Pretty stoked to get my awesome batwing design Cayenne light 170 with HMA lines. Looked awesome. Entire rig was a new Firebird, including container, reserve and main canopy. Had a professional packer do the all the first pack jobs as this is a very slippery zp canopy. Only jumped it 5 times, and 3 of those times, even after tweaking the nose and trying extreme nose roll, I experienced what can only be described as "holy shit that was fu$#%in hard". Two weeks later, after refusing to jump it anymore, I am still in severe neck pain. I believe I have every right to grade openings being an avid BASE jumper as well, even on 4 second delay slider off BASE jumps, I have never been slammed so hard by any canopy ever. I would rather take a severe head low BASE exit with chest strap neck burn combined with a slammy 7 cell opening any day than jump that Cayenne light 170 again.
Note: on the very first jump, after being experiencing severe body stretch and a massive whack of a an opening, I attempted to pull the slider kill lines in and immediately saw a rip at the trailing edge of each slider kill line channel about an inch long. WTF?? Brand new canopy, remember that. Second jump saw those slider rips open up even more, and by the fifth jump I could not collapse my slider, merely pulled it down as far as I could and swore all the way to the landing area. I believe the simple solution is a bigger slider, perhaps domed. But the real solution is to get rid of this canopy as it may have severe design flaws in the trim and in the quality control. If my slider rips on the first jump, what the hell else is going to fall apart on that canopy. Flys nice enough once open and flares quite well. But what good is that if your neck is broken on opening?? Recommendation is NO NO and NO.
