IF YOU HAVE COME HERE LOOKING FOR A CONAR RESERVE, SADLY WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT THEY ARE CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE.
When you need to throw, You want the VERY BEST RESERVE, and you want it to work!
It's not a second chance, it may be your last chance. You can't afford to cut corners with this most critical piece of safety gear.
Sure, we've all been there. We can't always afford the very best, so often times we have to settle for whatever we can get. All too often that means a compromise in safety. To make matters worse it's to easy too ignore a critical piece of safety gear that is Out of Sight, and Out of Mind. At TowMeUp.com we have a somewhat unique perspective. First, as a manufacturer we are intimately familiar with the construction methods of all the reserves available on the market today. When you look at the majority of reserves on the market, it's obvious that certain manufactures must pay more attention to their bottom line than they do to the safety of the pilots who choose to use their products. Poor construction techniques, no reinforcement of critical structural areas, poor system design and lack of certification by a recognized paragliding governing body are only a few of the concerns that are routinely encountered. As a manufacturer of probably the most popular winch used for paraglider towing worldwide, we get to attend and provide towing services for many over the water safety clinics worldwide.
One of the things that becomes readily apparent when you watch lots of reserve deployments is the ones that work, and more importantly the ones that don't work. All too often we have seen reserve deployments made both in haste, and in practise where the reserve fails to deploy successfully, and more than a few where the pilot needs to make several attempts to get the reserve out of the container. Even the best reserve can malfunction if packed incorrectly. Errors in stowing the final closing loop in the deployment container, or in harness construction that prevent the pilots ability to remove the deployment container from the harness can be avoided with a bit of care and common sense. Some systems use older designs that work well when deployed at high speed, but are prone to malfunction in low speed, low energy deployments. Several older designs worked well enough with hang gliders, in fact they were designed to best ensure that the reserve remained in the deployment bag or container until it was well clear of the hang glider after it had broken up in flight. Structurally, some of these are of almost bomb proof construction, and they are even tested and deployed in free fall by skydivers.
Unfortunately, the realities of paragliding MUST account for both high speed and low speed deployments. Consider a rather typical scenario. A wanna be acro pilot climbs out and decides to show off the SAT that he/she learned at a recent maneuvers clinic. While they had successfully done the maneuver under an instructor's watchful eye and with coaching, this was their big chance to show off their new found "skills" to their buddies at their home site. They forget to weight shift into the maneuver and jam on the brake. The glider spins nicely..... Whoops, not quite what they had in mind, ah well hands up.... What the??? Whoaaaaa, big surge, whack, an asymmetric deflation, ohhh that's a big one I can almost reach out and touch my glider, not to worry, brake the open side and go straight......... ahhhhh shoot now we're spinning the other way, O/K, O/K , hands up...... why am I spinning???... Oh shoot, that's a big riser twist, wheewwww at least the glider's opening, whooooooaaaa baby where are you going, oh my gosh that's a cravatte..... Don't let it wind up, brake it, brake it,,,, what the heck, now I'm turning the other way, more brake on the other side.... uh oh, that was a mistake, the brakes are stuck in the twist, so this is what a tailslide looks like, gee, I'm getting a bit low, I'd better toss. LOOK, REACH, OUT - WIGGLE WIGGLE, THROW HARD... wa hoo there it goes.... What the heck, the deployment bag is stuck on the reserve......, Ground coming up fast , pull it back in......... throoooowww WHACK, SMOOSH, (insert sound of rock strawberry forming here).
So unique it's patented!
