Canopy piloting

Canopy Piloting encompasses several disciplines, all involving the flight of a skydiving parachute either at high altitude or close to the ground.

"Swooping" is one form of canopy piloting and is a growing activity in the skydiving world. Many think the reason for this is that it is one of the few skydiving related events that are, for the most part, spectator friendly.

Swooping entails the canopy pilot deploying their canopy at 5000 ft, piloting their canopy to an "execution" point over the swoop course, then turning into a rotating dive dramatically increasing the canopy's speed. The canopy pilot stops the canopy's rotation on the proper course heading, while at the correct altitude allowing their canopy to recover from the dive and level out with maximum speed before entering the course, Maximum speeds regularly reaching in excess of 90 mph. The Current world records are

G-1-f1 : Canopy Piloting, Distance : 150.72 m

Date of : 15/06/2007Parachutist(s): Jason MOLEDZKI (Canada)Course/place: Longmont, CO (USA)

G-1-f2 : Canopy Piloting, Speed : 2.564 sec

Date of : 09/11/2007Parachutist(s): Jason MOLEDZKI (Canada)Course/place: Sydney, NSW (Australia)

Pro Swooping Tour Professional competition courses mark the entry gates with 5 ft tall wind blades, whereas some part of the pilots body must break the imaginary line across the top of the entry gate pair, often only 20 ft apart. These types of landings are inherently more dangerous than normal landings. For competitor safety this is usually done over a "swoop pond", a shallow artificial pond that can be narrow and long, but for safety a trend towards building larger square or rectangular ponds is becoming more prevalent.

The goal of the canopy piloting competition is to negotiate a number of different courses which challenge different performance characteristics of canopy flight and pilot skill. Speed, Distance and Accuracy are just three of the basic courses used at most competitions. Quickly evolving out of these courses is the Freestyle discipline. Freestyle typically uses a large body of water for competitors to drag through, or touch with different body parts and positions while maintaining nearly constant contact with the water. Gaining popularity both with competitors and spectators alike, freestyle puts the canopy pilot in contact with the water at high speeds, increasing the risk of a violent impact, or a spectacular display of skill over the pond, ultimately landing on solid ground on the other side.

To become a high performance canopy pilot, an interested and competent skydiver will typically have at least 1000 jumps to their credit, and start a 1-2 year training process to become skilled and experienced enough to compete at the 'standard' level. Professional levels take 2-4 years of dedicated training, where some competitors have 10,000+ jumps.

Ground launching and Speed-flying are another form of canopy piloting. These disciplines differ from swooping in that the canopy pilot flies his canopy in close proximity to the ground, either descending a mountainside or other gradient or, in certain conditions, hovering metres above the ground much like a paraglider pilot can. These types of flight are appealing to those pilots wanting long canopy flights at relatively low cost or for those wanting to use their skydiving gear in a new and challenging way.

ee also

*Skydiving
*Drop zone

[http://knowledge.freefalluniversity.co.uk/swooping.asp Account of Canopy piloting student]

External links

* [http://www.canopypiloting.co.za/ The 2nd FAI World Championships in Canopy Piloting - 2008 at Pretoria Skydiving Club South Africa]
* [http://www.canopypiloting.com/ www.canopypiloting.com Global Swooping Community ]
* [http://www.canopypiloting.net/ CanopyPiloting.net Air Sports of the third millennium ]