Basejumper.com - archive

All this vintage BASE stuff posted recently has got Nigel and me talking again and the good news is we’re collaborating on publishing again. We worked together to put the first BASE Magazine out, although I have to say Nigel did the important stuff – I just did the layouts and artwork really.

BASE Magazine started with Issue #3 and it was Nigel’s intention to leave the first 2 Issues for the future.

Well, the future’s arrived and we’re going to put together Issue #1 on the web which will tell the story of the very first UK BASE load which had BASEs 12, 14, 24 & 28 on it.

Nigel’s writing it up from his perspective and I’m doing it from mine. All the pictures we can find will be there to see. We reckon it’ll be ready within a month and obviously we’ll post a link here.

In the meantime, here’s a taste of some of images I have.

01 is hours before that first jump with Frank. Here we are with Larry Yohn at the ghetto and boy, could Larry hook turn that Dactyl!
02 is really spooky. I took this exit shot of Frank just before I jumped next (see avatar). I somehow accidentally double-exposed it with some streetlights. Weird.
03 There he is with the cigarette which stayed there before, during and after the jump. That’s Frank and me as well.

That's really cool, I look forward to issue #1!

Gus

When you gonna tell us who pushed Frank?

(joking)

jon

Fucking cool!

look forward to it.............


Is that IanM with the ciggy?

The one and only.

He hadn't plannned to jump at all, but saw the rest of us and just had to go for it.

Borrowed Frank's rig, packed it on the roof. He'd already packed my rig for me in the beer garden of the pub we were in earlier in the evening!

Phenomenal! I can't wait to see this. Thanks Nigel and Al!

To avoid confusion - Al's thread title should read British BASE Magazine No 1.

I wasn't very original with the title for my first magazine having taken same title as Carl and Jean Boenish's original BASE Magazine. Back then 'BASE' was a powerful word that provoked extreme reactions from the skydiving status quo. It seemed the perfect choice for our magazine.

I took a stack of our magazine to my first Bridge Day a few days after Al delivered them to me. I remember feeling like school boy with the headmaster when I gave him a copy each to Carl and Jean to check out. By that time I'd realised it wasn't such a smart idea and I'd used his picture for the cover without asking permission first.

Carl was silent as he studied it intently for a while and then was really generous and supportive of my first publishing attempt.

By the next year / issue I changed to 'Jump' which really anoyed some skydivers I knew. They felt the word 'jump' belonged exclusively to skydiving.

I know I have said this before but you guys in this age of instant web publishing just cannot start to imagine the impact of Carl and Jean's magazine in '81. We were inspired to risk everything from just reading those magazines! If you meet someone from my era see if they'll let you look at their collection.

p.s. Thanks to NickDG for starting the thread that put me and Al back in contact after 20+ years.

Actually, I'm pretty sure 02 is me not Frank.

03 You can see the gaffa tape and padding on the edge of the roof we hoped would protect our polypropellene (?) s/l. I took this pic and Al's avatar with camera on a pole to get the off building angle.

(Al took my avatar shot on my first jump)

Hey Brother,

Don't for a minute think "Jump" didn't have the same effect on us. You're right, we were so hungry for BASE information and stories I remember running back to the house with your latest issue, turning down the lights, opening a beer, and putting some Led Zep on the 8-track. I was in heaven . . .

When the time came to name my own BASE magazine we went around for weeks. I was last behind Carl's BASE Magazine, Phil's BASELine, and your JUMP. (I'm just glad I was before Andy's BASE Gazette.)

It was a time, like you said, that BASE was such a hot button issue with skydivers I even suggested we call the magazine, "Fuck You" but we settled on the "Fixed Object Journal."

It's funny when I look back as now I think a real BASE magazine could make it. We were trying to do our best when the highest we ever got was about 250 subscribers. And that accounted for all the hardcore BASE jumpers in the entire world.

I'm proud of us all, we risked it all for something we believed in, you, Carl, Phil and in a smaller way me, (and even Andy) provided direction when no direction was to be had . . .

We need to all get together somewhere sometime, but, I know after the laughs and all the stories the only thing we'd notice is Carl isn't there . . .

NickD
BASE 194

Whats an "8-track"?

just kidding, I had too.

Check it out....

Back issues of Jump Magazine

g.

"Phil "smitty" Smith jumping from a train as it passes over a 300 ft bridge..."

Bad ass, and this in 1984, with a round.

I met Phil Smith, BASE number one, for the first time a year later at Bridge Day in 1985. I wanted to tell him . . . well, I meant to say what an inspiration he was to me, but I just stood there and stammered like a school kid. He said, "Yeah, Nick, I've heard of you, how are you?"

I was walking on air for the next week . . .

Phil's a stand up guy and a gentleman. I don’t think we could have "picked" anyone better to lead off . . .

NickD
BASE 194

Let's not forget Kevin Vennell (spelling?), Phil's partner in crime. Phil was an inspiration to me, but so was Kevin (I'd met him the first time in Zhills when I had about 20 skydives, then the next time was my first bridge day in '84 when I had over 1000 skydives and was waiting to do my first BASE jump).

They drew straws to see who got to go with Phil. He said 'I'd wake up in a cold sweat at night, scared stiff, and the only thing to do was to grab the gf)

I'll never forget watching Kevin freefall 140' (over water) in October 84 from a bridge in WV.

He and Phil came up with the set-up of

16' pulled down apex round in a freebag,
Para Innovators 52" pilotchute,
Velcro rig.
+ hand-held 8' reserve canopy.

