Basejumper.com - archive

 
We went to our cliff on Saturday. What a day! It started off with us getting up at 4:30 am to be picked up by John at 5:15 am. John had been bitching all week warning us that we'd better be ready on time otherwise he would be pissed off. So............we get a call at 5:30 am from John telling us that he didn't hear his 3 alarms go off and that he had just woken up. So we sit in the dark waiting whilst John runs around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to get organised. (John normally needs about an hour to look and feel human in the mornings). Of course as soon as he's ready with the car loaded etc, the car doesn't start. He wakes up his staff and they push him up and down the street trying to start the car to no avail. John throws all his toys and loads all his kit in the Benz (which he really doesn't want to take on the bad roads) and arrives at our place sometime after 6:30 am and we get to travel to our cliff in style.

Our first jump goes without a hitch. There are animals everywhere on the climb up. John decides to go stowed for the first time ever; I've got my bullet cam mounted on my waist. The video camera Annette has down the bottom is a borrowed one and she presses the wrong button so we don't get any footage from that one. I get some interesting footage from my bullet cam though.

We go to a different place to pack for a change that is closer to our cliff. I normally finish packing at least 15 mins before John but this day he is packing like a demon and finished a couple of minutes after me. I express my amazement and John tells me that it might look alright on the outside it's a complete mess on the inside. This pisses me off again because my pack jobs are always so much neater than Johns but I'm the one that gets off heading openings. This time I'm packed stowed too.

It's now 11:30 am and starting to get warmer but unbelievably its still calm. No wind, perfect for BASE jumping. We head on off back up the cliff and gear up. It’s John’s turn to go first so off he goes. He has a slightly off heading opening to the right of about 35 degrees. Next it's my turn, first time stowed so there is a bit more tension than normal. It feels different to stand on the edge of the cliff without a pilot chute in my hand but never mind here goes. I jump and hold it for a second (probably ½ second in real time) and pitch out the pilot chute. It flashes through my mind that I might not have pitched it strongly enough and WHACK the canopy opens; FUCK it's facing the wrong way and the risers are crossed. I've got a 180 off heading opening haven't I! I grab the right rear riser and pull it down to try and turn the canopy back and to the right. It works but I hold it a second too long and I back into the cliff and hit it. I didn't expect the cliff to be so close and it surprised the hell out of me when I hit it. Of course as I hit the cliff I get supported by it a bit and the lines in the canopy go slack and the canopy stops flying. It then gets worse because now I'm sliding down the cliff face with my legs up around my head. Sliding down the cliff also helps because now I've got tension on my lines again and the canopy starts flying again and I fly away from the cliff.

When you look at the video of this it is all over in a couple of seconds. You can't even see me sliding down the cliff but at the time it went on for far too long.

I whacked the left side of my body a bit and my knee feels a bit funny but other than that I'm okay. On the day I felt a bit more battered and bruised and I had trouble walking up and down stairs. We spent the rest of the day in the pub drinking too much. And can you believe it, the rest of the day was a perfect BASE jumping day, what a waste!

1st stowed jump, 1st 180 and 1st cliff strike.

Mark

"If you're not living on the edge, you're wasting space"

AF said that if you never had a 180 you will. Glad you're OK bro!

I would not start experimenting going stowed off a cliff but everybody is different. I take cliffs very seriously.

Remember that when stowed a PC will hesitate more. It is my view that if I'm going stowed I must take a minimum of 2 sec to build up some speed around me. 1/2 sec delay might not be enough for a clean PC extraction.

Could you tell us the height of the object and the size of the PC?

Also, could you post the video?

Again glad you've got away with just few bruises!

I don't get it. You had the canopy turned facing away from the cliff but continued to back it up more and hit the cliff while you were facing away from it. Is that what happened?

me too. same opinion.

due to the fatality analysis from martin waldron (I hope I got his name right, please correct if I´m wrong), cliffs are the most dangerous things in our sport.
solid rocks are very unforgiving..

watch out, take care.

Welcome to the club, bro! Glad you're ok.

Perhaps, in 10 years from now, the technology will advance so far as there will be a new fun thing to do -- "parachute-assisted rappelling". You pack your ultralight and ultracompact 1000sq.ft. vented canopy with air locks with an intentional 180, dress in airbag-enhanced carbon fiber body armor, and gently bounce off the cliff to the talus.

