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I will hold a First Jump Course and BASE skills camp from May 21-29, 2005 (Saturday to the following Sunday) in Twin Falls, Idaho. Course will begin at 8am Saturday (21st) and conclude at 6pm the following Sunday (29th).

My goal is to make this the highest quality, most comprehensive, formal BASE education course offered to date. This is not a complete course in expert, or even intermediate BASE jumping. All BASE jumpers must continue to educate themselves throughout their BASE career.

The course will focus on basic BASE skills, with an additional emphasis on the history and ethics of BASE, and the teamwork necessary to many BASE jumps. In addition to standard First Jump training, the course will cover appropriate brake settings, advanced packing techniques, object avoidance techniques, object evaluation, and landing skills. Time and jumper aptitude permitting, we will also cover unpacked jumps, particularly as used for emergency situations, and multi-way jumps.

I will accept a maximum of five students in this course, although I would prefer to have only four. Students will be accepted based on my evaluation of their qualifications. I will give preference to students who have audited a prior FJC. This course is intended for students with no previous BASE jumps, but I will accept applications from jumpers having less than 20 jumps.

I will also accept a maximum of two non-jumping auditors in the course. If you want to audit the packing and discussion segments, I will also ask you to help out with some of the other parts of the course (such as ferrying cars). Auditors should be people interested in BASE who have not yet sufficient pre-requisite experience.



Course requirements:

1) Gear: Because we will customize brake settings during the course, you must have your own gear to participate.
2) Mentoring: You must make a reasonable effort to find an experienced jumper local to you, who can help you with your jumping when you return home. You must provide me with contact information for this jumper, so that I can talk with them. If you cannot locate someone, I will assist you in doing so. This requirement will be waived for jumpers in an area where I am unable to locate a suitable mentor.
3) Prerequisites: You must have appropriate canopy experience, as evaluated by me. I will ask for details of your experience when you contact me, as well as contact information for people able to verify your experience.
4) Reading: I will require all accepted applicants to purchase and read BASE 66, by Jevto Dedijer, and the micrometeorology portions of Understanding the Sky, by Dennis Pagen.



Course Syllabus:


Day 1: Packing

Discussion: The risks of BASE
Video and Discussion: Impact (Discovery Health), Over the Edge (Justin Kardi, Jason Fitz-Herbert)
Exercise: Letter to family
Packing
Discussion: Differences between skydiving and BASE cultures
Video and Discussion, Exits: Lemmings (Will Forshay)


Day 2: Beginner Exits

Exit Training
Discussion: Logging jumps
Landing Area Preview
Discussion: Jumps, landing, flight patterns
PCA BASE jumps
Video and Discussion: 2004 ABA Compilation (Australian BASE Association)


Day 3: Deployment

Discussion: BASE ethics
BASE jumps: Hand held
Discussion: BASE community
BASE jumps: Delay nomination, Hand held
Video and Discussion: BASE Community Self Regulation


Day 4: Floater Exits

Discussion: BASE History
BASE jumps: Stowed or hand held
Exit simulation: Floater exits
BASE jumps: Floater exits and/or stowed.
Discussion and Exercise: Appropriate Brake Settings
Video and Discussion: From Gravity Came Groundrush, Nobody But Me BASE Jumps Like I Do, Para-Care (John Hoover), Boenish El Cap Jumps (Carl Boenish), Gravity Sports (Dennis McGlynn)


Day 5: Object Avoidance Drills

Discussion: Object Avoidance
Avoidance Drill BASE jumps
Discussion: Insurance
Avoidance Drill BASE jumps
Discussion: Object Evaluation


Day 6: Object Avoidance Drills

Avoidance Drill BASE jumps
Packing, Part 2: Packing without tools
Avoidance Drill BASE jumps
Discussion: Recognizing Skillful BASE jumps
Video and Discussion: Radix (Jimmy Halliday)


Day 7: Landing Drills

BASE jumps: Landing Drills
Video and Discussion: BASE malfunctions and correction.
BASE jumps: Landing Drills
Video: Lemmings Extreme (Will Forshay)


Day 8: Unpacked jumps

Discussion: Unpacked jumps in emergency situations
BASE jumps: Unpacked jumps
Packing, Part 3: Advanced techniques and challenging packing areas.
Video and Discussion: The Ground is the Limit (Iiro Seppanen), "Aussie Pebbles" (Pete Wyllie)


Day 9: Multi-Way jumps

Discussion: BASE as a team sport
BASE jumps: Muti-ways, instructor planned
Discussion: Planning multi-ways
BASE jumps: Multi-ways, Student planned


Space is limited, so I will accept the best prepared applicants. If you want to come, you must contact me via email (tbaiello@mac.com).

When you email me asking to come, please include:

1) Your total number of skydives.
2) Your total number of CRW and Accuracy jumps.
3) Your primary skydiving discipline.
4) The names and contact info (email of phone) of:

(a) any BASE jumpers in your area who know you
(b) a BASE mentor who has agreed to help you progress
(c) any skydiving or paragliding instructors who are familiar with your skills
(d) either the DZO or S&TA of your home drop zone

5) Any other relevant experience (paragliding, rock climbing, etc)
6) An explanation of why you want to BASE jump
7) Anything else you think I should know about you, or your preparation

I will begin accepting students on April 15th, and continue until all spots are filled. Applying before April 15th will increase your chances of being accepted.

