The advent of zero porosity canopies and suspension lines that stretch very little, e.g., Spectra, has created many opportunities for variations and errors in packing to cause hard openings on these canopies. It has taken a while for information about how to prevent errors in packing to reach everyone, but now, there is no reason to be making obvious packing errors when so much is known about these problems.
I purchased a Z-PO 150 when the design was quite new and had rather hard openings from the beginning. Stong Enterprises had no particular advice on how to slow down the openings, only that they had not yet gotten much feedback about hard openings. I suggested to Bill Morrissey of Strong Enterprises that we try a larger slider, a solution which has "traditionally" been assumed to make canopies open slower. (This may or may not be the case any more, as I will explain below.) He sent me a slider designed for a Strong Tandem 425 canopy. It is quite large of course, but on the Strong Z-Po canopy it made very little difference. (The Strong Z-PO was not constructed with a tuck in the nose as are many canopies.) Since that time, Strong Enterprises has found the solution of using a "pocket slider" on this canopy as well as other canopies that they make.
Performance Designs Sabre 150:
I purchased a new PD Sabre 150 (original Sabre, not the Sabre 2) that nearly always opened quite hard, as many Sabres seem to do. It seemed that many people had no problems whatsoever with hard openings on this particular canopy model (not particularly related to size) but occasionally someone would get one that opened unacceptably hard on most jumps, and eveything that they tried would not slow down the opening. This seemed to be the case with the Sabre 150 that I got. I discussed the problem with John LeBlanc of PD and even had him pack this canopy for me at the World Freefall Convention when we were both there, but even this pack job changed the opening very little.
Around this time, many people were purchasing Sabres and some were having hard openings no matter what they tried. This was also around the time that John LeBlanc published the document about hard openings, because it was believed that many of the problems people were having were due to errors in packing. I knew that this was not the case with my packing, so after dealing with two different zero-porosity canopies that opened much faster than I wanted, I decided to try to find another solution.
John LeBlanc suggested that a slightly larger slider might help in this particular case but that he was hesitant to suggest this solution to very many people. He thought that eventually someone would eventually solve their packing problems that were causing their fast openings, and then have a Sabre with a big slider that snivels for a long time, another undesirable type of opening.
I began measuring the slider sizes of many Sabres in order to find one that I could use that was bigger, but found that all of the sliders from canopies sizes ranging from 135 to 210 were within an inch of each other. The size I measured was about 30 inches by 19 inches. (Discussion about why different size canopies have the same slider size is a lengthy topic in itself.)
After observing my success in getting my Sabre openings slowed down, people that I know began asking me to make them larger sliders for their Sabres, so I made several different sizes as "demo" sliders to see what size is really neccessary to work well without being too large.
I made larger sliders for about 6 people that had hard opening Sabres and they were all very pleased with the results. I have not made any in several years because many people are choosing Stiletto canopies over Sabres, and the need has been reduced.
Note: I do not have time to be in the business of making custom sliders, but you should be able to talk a rigger into making one for you. Be advised that they will find it difficult to believe that such a large slider is necessary, but it is.
A while back I made and installed a 34" by 29" slider on my Stiletto 150 to see if this would provide even slower openings than a stock slider. It did indeed make them slightly slower and a good bit "softer", (although describing it as such is a bit subjective of course). I have made approximately 200 jumps on this configuration.
Note: Stiletto canopies usually open quite nicely with stock sliders. I did not make this modification because I thought the openings were bad, but to try to make them even better.