Yuri

Nice work Mark on staying alive...some tips...if you intend going stowed then do a longer delay...you have the height...make sure the PC is packed and rigged correctly..if you are unsure speak to johhny utah for the rolls royce of PC technique lectures...dont be agressive with the toss as this may unstabilize you and dont use anything bigger or smaller than a 42..

if these are all suck egg type comments i apologise but they are worth considering

glad you are alive mate...should see you this summer hopefully

Different people have different objects. As far as I know, their object selection is extremely limited. If you know of a nice, safe (both in the BASE sense and in the gueriila warfare sense) span somewhere in eastern Africa, I'm sure those guys would love to hear about it.

holy crap yuri, sounds like you enjoyed your cliffstrike so much, you can't wait to do it again...

did you even read any of my reply to your cliffstrike thread? sounds like you went the 'bulletproof' route

'welcome to the club' - indeed, but there being a club like this is not cool, especially for low experience basejumpers (includes me)

sometimes object strikes are almost impossible to avoid with a vicious 180 (there are different kinds), but that should be a judgement call before the jump and lower experience basejumpers should try and avoid these jumps

slider off cliffs are especially technical objects, unfortunately due to relatively easy access at some, we see a lot of lower experience jumpers jumping these before being ready

DON'T DO THAT!!

MarkSin - glad you're OK. What were you thinking doing your first stowed jump off a low cliff?

people - please don't get complacent about cliffjumps due to the recent rash of cliffstrikes that worked out OK, any/every one of those strikes could've been a fatality or pemanently disabling injury

as the dude from Hill Street Blues used to say:

'let's be careful out there'


please do

How far did you turn the canopy on that riser?

Riser turns eat altitude. Because of this it is important to only make riser corrections until you are no longer facing the object (so, on a true 180, only the first 90 degrees or so of the turn should be made with the riser). As soon as you are no longer closing on the object, you should switch over to using the toggles, to reduce the rate at which you are losing altitude.

Awesome, simply awesome...

statistics are ...well ... statistics. on a dataset of < 100 records, they aren't worth much. from this analysis you could also say that a span is 20% more dangerous than a building. you won't get many people agreeing with that unless you start specifying a particular bridge and particular building.

if there are 5 times as many cliff jump a year as there are building jumps, that would mean that cliffs are safer than buildings (per 100 jumps) according to the stats... but still too many other factors to draw any useful conclusions...

each type of object has it's own very general set of risk factors but so does each particular object and each jump from said object.

<very sarcastic tone>
besides everyone knows that a jump from a 3,000ft cliff is just a skydive right?
</very sarcastic tone>

ok ok, I been reading this but trying to make sense of it ?
.
..."it's facing the wrong way and the risers are crossed."

Ok are the risers Miss-Rigged ? 360 Deg. line twist ? Harness flipped true ? step through ? ???
-

..."I grab the right rear riser and pull it down to try and turn the canopy."

Did you grab only one Rear Riser with right hand ? Did you grab both Risers with both Hands ?
It sounds by your description that you only pulled down on the Right Rear Riser. To Turn right.

(if you did this below). please disregard.
For proper 180 off Heading correction to avoid a possible strike. You must grab both rear risers up at the Links and Pull Hard to stop forward acceleration. When forward motion has stopped. You the let-up on the left rear. While keeping rear right Riser pressure on. To Turn Right.
If you do not use this method of making the Canopy opening surge of forward movement stop. Before trying to turn with rear Risers. You are cheating this Riser turn technique from it's full Potential. This technique WILL also keep the Canopy in it flattest pivoting turn.
.
edit to add:
If you were as close to the Cliff Face as you also described. You must fly your Canopy Backwards. Or at least initiate some rearflight momentum. Before doing the technique that I described for proper rear Riser turns on a 180 off Heading.
.

but I think it is a good start.
we here over in germany work on a statistic of our own activities. it will work better with every record we get, but is still not complete.
of course te analysis is not the holy truth, but it shows tendencies and what really happend.
like every statistic, it leaves different ways to react.
no one knows how much jumps have been made in total, even here in germany.
not every german basejumper is in our organisation and therefore it leaves a wide range open.

having a look at "the list" makes me believe, cliffs are the number one danger nowadays.
probably due to the possibilities they offer.
wingsuiting, for example, from an object is still uncommon for the most buildings and high potential multiple aerials are also not usual from "standard" buildings.

