Cheerful Greetings:

I posted this earlier today, but I think it may have gotten lost. Apologies in advance if I've double posted. If I have, can somebody point it out to me and I'll erase this one? Thanks.

I have a question about canopies. I'm wondering if anybody has any commentary on it.

I own and jump both a Fox and a Mojo. I'm very happy with both.

However, I have also jumped an old Australian canopy called a Pooster. The Pooster is a BASE specific canopy, not a skydiving canopy.

I noticed that the Pooster flares from half brakes significantly better than either my Fox or Mojo. I think that this is because the Pooster has five control lines in the toggle cascade, rather than the four on my canopies. I am also told that using spectra, rather than dacron, control lines will give a better flare from half brakes.

Why don't our canopies do these things?

1) Spectra lines: I can see the trade off here--dacron lines are better shock absorbers, since spectra is completely static. But would it matter if just the control lines were spectra, while the others were dacron? Would that throw off the flying trim of the canopy? What about openings?

2) Five control lines: I know that some riggers modify Triathlons to have five lines, rather than four, to help them flare better. Why are BASE canopies not built this way? Is there more chance of line over with the extra line? Or is there some other reason I'm ignorant of?

If anyone has any idea, I'd love to know what's going on here (especially the four v. five lines thing).

--Tom Aiello