Your Canopy Progression

[packing_jarrett 0]

1-25 Skymaster 230
25-100 Sabre 135
100-150 Batwing 116
150-250 Stiletto 120
250-500 Crossfire 99
500-on Xbrace 68-88

*this progression not recommended

Na' Cho' Cheese

[pchapman 279]

I'll jump in again with more of the old school progression, back when you might jump anything if you had already put a couple jumps on something a bit bigger.


Previously I mentioned how the canopies I owned went 265 --> 135 --> 88. But the initial downsizing jumps I made were like this:

180 jumps on F-111 canopies of 200 ft or more, mostly 265.

Then 5 jumps on a zero-p 160 to get the hang of the speed and concept of planing out. My logbook shows I thought the landings were easy enough to make work (although they were stressful), but I did roll one out as soon as the wind dropped.

(Oh yeah, I had a video camera strapped to my leg on the 3rd of those jumps, and put myself into fast spiralling line twists below 1500' when I decided to do one more set of quick toggle turns before getting to safety altitude to stop playing around. I was very close to pulling both handles had I not kicked out quickly.)


After those jumps it was
4 jumps Sabre 135,
2 jumps Sabre 120,
then after a few more big canopy jumps,

then to a Jonathan 92 on a hot summer day with light winds at jump 205 (the smallest production canopy other than the Nova 88 at the time I think).

On the first couple jumps on that canopy, high hop and pops, I was flaring over a log fence or bushes to land, as I had been doing so much testing under canopy (with tape recorder, wind speed indicator, and rate of descent indicator) that I just made it back to the DZ property.

Jeez, until checking my logbooks I had forgotten I had all that crap with me from the start. Even back then in the mid 1990s, playing test pilot while aggressively downsizing wasn't the norm.

[airtwardo 7]

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T-10
Para Commander
Papillon
Para-plane
Thunder bow
252 HW
Strato-Cloud-230
Unit-220
252 (lite)
Strato-Cloud Sport 260
Excalibur 260
Excalibur 230
Excalibur 210
Sabre 190
190 Zpo
170 Zpo
210Zpo

Edited to add: 35+ years in the sport and never had an injury that kept me off the 'next' load!

Thats a good advert for staying large. Any reason for the upsizing from 170 to 210?

Older ~less balls & more brains!

*staying large is relative, me on a 170 is loaded @ 1.5

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[knic 0]

PD Saber2 210 x 10 jumps
PD Saber2 190 x 15 jumps
PD Spectre 170 x 125 jumps
PD Sabre2 150 x 125 jumps
PD Sabre2 135 x 125 jumps
PD Sabre2 120 x 50 jumps currently [backup rig]
PD Katana 107 x 10 jumps currently

- Knic

[DrewEckhardt 0]

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So i came across on facebook PD's question of what was your canopy progression and thought that I'd like to see and ask everyone here on Dropzone

Found a few others threads but they were from way back when

Mostly at 5000 feet MSL, with 8000 foot density altitudes on hot summer days:

12 jumps under Sky Master 295s and Manta 288s
70ish jumps under a Turbo Z 205 @ .88
12 jumps under a Sabre 170 @ 1.06
100ish jumps under a Monarch 155 @ 1.16
150ish jumps under a Monarch 135 @ 1.33-1.52 before acquiring other canopies, 100+ after.
250ish jumps under a Batwing 134 @ 1.5ish
600+ on my Stiletto 120 mostly at 1.67 but later <= 1.50
20+ on a Samurai 120
300+ Samurai 105 @ 1.67 (at altitude) - 1.9 (at sea level)

I should have learned to actually fly the 135/150/170 canopies before down-sizing farther but the skydiving community had yet to come up with guidelines and canopy courses.

[champu 1]

That's easy, I can just take my post from three years ago and add more jumps to the last canopy on the list...

Skymaster 290 @0.6 (6 jumps; static lines)
Skymaster 230 @0.75 (14 jumps)
Sabre 170 @1.1 (8 jumps)
Sabre 135 @1.25 (~600 jumps)
Stiletto 135 @1.25 (~350 jumps)
Katana 120 @1.5 (~20 jumps)
Stiletto 107 @1.65 (~150 jumps)
Katana 107 @ 1.65 (~630 jumps)
Velo 103 @ 1.75 (~15 jumps)
Velo 96 @ 1.85 (~15 jumps)
Velo 90 @ 2.0 (~950 jumps and counting)

[yeyo 1]

Silo 230 - 3 jumps
Sabre 190 - 16 jumps
Sabre 170 - 33 jumps
Sabre 150 - 43 jumps
Sabre2 150 - 13 jumps
Triathlon 150 - 850+ jumps @ 1.3

HISPA #93
DS #419.5

[drjump 0]

