Your name is now inseparably linked with ballistic recovery systems. How did you first get involved in manufacturing parachutes and recovery systems? And if you do not mind going back to the beginning, what were you doing before that?

Before I started making ballistic parachutes, or parachutes at all, I was just a kid growing up in Český Dub, building model airplanes and boats. When I was 15, I became the bandleader of a beat band called The Sharks, which I put together from fellow model enthusiasts I was friends with.

After qualifying as an auto mechanic, I enrolled in a technical secondary school and bought a Faro sailboat. With my family, we sailed on Lake Balaton, the Baltic Sea along the coast (going farther offshore was not allowed), and the Adriatic Sea.

At the same time, I wanted to become a glider pilot. When the authorities at the Hodkovice airfield discovered that my father had opposed the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, they effectively shut the door on my flying ambitions.

Then came 1975, when French pilots arrived with hang gliders. Together with a group of friends, we immediately started building our own. At first we worked from photographs, and later, once we understood how the aircraft worked, from plans that we created ourselves.

Your professional journey began with hang gliders. When did you first realize that a ballistic recovery system could become a technology capable of truly saving lives?

I was the leader of the Liberec hang gliding community, and there were nearly sixty of us. Looking back now, I honestly do not know how I managed to fit everything in. I worked in the investment department at Skloexport, built hang gliders, and studied at university while holding a full-time job. I competed in hang gliding events, served as an inspector and instructor, and together with my wife, who was a teacher, raised two children.

I was among the first to start using a reserve parachute originally designed for paratroopers. However, it was heavy. Inspired by Jirka Gut, who brought back a parachute for hang gliders from Austria, I began looking for ways to improve the concept for us pilots. These parachutes were tested under Svazarm, and eventually a production series was developed that became widely used.

When ram-air parachutes appeared, I happened to be flying in the Swiss Alps with a group of fellow hang glider pilots. We had friends there who were also involved in the sport. That was where I first saw a paraglider.

Over time, I developed nine paraglider models, ranging from basic training wings to the aerobatic Shark, named after my old beat band. Four Austrian pilots flew my wings. Everything was done through barter. The Austrians gave me a used car, and I gave them paragliders. It was much the same in the hang gliding world.

In 1984 we moved from hang gliders to powered hang gliders, and the existing parachute was no longer sufficient. Together with Petr Suchomel, I developed a ballistic parachute powered by two blank 9 mm cartridges, with a weight used to extract the canopy. The mechanism came from the ejection seat system of the MiG-15, where it had originally been used to deploy the stabilization parachute. It packed such a punch that it could break a 10 × 10 cm wooden beam.

I improved the design so it could be mounted on a tube with a diameter of 30 mm and a wall thickness of 1.5 mm.

Again, it was mostly barter. About 150 of these parachutes were produced, and as we discovered only a few years ago, some were still functioning perfectly after 38 years.

Later, I developed a throw-out reserve parachute for paragliders, which won first prize at the major PRAGA 90 exhibition in 1990.

This parachute fully inflates only after it has been thrown clear of the tangled main canopy. Most of our ballistic recovery systems still use this patented principle today.

You are not only a designer and manufacturer, but also a pilot. How long have you held a pilot licence, and how has your own flying influenced the development of Galaxy GRS products?

I have held a pilot licence since 1990, when I was elected President of the newly established Czech Light Aircraft Association (LAA Czech Republic) at its general assembly in Brno. However, I immediately passed this honour on to Petr Tuček, as I had no desire to take on the position.

I flew hang gliders, powered hang gliders, and paragliders. Through Galaxy GRS, which still operates today, we sold more than 3,500 paragliders. We also developed electronic variometers, reserve parachutes, harnesses, and flight suits. We offered the complete package.

I was fortunate enough to train and examine pilots from the Netherlands, France, Germany, and the Czech Republic together with the instructors at our school. In total, around 750 pilots of paragliders, hang gliders, and powered aircraft.

