CANOPY PILOTING |
 Canopy Piloting, also known as Swooping, entails the canopy pilot deploying canopy at 5000 ft, flying to an initiation 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 canopy to recover from the dive and level out with maximum speed more than 150 km/h before entering the course.
Canopy piloting is known as an official skydiving discipline under FAI (The World Air Sports Federation) since 2003, when the first test World Cup took place at Perris Valley in California. The competition was very succesfull with almost 60 participants. First official european competition was in Austria under PST (Pro Swooping Tour) in 2005. Finally the first World Championship in Canopy Piloting was completed successfully under FAI in 2006 with all rounds completed in all events.
To become a high performance canopy pilot, an interested and competent skydiver will typically have at least 1000+ jumps! Ground launching and Speed-flying are another form of canopy piloting. 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. Would you like to try CANOPY PILOTING? What are you waiting for? |
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 three of the basic courses. 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....too much skydiving is not enough!
