https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VClAMnBLTQwSometimes life teaches you something while also granting you the luck not to be punished severely. Think I was about 12 inches from breaking both my legs on this one. This canopy flying game is a different world to just skydiving. It's taken over 400 jumps to get to this level, and I'm still such a rookie.
whew...
A brief explanation for those interested. The normal way to fly the canopy is with the steering toggles on a nice gentle straight in approach. These are long lines connected to the back of the canopy that you can use to alter the shape of the trailing edge. Just like elevators. They produce lift and also drag. These are the only wise option for recovering a low dive when you start learning to spiral down toward the ground and just miss.
A more dangerous and ultimately more awesome way of landing is to put the canopy into a diving turn calculating exactly the right altitude that the canopy will then level off again before you hit the ground. Along with this silly game comes the more advanced way of controlling the canopy, by pulling the rear or front risers. These are the 4 connections between your harness and the lines. The only lines not connected to the risers are the steering toggle lines. When you pull down on the front risers you change the angle of attack of the canopy and dive but without deforming the wing too much granting maximum aerodynamics for speed. Equally, when you pull down on the rear risers you decrease the canopies angle of attack, allowing you to level out of a shallow dive and swoop along the ground with minimum drag, scraping your feet through the grass and looking cool.
What happened to me was I tried to recover a low dive with the rear risers, realised that at that speed and angle I could not move them enough to swoop and then very nearly buried my ankles into the hard baked soil. Lesson learned. But man this game is so deliciously dangerous.
S!
