INNOVATIVE PARACHUTE TECHNOLOGIES

Thanks for visiting our website and taking the time to learn more about us! 

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To begin we would like to state that the IPT team is focused on the design and development of great performing, structurally solid, high quality main canopies and components.  We may have been in the parachute industry for quite some time but we will always maintain a humble and inquisitive attitude in our effort to make our products better and to improve the fun and safety in our sport of skydiving.

 

From the time we began the development of our first main canopy back in 2001 we were using three dimensional computer aided design and analysis methods that resulted in highly efficient wings and very well distributed structural load paths.  While we are pleased with the performance of our main canopies we continue to develop our design approach, materials, and manufacturing processes to improve on the outstanding performance of our wings.

 

As you become familiar with our main canopies, you will find that they are great performers from opening to landing.  Moving forward with new designs we will continue to ensure that all they retain these essential qualities as we continue to create new wings.

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My Background-

 

I started jumping when I was 16 years old way back in 1977 in the Phoenix, Arizona area.  I started jumping old surplus 28 ft. round canopies and made my first freefall on one that had been dyed purple in a 55 gallon drum.  After making about 30 jumps I bought my first rig, a Crossbow, which had the belly mounted round reserve moved to the back with a Para-Commander main.  Rigs were not all that safe back then and this one in particular was a hazard.  On my 37th jump the main opened in the door of a Piper Cherokee extracting me and catastrophically damaging the airplane to a point that it could no longer fly.  The pilot and a passenger (my uncle) could not get out in time and perished on Christmas eve 1978.  While this was his was a tragic event and I could have also been one of the fatalities, it was the impetus for a lifetime career of parachute design engineering.

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​With a strong passion to make parachute systems safer I became a parachute rigger and pursued a professional career in parachute design and testing in the 1980’s.  One of my most notable designs is US Navy’s environmentally-sealed emergency bail-out parachute called 'Thinpack' (aka A/P22P-21, shown below on the left).  This emergency parachute was designed for the US Navy to replace the older NB-8 Parachutes in the P-3 Orion aircraft.  The navy purchased over 5,800 systems and about 750 systems were purchased by the German and Norwegian militaries.  More recently, the Thinpack was adopted by the US Army and dubbed the ‘Army Emergency Bailout Parachute’ (AEBP).  The canopy design (shown in the middle photograph) is a 14.3% Full Extended Skirt round that uses modern materials resulting in the lightest weight military parachute available.  In fact it was the first military round parachute to use Spectra suspension lines and a Mesh Slider (circa 1993).  This parachute system is 36% lighter and, at the same time, it has a 25% slower descent rate with 50% more aircrew weight capacity.  Another currently fielded design that uses the vacuum-sealed parachute technology is the E-2C Parachute Survival Ensemble (shown in the photograph on the right) that has already saved three US Naval aviator lives to date.  I am happy to know that my passion, hard work, and perseverance over a long period of time have resulted in lives that were spared from a potentially fatal crash of an E-2C over the Arabian Sea.