Black Jack

[guest]

Yo !

Has anybody had a chance to jump or look at the Adam's new Black Jack canopy ?

bsbd!

Yuri.

[guest]

I didn't know Adam had a new canopy out until you posted. I checked out his site crmojo.com and read the press release. It goes to show you that competition breeds excellence. I like the idea that air can go in but not out the vents. Can't wait to try one out.

Cya

Tree

[guest]

Hi Yuri:

I got the (I think) first public look at it, since I was at CR on the release day. Although I haven't flown it (I'm hoping to get mine by the time I leave for Europe at the end of June), I also got to talk to some of the test jumpers, and watch the video of the test jumps.

My impressions so far: WOW!.

It looks like the Ace/Black Jack are really great leaps forward. Since I was mostly interested in purchasing a Black Jack (and ended up buying one), most of my time was spent looking at that canopy.

Here's what I know:

1) The Ace and the Black Jack are essentially the same canopy, but built with and without the PAC valves.

2)The airfoil (for both the Ace and Black Jack) is completely new, so it's not just a Mojo with vents. In fact, I think the Ace is superior enough to the Mojo (in both flight and opening) that we'll see Mojos disappearing over the next several years, and being replaced by Aces.

3) The PAC valves greatly change the pack volume of the Black Jack (so that, while an Ace 280 looks to be about the same pack volume as a Mojo 280, a Black Jack 280 is probably going to be around the volume of a Mojo 310).

4) The Black Jack openings are on par with a Vtec Fox canopy. Studying the video (from above, below and the side), I was honestly unable to say that a Vtec canopy or a PAC valve canopy had better openings. It looks, to me, like the Vtec and the PAC valve are performing virtually the same during opening. Both systems are (my opinion) opening far cleaner than non-vented (or -valved) canopies.

5) However, during flight the PAC valve appears to work far better than the Vtec. It appears (again, my opinion) that the Vtec vents can allow air to escape from the bottom surface of the canopy during flight. The PAC valve does not. Here, I am basing my opinion on video of the canopy in flight, with tell tales (streamers) attached to the Vtec vents. I'm also (in small part) basing some of my opinion on my experiences flying a Vtec canopy (around 50 jumps).

6) As far as flight characteristics, I saw some radically impressive things. I've seen the Black Jack landed in 3/4 brakes with NO FLARE at all, and a stand up landing. I really couldn't believe it (but other reliable witnesses have verified it--no digital trickery here, either, as we saw this in person). The canopy also flares far better than any BASE canopy I've seen. I think that the canopy is also a bit more responsive to toggle input, but that may be subject to debate and personal opinion.

So, my first opinion (based on around 3 hours of examination of the canopy and footage, and in person views of a handful of test jumps), is that CR has just significantly raised the bar for BASE canopies.

I believe CR will have a few demo canopies available by the IPBC meet in June, so there should be more feedback forthcoming shortly.

Also, I hope to have my Black Jack for my July and August trip to Europe, and I'll undoubtedly have some more thoughts (which I'll try to post here in some coherent form) on my return.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what BR comes back with (this kind of competition can only be good for the jumpers in the sport).

--Tom Aiello
tbaiello@ucdavis.edu