Early 80s – Paul Martyn is a young man in love with skydiving, and completely broke. He starts to make log books, jump suits, and other gear – anything to fund his jumping. Along the way he picks up a nickname – JYRO for ‘Jump Your Ring Out’. No one really calls him Paul ever again.

Jyro starts to make skydiving parachutes under the name “Icarus by JYRO” The first canopies were a few Pegasus copies for friends, then Jyro began gradually elevating the performance levels of the designs of the day.

In the early 90s Jyro changed the brand name to “Icarus Canopies” – and in ‘94 NZ Aerosports became an incorporated company.

In the late 80s PD brought out the Excalibur canopy showcasing a brand new construction method – the tri-brace (now ubiquitously known as ‘crossbraced’). Jyro knew that this was a big step forward, and wanted to combine this with another exciting new piece of technology – ZP fabric. Many, many prototypes followed, but while they flew hotter than ever, the openings weren’t good enough for the market. Jyro and the team just about went crazy and broke trying to make it work, but then…..

NZ Aerosports released the Mk 1 Icarus EXTreme in 1995, the first ZP crossbraced canopy on the market, and high performance canopies changed forever. In 1997, the upgraded FX (Fucking eXtreme) was released featuring the closed nose seen on all HP canopies these days. 2 Years later the PD Velocity was released based on the same format – the industry leader Jyro took inspiration from was now looking to him! Because he was a cheeky bastard, Jyro released the first crossbraced 9 cell – the VX – on the very same day.

In 1999 NZ Aerosports was growing in notoriety, and demand quickly outstripped Jyro and his small team’s capacity. In response, he signed licensing agreements with CIMSA in Spain, and Precision in the US – more people than ever were now able to jump Icarus Canopies! Precision later left and came out with their own versions of these designs.

After that there were upgrades and performance enhancements to our range, and Jyro developed and released the JFX and JVX, pushing the existing crossbraced designs even further. There hadn’t been anything groundbreaking for a while however…

In 2010, a young French skydiver with an aerospace engineer’s degree came to NZ for a holiday, visited the factory and – as happens more often than not – left with a job making linesets. It didn’t take long for Jyro to realise who he had, and Julien never made another lineset. Between Julien’s technical knowledge and high tech computational design processes, and Jyro’s passion for design and uncanny intuition for canopy characteristics, the infamous ‘Summer of Love’ prototyping fest was embarked on. This culminated in a wing leagues better than anything else being made at the time – Petra. Petra still holds all major Canopy Piloting records – fending off newer entrants to the ‘hyper performance’ market.

Following many years of dissatisfaction with the working agreement, an inability to collect royalties owed but not paid, and failed negotiations – in 2016 NZ Aerosports cancelled CIMSA’s licence to make, sell, or market Icarus canopies. NZ Aerosports is now the only place manufacturing true Icarus canopies. Of course, breakups often get messy, and CIMSA refused to drop the Icarus name, and released a new range of canopies with names that sound an awfully lot like Safire and Crossfire (we’re sure it’s unintentional). Cheeky bastards. Oh well!

Shortly after the 2017 PIA Symposium, Jyro passed away. It’s been incredibly hard on us as a company and individually – most of us considered him a close personal friend. We’re buoyed by the fact that he left a legacy of canopy design that’s worked its way throughout the market, and will last for a very very long time. Our job is to continue on in his footsteps and honour his legacy.                                                                                                  Our mission statement is still JYRO’s:                                                                                                                  DON’T KILL ANYBODY.                                                                                                                                        STAY OUT OF THE SHIT.                                                                                                                                      HAVE A PHAT TIME.                                                                                                                                            MAKE SOME MONEY.                                                                                                                                 CONQUER THE WORLD.

After Jyro passed away, the company was handed to Luci, his daughter. The new shareholders are now Luci, Attila, Richie, and Julien. We work well as a team and continue to work towards Jyro’s vision and values,  all while adding our own spices to the mix.