Total jump time 5 1/2 seconds.
Full canopy in under 2 seconds with a delay of around 8 feet.
Rock drop time was a fraction over three seconds.

(Page 13 in Jump 85 with photo sequence)

Sorry Nigel - of course it's you - which maybe makes it even spookier!

And I had to go back to the site next day and up on the roof to collect all the shit, tape and static lines we'd left behind! I've got a picture of all of it.

Kevin was a great guy and a fantastic inspiration to me. We didn't know each other well but I'd love to run into him sometime over a few beers. I don't know if he even skydives any more....

Then there was that guy who taught me a First Base course at the bridge in '84. Hmmm, what was his name? Nigel Slick?... God knows where he ended up....

Wasn't it Nigel who did "Tall Stories"?

Sorry, I'm having a brain fade this morning . . .

It's an audio tape made at an early Bridge Day made up of interviews with some of the sport's big names. I've had a copy for many years and the last time I wanted to listen to it I had to go out and find a cassette tape player, LOL.

There's one interview with Phil Smith where Nigel (yes, I'm sure it was Nigel) asks Phil what he thinks of all the young jumpers coming up. At the time Phil had the most BASE jumps of anyone around at three hundred or so. But Ritchie and Mark are hot on his heels and Nigel says, "I have this mental picture of the old man, Phil Smith, pushing himself up another building in the middle of the night, because he's got to get another one in to stay on top." (This is funny now as Phil was probably 35-years old at the time and "was" an old man compared to the rest of us.)

"No," Phil says, "those guys are doing three to my one and they are going pass me up real soon." He then goes on to say it's never been about the numbers for him and talks about some other very interesting things. Maybe Nigel will make the tape available again. It's a real piece of BASE history.

And wasn't it the same Bridge Day where Phil later whistled in with a bad slider hang up, I think he was jumping a Cruislite and trying out a new slider. JD was walking around on the bridge saying, "Could it be true, the living legend is dead . . ."

In those days we relied heavily on Black Death humor to cover up the fact we didn’t know what we were doing.

NickD
BASE 194

I've thought about it, especially seeing the vintage story thread. Tall Stories was a 60 minute audio tape of jump stories from Bridge Day '88. I interviewed all my heroes plus friends standing on the wall waiting to jump. The idea was to make an inspiring tape to play on those long drives to the object or back home when not jumping.

There's also a sadness hearing some of our missing friends; Brad Smith, John Mjoen and Lukas Knutsson.

I have considered putting it online but have reservations that some of the stories on it shouldn't be in the public domain (knowing how we are frequently reminded that these forums are visited by those without our best interests at heart). Nothing radical, just guys talking about named places, what we do and how we go about it.

I suppose if there was enough interest I could produce a new edition on CD, perhaps cdrom with the back issues, historical video clips and a few pictures and offer package via mail order.

I'll look into it. Thanks for the reminder Nick.

I have the same problem when looking over stories, events, and even people I want to put in my book. I re-read the pieces and think, gee, I can't say that, and oh boy, I really can't say this.

Maybe it just still too soon . . .

There are many in the newest generation of BASE that doesn't seem to regard security the same way old-schoolers do. But, when I look through the parts I've written already I can't help but feel a twinge of something akin to betrayal if I put them out in book form.

One good thing is it solves my problem of coming up with a title. I can call it, "Spilling the Beans . . ."

NickD
BASE 194

Register my interest.

Seconded.

Interest noted.

Yeah that would be awesome!!

for sure!

Actually, I'd be really interested in it because I remember you interviewed me that year, this after you taught me my first jump course in '84. I was pretty full of myself, I think, talking about how it felt jumping off the 'high' bridge again after doing buildings and 300' cliffs, sub 200" grain elevators, teaching some others and getting caught, etc.

Strange thing is, less then a month after the interview, I had a 180 on opening up a new object and hit a smokestack, breaking my hip on landing. About 6 weeks later, just barely (not even) healed, I broke the other leg skiing. That smokestack was the last base jump I did until 2002.

Rob Price
BASE 92

Also interested.

Michael

A retrospective "re-interview" with the original cast of characters would be very interesting.

Rob you sick fuck. that's a ridiculously low 16feet but enough to break a limb or two. What deployment method you use on that.


ian

He said sub 200". He's probably over-stating the height. This so-called "grain elevator" is probably just a standard bread box or something.

Michael

count me in

me too...im in.

Hey guys, Kevin Vennel and I have been out in Galveston Bay all day and he's passed out in the living room. Boy is he going go love this thresd, he has a huge ego. This is Rick Harrison and Kevin, Smitty and I jumped together a lot in 83-87. Nigel, hello!! We had some unforgetable times. FYI, at New River 83, Kevin went off right after a guy from Louisiana. They yelled at each other to do CRW. It was the first 2 stack on a BASE object. Prettly good too. Kevin came out to New River this last year with Joy, Randy and I. We only did 1 on Sat. but another later on. NICK, behave! Join us at Perrine this Aug. 6-8. We figured we'd come out and do a few and maybe bring an old 23' round for fun.
Anyway, the old days were great and there are a lot of crazy stories from those days. By the way, Smitty is still in Houston. We talked to him just before New River, but I think he's smart enough to avoid us.
CYA
Rick Harrison
BASE 38
PS. Joy says I have to get off or I'll sound senile.
Rick

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damn nitpickers!