I held four licences, including instructor and inspector ratings. I am also a parachute inspector and hold a licence for powered ultralight aircraft. My total flight time is approximately 1,000 hours on hang gliders and paragliders, plus more than 2,000 hours on powered ultralight aircraft.

The development of our systems is constantly influenced by the increasing speed, weight, and equipment levels of modern ultralight and sport aircraft.

Your work clearly reflects a strong emphasis on precision, calculations, and extensive testing. In your view, what is the most challenging part of developing a ballistic recovery system?

In 1994, Ing. Jiří Matějíček from VZLÚ Aerospace in Letňany approached me. He had been the designer of the VT-16 Orlík and the ejection seat for the L-39 Albatros. He offered to join our efforts in developing a new generation of ballistic recovery systems.

Although he was already retired, together we created the first new rocket-deployed system in which the parachute remains packed until all suspension lines are fully stretched. The canopy is extracted inside its deployment bag and only then begins to open.

After regular improvements and updates, the system is still in service today. It is, of course, patented. We could never have imagined that Cirrus in the United States would eventually adopt this principle and even thank us for it. At the time, they were producing three aircraft a day.

Without testing every individual component of a ballistic recovery system, it is simply impossible to continue development.

Today, our portfolio includes more than 90 parachute types deployed either by rocket or pyrotechnic generator. I have always insisted that every system produced by our company meet at least AFNOR standards, relevant European ballistic parachute requirements, Czech regulations, and the DULV and DAeC standards used in Germany.

If a parachute or its parameters fail to meet these requirements, it is modified and tested repeatedly until the target values are achieved. Our philosophy has always been simple: “Whatever it takes.”

Parachutes present a unique challenge. If you are designing a new aircraft, you can find extensive literature, textbooks, and engineers capable of tackling the mathematics, calculations, and aerodynamics involved. However, when it comes to parachutes and how to design them, virtually nothing exists.

There are only a handful of companies worldwide working in this field, perhaps few enough to count on one hand. Simply put, there is almost no publicly available knowledge about the “fabric.” And whenever a company does know something valuable, it guards that knowledge very closely.

Everything we manufacture is based on our own patents and utility models. These patents are protected in both the European Union and the United States, and there are many of them. A quick look at our website will show that.

Even so, there are companies that try to appropriate our patents and present them as their own. Legal disputes are expensive, but so far we have won every case. Some of them lasted more than seven years. You can probably guess which company I mean.

We are the only manufacturer capable of deploying a ballistic parachute system within a very short time frame at both low and high airspeeds while maintaining acceptable opening loads. Unfortunately, many aircraft owners selecting a ballistic recovery system are unaware of the importance of this distinction.

The Galaxy ballistic recovery system is part of the equipment fitted to our M-8 EAGLE. From a manufacturer’s perspective, what is important when integrating a ballistic system into a light aircraft, and how do you assess current safety standards in the UL and LSA categories?

Today, the highest volume of flying takes place in the United States. Europe is somewhat behind, but that certainly does not mean we are any worse.

BRS in the United States is probably the largest manufacturer of ballistic parachutes. The company has since split its operations into military and civilian divisions.

Compared to the United States, however, we offer a much broader product range. Our portfolio starts with parachutes as small as 3 square metres and extends to systems with canopy areas of 360 square metres.

We are the first company in the world capable of recovering a VTOL aircraft from just 15 metres above ground level at zero forward speed, all the way up to 300 km/h and an altitude of 300 metres.

The main problem with our competitors is that their systems open approximately 30 to 50 percent slower in stall-speed scenarios involving modern high-performance aircraft. According to global statistics, around 80 percent of all accidents occur at or near stall speed.

These accidents typically happen during take-off and landing phases, usually in the airport traffic pattern.

There are parachute families designated as 3, 4, 5, and 6. Each family is designed for a specific combination of VNE speed limits and MTOW values, and these parameters cannot simply be changed. That is extremely important. A universal ballistic parachute simply does not exist.

