NZ Aerosports

Related categories : Manufacturers Canopy manufacturers



'''NZ Aerosports is a company located in New Zealand. It is the designer and official manufacturer of the Icarus Canopies and Daedalus Project brands.'''

History
NZ Aerosports has been created by Paul Martyn (known as Jyro) who was mainly making jump suits at the beginning. The company, based in a house of a residential suburb of Auckland, New-Zealand, has been building canopies since 1985. It started by making a few Pegasus copies, then began gradually elevating the performance levels of the designs of the day.

At the time, new designs were lifting the bar a little each time: the Sabre, the Jonathon and in 1993 the Stiletto (the most popular sport main of all time). Jumpers were starting to swoop their landings and wanted more. So, inspired by the Excaliber (developped by Bill Coe of Performance Designs) which was the first crossbraced (and tri-cell) canopy and the Blue Trac (Parachutes de France) which used ZP, NZ Aerosports found natural to develop a ZP Crossbraced Tri-cell.

The performance was amazing but the openings were totally unworkable so the project stayed on the shelves for several years and NZ Aerosports focused on more conventionnal designs which would offer better openings to the market. PD eventually pulled their F-111 Excalibur off the market for similar reasons.

By 1994, elliptical ZP canopies were the norm in the high performance range and crossbraced canopies have been invented for 5 years so when NZ Aerosports installed their first cutting machine (one the first computerized cutting system in the industry) using their own software, it was time for more dramatic innovation. They used the brand new system to try to design the best ZP Elliptical Crossbracd Tri-cell canopy ever. It was hard to make, bulky but so advanced that it was worth it.

The openings were still not good but the canopy was awesome. Realizing the potential, a lot of effort were put in this development including sleepless nights, many test jumps and wind tunnel testing ! The company built much more prototypes that it could afford at the time knowing this canopy would be a winner if they could figure it out.

In 1995, the Mk1 Icarus EXTreme was released, opening the sport to a all new world. Canopy flying competitions were starting out and the extra performance showed up clearly in these controlled and measured environments. Soon NZ Aerosports, which was a very small business, was licensing the design to other manufacturers.

In 1997, NZ Aerosports released an upgraded version called the FX with the smaller pack volume and closed in nose universally seen today on tri cell canopies.

In 1999 the giant in the industry, PD (the original designers of the cross-brace) released the Velocity based on the same format helping NZ Aerosports to be recognized for its designs. The same day, the company was releasing the VX and its 27 cells.

This year will also see the creation of ICARUS Canopies as an independent company in a joint venture with CIMSA Ingenieria de Sistemas of Barcelona, Spain and Precision Aerodynamics of Chattanooga, GA - USA. An agressive effort of marketing will soon establish the brand as a main player both in the USA and in Europe. After some time, Precision left the group and came out with their own versions of these designs.

Team Extreme

In 2005, NZ Aerosports launched the brand Daedalus Project with the aim of developing high performance canopies for competition and release the JVX] (upgrade of the VX). This brand is only sold by NZ Aerosports and is not part of the Icarus joint venture. Flown by [[Jim Slaton the JVX will take the first place at the inaugural US Nationals of Canopy Piloting.

In 2009, new technologies such as CFD (Computatioannl Fluid Dynamics) and CAD (Computer Aided Design) will start a new innovation period starting with a project called "The Summer of Love". NZ Aerosports started building dozens of prototypes and will end up developping the JPX-Petra. The project will soon become "The Endless Summer of Love" and still hasn't stopped today.

Team
More or less in the office:


 * Jyro Owner and founder.
 * Attila Csizmadia General manager.
 * Richard Munro Production manager and test jumper.
 * Shannon Seyb Marketing, facebook stuff and much more.
 * Julien Peelman Research and development.
 * Chris Brook Test jumper amongst other stuff.
 * Linda Fothergill

And in the factory:


 * Chris T.
 * Kamal
 * Lynn
 * Mali
 * Rilee
 * Samba
 * Seetha
 * Sonia
 * Tim

Products
NZ Aerosports is manufacturing canopies under two different brands : Icarus Canopies and Daedalus Project. Daedalus Project is a range of high performance and competition canopies.


 * Icarus Canopies
 * Omega
 * Safire 2
 * Crossfire 2
 * Icarus Tandem


 * Daedalus Project
 * Matrix 2
 * JFX
 * JVX
 * JPX-Petra

Website
www.nzaerosports.com