• ABOUT THE SPOT

Canopy Piloting in Itzehoe-Hungriger Wolf Airport, Hamburg, Hamburg Germany

Hamburg (Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg) is the second largest city in Germany, the sixth largest city in the European Union and the thirteenth largest German state. It is situated on the river Elbe while its port is the second largest port in Europe and tenth worldwide. Hamburg is known for its big sporting activity among others.

In a small airport, at just 42 minutes in the north of Hamburg, you find anything you are looking for. The Itzehoe-Hungriger Wolf Airport is located at 30 mi/49 km away from Hamburg. Once you arrive, you get a short 20 minutes briefing by your personal and highly experienced tandem master and then off you go up in the sky!!!

Canopy piloting or swooping is perhaps the most spectacular discipline in skydiving. It’s all about speed and distance but not in vertical free fall but the horizontal sliding on the open flair landing. Precision, coordination skills and abundant experience are of essential importance.

In order to perform canopy piloting, you get on the plane and jump off just like skydiving. The good part is when you reach the land! When swooping, smaller and highly maneuverable high performance parachutes come with greater speed for potential use. At about 300 to 150 m/984 to 492 ft, it initiatives a curve, a so called Hookturn a nosedive.

It has a settling velocity of about 120-140 kph/74.5-87 mph. To end the recording speed of the parachute, it is placed just above the ground in normal flight position. The rate of descent is implemented as in the horizontal velocity. Thus haul flights of more than 100 m/328 ft are possible.

Swooping is the goal, then, to make the parachute by skillful maneuvers on approach the ground so fast that the screen slides parallel to the ground a horizontal distance as long as possible. The current world record is 142 m/465 ft! Do you think you can break it? Go ahead and try!