Angelo Crapanzano who made Morphosi backup chutes for hang and paragliders (i.e. the ones people really use) said that a lot of factors such as perspiration and UV could affect the life of a chute. For HG backup chutes which are enclosed in a thinner bag, he recommended wrapping the deployment bag in an aluminium foil shield to stop the UV.
Sailplane parachutes are possibly more affected by perspiration because we sit on them for long periods of time. There's a big difference between the way HG and sailplane chutes deploy based on the speed of the aircraft and/or pilot at the time of deployment so perhaps a slightly damp and compressed chute would not be so critical for a sailplane pilot. UV is really critical though. Some early paragliders which used good quality fabric were falling apart after a season because the manufacturer got the colour mix wrong and it affected the fabric really badly. Angelo and others also recommended a bright but non-white nylon for the parachute material. Bright colours because you want to be seen but not white because the bleach used on white nylon appears to affect the strength. I'm not sure but I don't think that sporting canopies use the same mil-spec material as military ones. D _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] http://lists.base64.com.au/listinfo/aus-soaring
