The tri-braced canopy that started new parachute design?

[kleggo 145]

[BMAC615 209]

John LeBlanc talks about it in This video recording of a seminar he gave.

[JoeWeber 2,720]

6 hours ago, kleggo said:

Now there's a blast from the past. Fun to fly compared to everything else but the openings could be real doozies.

[pchapman 279]

Still F-111 if I recall correctly.  An invention a little ahead of its time, just waiting for ZP to arrive...

[chuckakers 425]

16 hours ago, JoeWeber said:

Now there's a blast from the past. Fun to fly compared to everything else but the openings could be real doozies.

Yep, I had one. Best performance by far for a wing in that era. And yes, every few dozen jumps an opening would jack up my neck. Probably wasn't the best canopy for a video guy back then, but it sure was fun to fly.

[GoneCodFishing 24]

21 hours ago, BMAC615 said:

John LeBlanc talks about it in This video recording of a seminar he gave.

Ah! I 'knew' i had read an article that went over the development of the Excalibur/cross bracing, but despite searching for years i never managed to find it again. Turns out is this video i had watched! Haha. Thanks for posting it

Edited October 13, 2023 by GoneCodFishing

[kcaero 3]

Steve Snyder said that cross bracing violated his patent on "v " rib design

Edited October 14, 2023 by kcaero

[freakyrat 1]

I just flew a couple demo canopies and one from another jumper. Demoed one for the first time at Muskogee when they first came out. It was a fun canopy to fly and landings were easy. I heard that it just didn't work out when they tried to use ZP.

[KellyF 16]

On 10/13/2023 at 7:53 AM, pchapman said:

Still F-111 if I recall correctly.  An invention a little ahead of its time, just waiting for ZP to arrive...

They made a couple out of ZP,  as I understand it. I remember Craig Buxton jumping one pretty regularly in the early '90's. Between the openings, and the much easier production of the Sabre, I think PD just didn't think it was worth pursuing at the time.

[ChrisHoward 8]

On 10/18/2023 at 11:13 AM, KellyF said:

They made a couple out of ZP,  as I understand it. I remember Craig Buxton jumping one pretty regularly in the early '90's. Between the openings, and the much easier production of the Sabre, I think PD just didn't think it was worth pursuing at the time.

You mean to tell me that PD decided the Sabre opened better than something :-)

[tbrown 26]

 I've read that Precision's FX canopy was a licensed ZP version of the Excalibur.

[pchapman 279]

On 1/15/2024 at 4:33 PM, tbrown said:

 I've read that Precision's FX canopy was a licensed ZP version of the Excalibur.

Sorry, can't be true.

I don't know anything about what may have gone on in the background, but the canopies are very different. Excalibur wasn't tapered -- Adding taper was a huge change in canopy design complexity!  Excalibur had different nose inlet shapes. Different standard sizes. The Precision built FX's were of course licenced from Icarus in NZ. Maybe that's what you were thinking of?

(I still fly an FX but don't know all the history from back then!)