Over the years, you have designed systems for a wide range of aircraft. What is the largest parachute or recovery system you have produced in terms of maximum take-off weight?

As I mentioned earlier, our smallest parachute is designed for drones weighing between 5 and 15 kilograms MTOW and has an area of approximately 3 square metres. Our largest parachute has a canopy area of 360 square metres and is intended for VTOL aircraft and airplanes with a maximum take-off weight of up to two tonnes. This parachute is certified for speeds up to 325 km/h.

Manufacturing such a parachute, which incorporates 232 slots, takes nearly an entire month. As mentioned previously, these slots, or lift-enhancing flaps, allow the parachute to be used at higher speeds while also reducing the descent rate of the canopy. Naturally, all of this technology is patented.

During your career, have you come across any particularly unusual or unique application of a ballistic recovery system that still stands out in your memory?

Yes. I discovered that besides rocket-deployed and pyrogenerator-deployed systems like ours, there is an Italian company producing parachute systems that use compressed air.

In these systems, the parachute is ejected from its container using compressed air rather than a rocket or pyrotechnic device. The fact that this concept never became widely adopted suggests that it ultimately proved to be a dead end.

How do you think the presence of a ballistic recovery system changes the way pilots think about safety and decision-making in emergency situations?

An aircraft parachute is intended for handling emergency situations. There are many such scenarios, ranging from pilot incapacitation, adverse weather, and engine failure to bird strikes, mid-air collisions, loss of control, and poor decisions that can no longer be reversed.

Whenever we see photographs showing the deployment handle secured with a safety pin carrying a “REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT” streamer, we are genuinely alarmed by how human error works.

In any serious accident, the aircraft often enters a spin. Only someone with no practical understanding of such a situation would think they could remove that pin at that moment. The centrifugal forces can become so strong that an arm that normally weighs 5 kilograms effectively feels like it weighs 20 kilograms. In that situation, there is simply no chance of activating the system.

Your systems are used by aircraft manufacturers in many countries around the world. What do customers most often expect from Galaxy GRS, and what do you consider the main reason for the trust your company has earned?

One of the foundations of our success has always been our willingness to publish as much information as possible on our website, including the results of our tests. Every year we invest significant resources in testing new parachute systems, and we make those results available to the public.

We also place a strong emphasis on after-sales service. Our systems offer a service life of up to 30 years, with regular inspections throughout that period. Overall, we share as much information as possible. That is something you can afford to do when your technology is properly protected by patents.

Looking at the future of light aviation, whether aircraft, gyrocopters, helicopters, or drones, where do you see the greatest opportunities for further advances in safety?

From my perspective, the biggest growth area today is in drones and VTOL aircraft. Recovery systems have already been developed for gyrocopters. Helicopters are somewhat more complicated, but demand for recovery systems in that segment remains limited, which reflects the relatively small size of the market.

As for drones and VTOL aircraft, major growth began around two years ago and continues to accelerate, largely because of military applications.

The day when a single unmanned aircraft controls an entire group of jet-powered drones is just around the corner, with all of it managed remotely by an operator flying in a manned two-seat combat aircraft. Unfortunately, this also means that aircraft such as the F-35 may become obsolete much sooner than many people expect.

To finish on a more personal note: when you look back on your career, which moment or achievement are you most proud of?

Recently, we celebrated the 42nd anniversary of our company. Ironically, back in 1984, I installed a ballistic recovery system with a cartridge-powered deployment mechanism on my first powered hang glider, which used an engine from a Trabant automobile. I named the system GALAXY.

The name came from a large American jet-powered military transport aircraft that remains in service today. Naming it GALAXY was, of course, a bit of an exaggeration, but also a deliberate provocation.

And today, there is not a single country on Earth where our ballistic recovery parachutes have not been used. The official figure of 139 lives saved speaks for itself. Our systems are also supplied to twelve armed forces around the world.

Everything can be found on our website at www.galaxysky.cz.