[UPDATE: The complimentary line set offer ended on October 1, 2017]

After four years of development, testing, and design we released the Valkyrie in early 2015. Since then, we have been extremely humbled by all the amazing photos, messages, and positive feedback we’ve received about the Valkyrie. It has been one of our most successful products ever. It amazes us to see what you, the jumping community, have done with them!

However, over the last several months we’ve received word from some Valkyrie owners about premature line wear. Some customers also report a higher-than-average rate of tension knots. We appreciate this feedback and take it very seriously. Over the last few months have been working diligently to understand and address this issue.

We started by looking for trends and common factors. We considered canopy size, wingloading, components, jumping environment, packing technique, deployment technique, and many other variables. We had just as many reports of people getting 500 jumps from a lineset as those who were only getting 200. Even more puzzling, we never saw any of these issues during the lengthy development of the Valkyrie.

The quirky nature of this issue made it very difficult for us to understand and address it. However, after months of additional testing, we believe we have found an improvement to the Valkyrie lineset that reduces the likelihood of premature line wear or tension knots.

First, we have made some changes to the 500 Orange Vectran lineset. The most obvious of these changes is that we replaced the 500 Orange Vectran outside A/B lines with 300 Orange Vectran instead. While it’s somewhat counter-intuitive to put a lighter weight line in a high-wear area, it helps to know that the outside A/B lines on the Valkyrie are very lightly loaded during the opening. A lighter weight line in this area is helping to reduce the possibility of uneven tension and “line whip,” which also reduces overall line wear. We also made a few less obvious adjustments to both the 500 and 300 Orange Vectran linesets. These lineset changes will NOT affect the flight characteristics of your Valkyrie, but it should make your lineset last a bit longer and protect you better from tension knots.

For those who would like to have another line type entirely, we now offer 500 HMA on the Valkyrie. Due to the characteristics of HMA, there was no need to mix the line weights – all of the suspension lines are made from 500 weight line. We developed an HMA lineset because some jumpers may like the soft feel and slightly lower drag that comes with HMA, or maybe they prefer the aesthetics of an uncolored line. Performance wise, there isn’t a noticeable difference. The new HMA and Orange Vectran linesets are both great, reliable options. Your choice comes down to personal preference between the two. If you would like to learn more about the different line types, check out this article and these videos explaining HMA and Vectran.

Those jumpers who emailed and called us about concerns provided us with invaluable insights. We are so grateful to have such awesome customers! Although the majority of jumpers have had no issues with their Valkyrie, we would like to offer all Valkyrie owners a complimentary lineset (canopy serial numbers 000001 – 001044). We feel like this is the right thing to do. The offer is good through October 1, 2017. All you need to do is fill out this form telling us which lines you want and where to ship them. We are working tirelessly to cut new linesets as quickly as we can. Serial numbers beyond 001044 will already have one the improved linesets installed.

We would like to thank all Valkyrie flyers for your patience and continued support of Performance Designs. If you have any comments or questions, please reach out to us at (386) 738-2224 or support@performancedesigns.com. We look forward to hearing from you!