Just checking

[Clif Huckstable]

Maybe this is no big deal but better be safe than sorry.
Recently I've noticed a difference in the appearance of my base canopy. (Amigo 220) It looks as if maybe the top skin is separating from the vertical thingys that seperate all the cells. When in flight and fully inflated it appears to have much bigger holes for the cell openings than other canopies that I've seen before. I held it up next to my friends canopy and they are deffinately bigger. He said that it might be just normal break in of the canopy. (It only has 20 jumps) Is this natural for an Amigo canopy? It seems to fly a bit different than his too. He flys much further than me and I can't seem to flair smooth like he does. I thought it was because he has an Ace. I've jumped it a fair bit like this and it hasn't seemed to change so I was wondering if canopies break in like this usually.

[Nick_D]

Hi Cliff,

I did some of the intentional cutaways on the Amigo when it was being TSO tested. It's a generic 7-cell skydiving reserve to be sure, but not built for BASE jumping. But I'm sure you already knew that. (Unless, someone is building a BASE canopy called the Amigo I don’t know about).

Crawl up into the center cell and check the bridle attachment point is not slowly tearing out. (Did these even have those?) Those thingies between the cells are called ribs so look at all the stitching top and bottom on those too.

Keep in mind this skydiving canopy was manufactured during a time when weight, or the lack of it, meant everything. And although no manufacturer would every say this, these canopies weren’t built for continual use. Especially, if you are jumping without a slider.

The thumping in on landing may be combination of whatever’s wrong with it, and the overall stabilizer design, plus these types of 7-cell canopies need some wind to land into. Wind like you’d find at the drop zone.

BASE jumps tend to occur in low or no wind conditions. Marry that to the fact common wisdom says a 220 is too small for the average sized BASE jumper and there you go, you’re going to hammer in most of the time.

Again, I would not recommend an Amigo skydiving reserve canopy for BASE jumping.

BTW, FreeFlite had a catchy slogan for this canopy, “Amigo, a Friend for Life.”

Nick
BASE 194