10/17/09
About 10 ~ 11 years ago I had something of a midlife crisis brought on by a knee injury from a poorly executed landing on my high performance Nova 120 parachute. I think it was the approaching milestone age of 40 combined with the injury that created this first midlife crisis which drove me to sell the Nova. After all, I was just too old to be jumping such a small, fast, high performance canopy! With a 180 deg front riser turn I could come in on landing approach upwards of 50 mph!
Now passed 50 years, I’ve had a second midlife crisis which has driven me to buy the Nova back. Currently I jump Nitron 135’s in both rigs which are also nice canopies but far more docile than the Nova. Sometimes I wondered if the Nova was really that good or if my memory of its performance had become exaggerated over the years. Today that question was answered, and the answer is a resounding no! My memory had not exaggerated the performance, the Nova really is that good! The front riser pressure is slightly higher than I remember but toggle turns are far faster than the Nitron. This certainly is in part because the Nitron is larger but maybe not entirely. The Nova also has a more responsive landing flare than the Nitron and I believe a longer swoop. I think my Nitron’s are not going to be much fun anymore after revisiting the Nova. They’re going to feel big and floaty!
Now for something I may have forgotten to mention in my facebook posting where I mentioned I would be jumping the Nova at the Nationals… The Nova has something of a reputation. It’s been dubbed, “the self packing parachute”. The problem with the Nova was that a number of jumpers were injured or killed when the canopy suddenly collapsed at about 100 ft off the deck on landing approach. A self packing parachute would be nice but not so nice when it repacks itself at 100 ft dropping you the rest of the way to the ground. Personally I always attributed this to pilot error until a jumper purportedly to have over 2000 Nova jumps was killed when his canopy collapsed at low altitude. I personally never experienced a problem with my Nova. This may in part be due to the high wing load. The maximum recommended suspended weight for the Nova 120 is 188 lbs, my “exit weight” (jumper plus clothing and gear) is about 220 lbs or about 17% above the canopies rated capacity. I know that seems scary but actually it’s not. One thing that is known about the Nova’s problems is that the heavier it was loaded, the less likely it was to collapse.
So if I keep jumping the Nova there is the possibility that I will one day be looking up at a collapsed ball of nylon thinking, “oh, so that’s the problem those other people were having”. For that reason I probably will not make the Nova one of my regular mains but instead just jump it occasionally for old times sake. In the mean time I need to down size my other mains. I’m not sure what I’ll get but some suggestions from a highly experienced high performance canopy pilot include, the PD “Velocity”, the Aerodyne “Sensei”, and the Aerodyne “Mamba” among a few others. These are all high performance canopies which in theory should outperform the Nova assuming I stay with a 120 sq ft or smaller. (I would like to go smaller...and thus faster) Today walking back to the hanger I was scanning the landing area to see if any official looking person was walking toward me half expecting to get scolded for jumping a canopy that had been long banned on most drop zones. This will be something I don’t have to worry about with any of these new canopies so it will be worth it to find something new.
I’ll definitely be putting some jumps on the Nova until such time I find something I like better but I will try to keep it limited to good conditions where the likelihood of a ground turbulence induced collapse is at a minimum.
Monte