Crossbraced Tricell canopy. The new design was hard to make and bulky but they knew it was miles ahead of everything else on the market.

NZ Aerosports has only ever been a very small business. They had this awesome canopy but it still wasn't opening well enough. They believed they could get even more out of it. The next 2 years included many sleepless nights, every idea they could think of to manage the openings and optimize the performance from it was tried. They also did a run of wind tunnel tests and just about went crazy building more prototypes than they could afford knowing they had a winner if they could just figure it out.

In 1995 NZ Aerosports released the Mk1 Icarus EXTreme, Since then this style of canopy has revolutionized our sport. Canopy flying competitions were just starting out and the extra performance from the Mk1 Extreme showed up clearly in these controlled and measured environments including the early Bladerunning events in 1996. Soon NZ Aerosports were licensing their designs to other parachute manufacturers like Precision Aerodynamics and CIMSA in Spain. In 1997 NZ Aerosports createed the "Icarus Project" and released an up graded version of the Mk1 called the "FX" which had a smaller pack volume and a closed nose universally seen today in almost all crossbraced canopies. The Icarus Project soon became Icarus Canopies and in 1999 the giant in the industry PD ,the original designers of the crossbrace, released the Velocity based on the same format Icarus had developed in the FX. This really made people take notice of NZ Aerosports/Icarus canopies, the well deserved industry leader Performance Designs was following lead with a 21 cell tri-braced canopy just like the 21 tri braced FX. The same day PD released the 21 cell Velocity Icarus released it's 27 cell "VX".

NZ Aerosports/Icarus has learned a lot designing High Performance wings over the years. Much of what NZ Aerosports had learned was transferred into a complete range of canopies. The Tandem, Omega, Safire, Crossfire as well as the FX and VX. These canopies were to be manufactured and sold under license by Precision in the US and Cimsa in Spain, as well as, directly by NZ Aerosports (Icarus New Zealand). After some time Precision left the group and came out with their own versions of these designs. Icarus canopies became mostly manufactured in Spain for both the US and EU markets.

NZ Aerosports is now known as "Icarus NZ" in America and have always been on the cutting edge. Icarus NZ canopy design software has come a long way since the start, the cutting systems are now used by most ram air canopy manufacturers.

Now here's the exciting part... Icarus NZ hasn't been idle over the last 5 years, we have been in active R&D of some of the most advanced parachute designs thus far. The newest version of the VX called the "JVX" will be released next month. The JVX has already took first place at the 2004 US Nationals of Canopy Piloting and right behind the JVX comes the newest generation of HP wing called the "JSX". The JSX has been in testing for a long time and flown since last year. The JSX was displayed just prior to the 2004 U.S. Nationals and at the New Zealand Nationals. The JSX will also be displayed during several events in 2005 before its unscheduled release. The JSX is a 45 cell Ultra performance parachute utilizing a new cell structure designed by "Jyro" (Icarus NZ) called "NZ Bracing". The JSX also has a JVX type nose section, new trim, HMA lines and no stabilizers. Icarus NZ also has new models of HP canopies designed specifically for Bladerunning, canopy expeditions and ground launching. That's right...the GLX (Ground Launch Extreme) and the GLS (Ground Launch Sport) will also hit the market next month!

The new line of high performance canopies will be available through Icarus NZ/NZ Aerosports in New Zealand. Icarus NZ might be on the other side of the world but nowadays they are only a Phone call or E-mail away. Icarus NZ has their own support and distribution office in the U.S. Contact Icarus NZ at supprt@icarusnz.com

Coming soon!
[/url]www.icarusnz.com[url]

[pms07 3]

In 1988 Bill Coe of performance designs designed the Crossbrace Tricell canopy called the "Excalibur". At that time Parachutes de France had released the Blue Trac, the first ZP Elliptical canopy available on the market. These were the most significant steps in parachute design in a long time and started a whole new addiction called, "swooping".

Quote

Nice advertisement dude! Anyway, a few comments:

That was not the start of "swooping" and you would have to have been at places like Deland or US Nationals that year or the year prior to see what was being done on "conventional" 9 cell canopys even prior to the Excaliber or BT.

The most significant performance gain was the Tricell canopy NZ Aerosports had built in 1989.

You are kidding right? No complaints or criticism of of NZ Aerosports canopies from me. Yet you seem to have missed a bit of reality in your haste to send out this lengthy advertisement... Are you serious? If so, I hope I can unload all these soon to be outdated and useless PD and Precision canopies I'm currently using...

pms

[CanopyPiloting 0]

The post is meant to clarify the history of NZ Aerosports (Icarus NZ) and tri cell canopies, not date the entire history of parachuting...

[blitzkrieg 0]

Quote

nowadays they are only a Phone call or E-mail away. Icarus NZ has their own support and distribution office in the U.S. Contact Icarus NZ at supprt@icarusnz.com

so you're telling me someone will actually respond to this email address? maybe the company should spend a little more time in R&D with regards to customer service, IMO that goes a lot further than any swoop.

and what's with that web site? more info or none would be a little less insulting.

[diablopilot 2]

Quote

so you're telling me someone will actually respond to this email address? maybe the company should spend a little more time in R&D with regards to customer service, IMO that goes a lot further than any swoop.

Before you make broad sweeping generalizations you should unserstand IcarusNZ (formerly NZ Aerosports) is a completly seperate company from Icarus Canopies, and utilizes different personel.....

----------------------------------------------
You're not as good as you think you are. Seriously.

[blitzkrieg 0]

well my bad, but maybe they should change their name.

[marks 0]

jeese, i can feel the negativity through the computer!


im sorry, but i want to know more! thanks to jim for posting this,

if there is more info you have jim that just might not be "pc" for the forum, feel free to pm it to me, and i will pm it to who i think might want to read it!

[Spizzzarko 0]

Do you want to know why this forum sucks? People like you being so critical over everything that someone sits down and types for the education of other users.

[blitzkrieg 0]

just expressing my opinions which i thought was one of the main purposes of a forum, maybe i'm wrong.

Quote

someone sits down and types for the education of other users.

was this education or advertising??? i wondered because i originally saw it posted in the swooping forum.

[Spizzzarko 0]

Why don't you let the moderators sort that out. That's their job.

[blitzkrieg 0]

well, ya got me.

i guess that's why i don't rule the world.

[Spizzzarko 0]

[jose 0]

Its all up to the individual. I saw it as an awesome piece of information. There was alot of great stuff in that post.

Others that are more scrutinizing, and negative, saw it as an advertisement. Unfortutately, no one here gets the benefit of the doubt when posts are borderline, they are automatically re-routed or smacked off the web. But hey, I guess they don't have the time to ask every person what their intent was.

Anyways, good stuff, I enjoyed it.

[diablopilot 2]

Only got a few minutes free to look at it this weekend Jim, but the JSX looked pretty cool. Neat technology. Interesting construction. The sliders and no stabilizers looks weird, but I'll reserve judgment till I experience it.....


Cool stuff man.

----------------------------------------------
You're not as good as you think you are. Seriously.