Understanding your Canopy

There’s no doubt that when you’re in the air, your canopy is the most important piece of equipment you have. It’s what allows you to enjoy a scenic glide to the ground, instead of crashing towards it at alarming speeds. So before you strap on your pack, you really should take the time to fully understand your canopy.

The chute you will be flying with is most likely a canopy, a rectangular-shaped chute made from cells of inflated air. These are huge improvements on the balloon-style chutes that were first used in the sport. The canopy uses an angle of incidence, which is built right into the canopy and consists of two lines: the lines in the front, shaped like an “A”, which are short; and the lines in the back, shaped like a “D”, which are longer. These lines cause the canopy to descend down and slightly forwards.

The toggles on a canopy can be used to slow the chute down or to turn it. To slow down and turn right, you pull on the right toggle, which causes the back right corner of the canopy to be pulled down slightly. It’s important to remember when you are making any turns with your canopy, that it will always cause you to fall faster than when you are just gliding alone. Forgetting this can cause you to turn or land far too quickly and is the biggest reason for parachute injuries.

However, pulling down on both toggles at the same time will result in the canopy sloping slightly downward and the entire chute will begin to slow down. Normally chutes are flown ‘toggles up’ so that the maximum amount of air can pass through it and you can get a great dive! Experienced skydivers will sometimes fly ‘toggles down’ and may even completely stall their canopy in mid-air but for those who don’t know what they’re doing, this should not be attempted and the movement is actually restricted on most student canopies.