28' dBL-8
28' 7TU-147
28'-7TU LoPo-5
32-7TU-LoPo-2
X-Bow-1
35'-T10-3
28' 4-line release-4
26'-Navy Conical-1
PC- 575
Para Sled-5
Para Plane- 3
Cloud-4
Strato Cloud-5
Delta II-15 (Most fun of all)
Papp.-4
Piglett II-125
Sparrow-1
Pegasus-16
PD 210-54
Spectra 190--1072

[billvon 2,991]

Let's see:

DC5 (300 sq ft 5 cell)
Manta
Pursuit 215
PD190
Tri-160
Sabre 150
Tri-135
Pilot 140
Safire 1 129
Pilot 117
Nitro 108
Crossfire2 109

Also a few other Safires, a Jedei, a Spectre, a PD170, a Crossfire 1 etc etc. But the above list are the "main" canopies (pun intended) that I did most of my jumping on.

[wildWilly 0]

Manta 280 - 25 jumps
Lazer 210 - 150 jumps
Sabre 150 - 350 jumps
Samurai 136 - 600 jumps
Sensei 101 - 200 jumps and still counting WL 2.1
no injuries so far, knock on wood.

growing old is inevitable, growing up is optional.

[JohnRich 4]

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I should have learned to actually fly the 135/150/170 canopies before down-sizing farther but the skydiving community had yet to come up with guidelines and canopy courses.

Another interesting thing to see here is the number of canopies relative to the total number of jumps. For example, you've flown 9 canopies in 1,500 jumps, for an average of 167 jumps per canopy. One might argue that this could be a guideline to know whether one has truly mastered one canopy before moving on to a smaller one.

For fun, we could even come up with a ratio to express this number. We already have "wing-loading" to express the relationship between suspended weight and wing size. So what would we call a ratio expressing the comparison of number of canopies to number of jumps? How about "canopy experience ratio", or CER. Your CER, given the above numbers, would be (1,500 / 9 = 167).

And then if we knew the CER of every jumper, we could look at the CER of jumpers who die in low turns, versus the CER of those who don't. Hmmm...

And in every such incident report, along with people screaming "What was his wing-loading?", they could also scream "What was his CER?" Wouldn't that be fun.

[nickfrey 0]

Sabre 2 190 1 jump
Triathlon 175 21 jumps
Triathlon 135 most of next 75 A couple jumps on Sabre 2 150 and a Nitron 150 in there.
My first canopy Sabre 150- 150ish jumps
Sabre 135 5 or so jumps (borrowed)
Spectre 129 2 jumps (demo)

[RafaelYP 0]

Skymaster 280, w/l 0.90; 44 jumps
Coe 260, w/l 0.95; 33 jumps
Triathlon 260; 2 jumps, firts time in USA (Perris)
Spectre 230: w/l 1.05, 6 jumps
Spectre 210; w/l 1.17, 3 jumps
Sabre 2 210, 2 jumps
Spectre 210 (mine)

[Calvin19 0]

I weigh 175lb with gear

skydiving
Student gear 190'+ 20 jumps
Rental gear 170-190 15 jumps
Saber 170 50 jumps
Saber2 150 150 jumps
Stiletto 150 100 jumps
Safire2 149 20 jumps

Small canopy RW flying, non swooping
Stiletto 120 150 jumps
Velocity110or whatever 5 jumps
Velocity 90something 5 jumps
JVX 84 10 jumps
JVX 79 15 jumps+

BASE jumping
Dagger 222 250jumps
Blackjack 260 200+jumps
Dagger 270 50 jumps

-SPACE-

[DoZ3r 0]

Student time:
Raven III
Raven IV
Manta
Navigator
Then
Spectre 190
Sabre2 150
Sabre2 135
Vengeance 120
Katana 107
And now
Vengeance 120, Spectre 120, CF Storm 97 and Icarus Tandem...

And some random jumps here and there on other gear...
Crossfire2 109, Sabre2 120, Mamba 104...

If everything seems under control.. You're just not going fast enough..!

[mchamp 1]

agreed lol

For info regarding lift ticket prices all around the world check out
http://www.jumpticketprices.com/dropzones.asp

[countzero 7]

student gear- skymaster: 200, 190, 170
skymaster 170
monarch 155
omega 135

got into CRW
triathlon 150
lightning 143

diamonds are a dawgs best friend

[SRI85 0]

Nav 220 -4 jumps
Nav 200 - 30 jumps
Spectre 190 -4 jumps
Spectre 170 - 1 jump
Safire 2 149 - 100 jumps
Safire 2 119 - 45 and counting

[thrillstalker 0]

260 manta- 32 jumps

230 manta- 15 jumps

210 sabre2- 54 jumps

"Never grow a wishbone, where your backbone ought to be."