Basejumper.com - archive

Checked in with Tom first. Three prints Carl gave me back in '82. I'm sure everyone knows where they are, but any idea who the HD and GP people are? I think one of them's Smitty.

Al

The first one is Jean. Carl is jumping with a long static line and is above her and shooting this photo. The photo that Jean took with the rearward facing camera of Carl is cool too.

The second is Phil Smith and I'm not sure, maybe Phil Mayfield.

I don't know who the third is . . .

NickD
BASE 194

To me seems, looking at the shadows on the rock, they're either going for a 2way hand held... or am I wrong?

From Carl's shadow it looks like he's holding his PC for a freefall. I think that wall's about 700'. Carl also gave me a VHS which included these jumps and Jean's first static-line off this site. When she lands he just turns to camera and says "Piece of cake!". I left the tape in the back of a taxi in London! How slack was that?

Yes, you're right, I didn't scroll down to see Carl's shadow. There's another photo from this site that looks very similar. I know Carl did do some long static line jumps at this place with a static line attached to his hand held pilot chute.

This is also the only site where it would be fair to say Carl burned it . . . I guess he was a victim of his own success. For a couple of the early years, Carl and his crew (although they would not have used the word "crew then) pretty much had the entire USA to themselves.

Carl didn’t think too much about bringing in a helicopter to this site, without realizing by that time others were now jumping it, and these other jumpers had made a deal with the locals. The "deal" called for no publicity, no helicopters, etc.
After Carl broke the "rules" the locals no longer welcomed BASE jumpers. I think it was an honest mistake on Carl's part (some jumpers said otherwise) but the ruckus it raised was sad, as it showed all of us we weren't quite the happy band of brothers we thought we were . . .

NickD
BASE 194

How long of a static line was he doing?

I don't know about Carl Boenish, but I recently did an extremely long static-line at a local terminal wall. When I finally rapelled to the ground, it turned out I didn't even need a canopy anymore.

Sorry, couldn't resist ....

I'm sure someone will know this accurately, but didn't Jim Tyler do a 200' static-line off the Royal Gorge Bridge?

I think it was the Bridge Day bridge. Either way, I have some rear mounted helmet cam video of an extremely long static line there. I got the video from Rick and Joy, and as I recall the explanation was that he wanted the static line to be longer than the steel, so that he would have no chance of striking the structure.

At that point, why not just go hand held?

How would you do that long of a static line anyway? You'd either have to take the PC off or do something else with it to prevent it from catching air and deploying the canopy before you reached the end of the static line.

And still, by the time you reached the end of the static line, you'd have so much speed that I'd be surprised if the shock of pulling the velcro, pins, or even the canopy out of the container didn't prematurely break the break cord. If you've got no PC, that's real bad. If you've got a PC and you held onto it until the end of the static line, you should have gone handheld in the first place.

Thoughts?

Lou

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the jump in question was most likely done in 1982 +/- a year.

Why Why Why?
probably because he was just trying to figure out what worked and did not have a depp knowledge base from which to draw information.
i agree that his choice of gear was............... interesting and not what i would choose myself.

we could ask him if he wasn't a dead guy.

be safe

kleggo

 

Ditto.

Must be two separate things we're talking about then. Jimmy Tyler definitely went in on a famous wall out West, leading to the oft-repeated joke about he "correct" delay being "something between a Tyler and Reno."