The reserve canopy limitations explained
Let's talk about the TSO for a second...woops, half of you just left the building :) For the rest of you still here TSO stands for Technical Standard Order. It’s basically the quality and performance standards for parachutes since year 1949. I'm not gonna go through all different variation and their requirements. For most of you it’s gonna be just boring! The reason I'm doing this post is to help you understand what the numbers on your new logcarts mean.
When we've got the new forms from KNVvL, the instruction was to write the TSO Weight and Speed for the reserve canopy. That’s the CERTIFIED MAXIMUM. Now that’s changed and we have to write the “RECOMMENDED” weight and speed, which for most manufacturer is much lower.
A little example here;
Decelerator 120 reserve from Parachute systems is certified to 275 lbs (125 kg) and 150 knots. (275 km/h), but the recommended weight is 183 lbs and 130 knots. See the picture .
Manufacturers are...