Canopy piloting

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Canopy Piloting, also known as "Swooping", is a growing activity in the skydiving world. Many think the reason for this is that it is one of the few skydiving related events that are spectator friendly.

Canopy Piloting entails the canopy pilot deploy their canopy at 5000 ft, piloting their canopy to an "execution" point over the swoop course, then turn, from 270 degrees or more, into a rotating dive dramatically increasing the canopy's speed. The canopy pilot stops the canopy's rotation on the proper course heading, while at the correct altitude allowing their body to pendulum back beneath and level with the canopy before entering the course, all while going at speeds approaching 50 mph. Pro Swooping Tour (PST) competitor Jay Moledzki was clocked at 91 mph as he entered the course during the 2005 PST Championships at Mile Hi Skydiving in Longmont, Colorado.

Professional competition courses mark the entry gates with 5 ft tall wind blades, whereas some part of the pilots body must break the imaginary line across the top of the entry gate pair, often only 20 ft apart. These types of landings are inherently more dangerous than normal landings. For competitor safety this is usually done over a "swoop pond", a shallow artificial pond that can be narrow and long, but for safety a trend to build larger square or rectangular ponds is becoming more popular. At Mile Hi Skydiving their newly installed pond was the site for the inaugural Canopy Piloting Circuit/Go Fast Canopy Pilot Challenge events in Sep 2005. It was a huge success for canopy pilots, coming in as the largest yet built at 190 ft x 370 ft.

The goal of the canopy piloting competition is to negotiate a number of different courses which challenge different performance characteristics of canopy flight and pilot skill. Speed, Distance and Accuracy are just three of the basic courses used at most competitions. Quickly evolving out of these courses is the Freestyle discipline. Freestyle typically uses a large body of water for competitors to drag through, or touch with different body parts and positions while maintaining nearly constant contact with the water. Gaining popularity both with competitors and spectators alike, freestyle puts the canopy pilot in contact with the water at high speeds, increasing their risk and chance of a violent impact, or a spectacular run over the pond, ultimately landing on solid ground on the other side.

To become a high performance canopy pilot, an interested and competent skydiver will typically have at least 1000 jumps to their credit, and start a 1-2 year training process to become skilled and experienced enough to compete at the 'standard' level. Professional levels take 2-4 years of dedicated training, where some competitors have 10,000+ jumps.