In 2017 a brave young man by the name of Rilee set off on the first official NZA demo tour of the USA. With a big old RV stickered up to the nines, he powered through what was a blur of jumping, meeting amazing people, enjoying a beer or 2, recovering and repeating. The following year the demo tour was expanded to Europe, with our very own testie Chris Stewart taking the reins. The boys spread the word of NZA all while having a blast, even if they can’t remember every amazing moment…

In January of 2018 Leia, our beloved princess, got a make over and become a sky shredding heavy metal goddess. Full sail material and a modified line trim, this unexpected and probably unnecessary new wing (but still shitloads of fun) carved up the sky like it was no ones business. While Sleia was a hit, she burnt bright but brief as she was a limited release…but you never know, she might make a glorious return in the future.

Between the 1st and the 4th of March the first ever Jyro boogie took place at Skydive Auckland, created to celebrate the legend and everything he stood for. World class load organisers from all over the world were in charge of keeping the stoke high in the sky, while others made sure night time load oraganising was taken care of. The boogie ended with everyone coming together remembering Jyro and partying like it was the last day on earth, this we know he would have been proud of and also probably would have been the last man standing.

On the 25th of July and after only a few minor delays (cough, cough) the wait was finally over, our very first wingsuit specific canopy was released. No longer a mythical beast, the Kraken is packed full of new technology and innovation to give it the amazing on heading buttery soft openings that we know the bird people love. Not to mention this beast can be taken on slick jumps…how good!

This time around it was time to move the boogie to a new DZ and even a new country, from the 13th to the 17th of February, Skydive Oz in Moruya hosted Jyro boogie 2. With more coaches and more participants, the stage was set for this thing to be kicked into another gear and it most definitely was. Amazing jumps, awesome people and of course a party Jyro would have been proud of, or at least we think so, the details are a little fuzzy… Where to next you say? We’ll let you know when the dust has settled from the epicness that was Jyro Boogie 2, might be a couple of years…

It was late March and we were keeping an eye on the unfolding global situation Covid-19, but before we knew it, like most of the world, New Zealand was put into a strict lockdown. We had a fire sale on our stock canopies, shipped every order we could in our remaining days of freedom and finally migrated back to our homes not knowing for how long. While our office staff set up their home offices (also known as a laptop in bed) and learned all about zoom meetings, our factory staff enjoyed same extra family time which maybe at some points was a little too much extra. Production ceased and plans were being made for when the doors could finally open again. When this did happen and we came out of hibernation 2 months later, production kicked back into gear but it was clear that things would never quite be the same and there would be more challenges to come…

In November of 2020 a new era was beginning. Due to the continued growth of the company and the financial pressure that Covid-19 had created, it was time to start our next chapter. From a boujee office space in central Auckland to a larger more practical space further south, we had found the place we would call home for years to come. It might not be close to all the fancy bars but the beer fridge still works and the place is equipped to make the worlds best canopies (we might be a little biased). The move began in November and was complete by Christmas but there are still a few final touches to be added, such is the way when moving house.

In 2006 Luigi Cani landed a JVX 37, it was the smallest canopy every landed making it an “unofficial” world record. Then in 2014 an “official” Guinness world record was set by Ernesto Gainza, landing a JVX 35 and beating the previous record. In 2020 Luigi decided he was going to beat it again and in January 2021 after meticulous training on slightly larger canopies (still considered beach towels), he did just that and landed a Sleia 34. Although considered “unofficial” to some, it’s official in our eyes and that’s good enough for us, not to mention all of the canopies used are made right here in NZ!

As we begin 2022 the ongoing affects of Covid-19 remain. With multiple lockdowns happening since the first one back in March of 2020, we are working hard to bring our lead times down and press forward with R&D. Our goal is always to be the innovators of the industry and this hasn’t changed despite the position we and many other companies have found themselves in. Luci has grown into a leader her dad Jyro would be proud of and together with the shareholders are insuring NZ Aerosports has a future to look forward to.