I believe that all BASE jumpers should make contact with, and learn from, their local BASE communities. If you have an experienced instructor in your area who is willing to travel to a legal span to provide instruction, whatever they charge, I will not accept you into this class without an agreement with that instructor. Be aware that I will not accept anyone who tries to bypass their local instructor, and that if you are in Australia or the Toronto, Canada, area, the availability of a local instructor will reduce your chances of being accepted to my course.

I will continue compiling a list of instructors in specific areas. If you are an experienced BASE instructor who wishes to be included in my list of areas, please contact me via email.


I will not charge for this instruction. However, in order to attend, you must make a donation of a minimum $100 to The Alliance of Backcountry Parachutists. I will verify that you have made such a donation prior to the first day of the course.

If you have any questions, post here, or PM or email me.

To clarify, as I have been asked this 3 times now, so I'm sure there will be others wondering:


This is not a requirement for a specific number of skydives. Canopy experience can be gained in a number of ways, including skydiving, but also including ground launching and paragliding. I will take the best prepared students, exercising my own judgment as to what that means.

Skydiving experience is a very big plus if you want to come. But a very experienced paraglider with 20 skydives will have superior canopy skills to a skydiver with 150 skydives and no other canopy experience.

To clarify, for those that have asked:

This means that if you have sent me an email applying, I will not respond until April 15th at the earliest. On the 15th, I'll start sending out acceptance emails. If for some reason you are not certain I have received your email, you can send me another requesting confirmation, if you like.

Just for general information, I have received 6 applications so far. If you want to come to this class, your odds will be significantly better if you apply by April 15th.

Just a reminder that I'll begin accepting students for this on Friday. At the current rate, it looks likely that I'll fill the class with people who apply before then. I may try to hold a spot, but be aware that I'll give preference to those who apply by Friday.

Did not get a chance to be on one of Tom's course but got to hang out and jump with some of Tom's students. I do believe his course his the shiznit, so if you have a the chance to get on one of his course, do it by anyway you can. Not because it's free but because I really felt like it was very comprehensive from what was described to me...
Heck I even learn packing tricks from one of his students!
Thanks for giving to the sport so freely tom.

Just a reminder that today is the last day for "first round" consideration.

I really wish i could apply but dont know if i can get the time...I would come though just to watch and help out with ground stuff.... will though make your next one....

I've started sending out the invitations for this course. As people confirm (or not) I'll work down the list. At this point I have 1 confirmed student, 3 invitations I'm waiting on confirmation for, and 1 invited auditor. As soon as I receive confirmations or folks let me know they can't make it, I'll send out additional invitations. Once I've filled the whole course with confirmed attendees, I'll send out a final email to everyone who applied, letting them know.

Thanks for bearing with me.

Hi Tom,

Any slots still open . . . ?

http://slam.canoe.ca/...4/22/1008525-ap.html

NickD
BASE 194

naw... i think he might want to try the red bull guy....? no? ok that wasn't funny....

LOL, that was my first thought too, but I thought he deserved better.

There have been a few blind skydivers. We had a guy at Elsinore that did pretty well on his own using radios and lot's of support. His landings were always a bit rough though.

I think potato BASE, in a limited fashion, would be easier for him than skydiving. He'd also get more out of it as BASE jumping is more of a tactile experience. The trap door feeling, the onset of the rushing wind, the slower opening sequence are all things he might appreciate and enjoy. He'd also have more control in certain ways if you look at it like this:

One potato, two potato, three potato, GO!
One potato, two potato, three potato, THROW!

After a few jumps he'd also probably be able to know, just by timing, when he was about to land in the water.

Think about it. Most people's first BASE jump is a big blur anyway. Take the ground landing out of the equation and what's stopping him?

Besides, after getting to know Russel, I know anything is possible . . .

NickD
BASE 194

great point indeed

This course is now full, with all participants confirmed.

I'll hold another, similar course in late summer, from August 27th to Septmber 4th (Labor Day Weekend).

Hi can some1 briefly explain this.

I believe that the ability to do a TARD (and to a lesser extent other unpacked jumps) could have saved several lives in BASE accidents (where jumpers were stuck on walls and died either of exposure or trying to self-extricate) and also would have greatly simplified several other rescues.

Please excuse a foreigner... what is a TARD?

An unpacked jump where you essentially hold the canopy propacked in one hand as you jump off. There's more to it than that, but that's the short explanation. You might want to do a search through the forums, and I bet you can find video of it on SkydivingMovies.com.

On the other hand, an poor tard by an injured person can complicate matters. Tards scare me, so I can't really judge them, but I can easily see a tard making things worse when a simple wait for a rescue helicopter would have sufficed. I guess having the option is nice, as long as injury and isolation doesn't cloud judgement.

All the more reason to always carry a radio...

Cheers,

Jaap

Yep. Which is why I think they ought to be practiced in non-emergency situations first.

TARD is one of the reassons ill jump the legal span this summer,How ever i found it really hard to find any info on the net on how to preform a TARD besides a propacked jump...
Hopefuly ill learn more at that Span this summer

How to pack a tard

now thats nice ill pack it if you jump it