"the list" is a kind of statistic also.
sad, but true.



if you put it in combination with number of jumps, than you get a different view, right.
but when jumping more cliffs than buildings, the risk increases on an E...
still more people die during cliff jumps in total.

hmmm, kind of a "point-of-view" thing...

I agree, if you want a real analysis, based on all available facts, you need more and complete data, like number of jumps done in total, type of equipment, and so on.
this is of course not possible, because we are not in a public sport where everything is recorded.
so you will just get a more or less true estimation.
but every "analysis", complete or not, which leads to just one less jumper going to die
is worth lookin at it and makes sense to me.
I take this as a first step in increasing the safety.
spreading all available info and talking about it is a good way in my thoughts.
like this posting...

To add a bit more information.
Our cliff is 420 ft and all my BASE jumps have been off this cliff.
My canopy opened briskly (as it should) and clean except that it was facing the wrong way.
As my canopy opened and I looked up, my risers were crossed because the canopy was facing in the opposite direction to me. I grabbed the right riser first before I swung around to face the cliff. Once I did I grabbed the left riser as well. Here my recollection gets a bit fuzzy. I believe I had both risers pulled down but the right one was pulled down more. The canopy stopped moving forward and was moving backwards slowly in a right turn. Looking at the video I probably had less than 1/2 a second from moment when the canopy was facing enough away from the cliff till I contacted the face. I hit the cliff with the back of the left side of my canopy and IF I had had the presence of mind to let go in that instant then I would have flown away from the face with no problem.
I admit I did a couple of things wrong.
1) I didn't stop the canopy first and then turn it. (like Ray has said)
2) I should have let the risers up the instant I was not facing the cliff.
All in all it was a sobering experience; and not just for me. I have read all the "what to do if" threads when I can but as we all know, until it happens we don't know how we will react.
I'm glad I'm still around to keep learning and I appreciate all your input.
I would love to do some experimenting off a nice span but unfortunately there is a gross shortage of them here. If anyone wants to start a "Get the Kenyan crew to potato land" fund then I'm all for it. I'll even donate the first $20.

Hope to share an exit point with you all some day.

I see your point and Tom's about not having a S close by to experiment things out. I guess here in the US we are a bit spoiled in that department for better or worse.

However @ 420' you can take a solid 3 sec before going for the PC. This added airspeed should take care of PC hesitations and also add a bit more of grond rush to the mix!

By the way what size PC were you using?

Stay safe.

Hi Nick,

I'm Mark's Base buddy

His home connection is down at present and he answered previously thru an internet cafe which he has now left.

I just spoke to him over the phone and he asked me to advise that he was using a 42" PC
and will put up the video tomorrow.

He also mentioned that he really appreciates the good will shown by the above respondents

John

If one has an 180° with linetwists this is a "Deployment 180". More than likely due to an asymetrical PC.
take care,
space

Dude I do not think he was saying Twists -(Plural). Theoretically in BASE a full line Twist is a 360 Deg.complete revolution. I think a 180 is just simply that. A 180.
In his Post (marksin) states: " I jump and hold it for a second (probably ½ second in real time) and pitch out the pilot chute."
Ok a 1-Second delay is not going to cause violent Pilot Chute oscillation. And most likely Not the Culprit of the 180 deg. off heading with Half of a Line Twist. Also add in from facts stated in first post of no outside (wind) interference.
Plus add that (marksin) states: ..." Next it's my turn, first time stowed so there is a bit more tension than normal."
He admits to being more Pinned-Out (nervous) than usual at Exit. Put all these Facts together and you get.
Main culprit for 180 Deg. Off Heading is likely to be. Bad Body Positioning at deployment.
.

Space,

I really respect your opinions on technical issues, but I think you are wrong on this one. Or perhaps I am misunderstanding the terminology and don't get what you mean by "Deployment 180."

In my experience, line twists develop in one of two ways;

a) The canopy twists as it moves to line stretch. This is (I think) the "Deployment 180" that you are talking about.

b) The jumper's body twists under the canopy after it reaches part or full inflation, and establishes heading. I call this "body position induced line twists" for lack of a better term. This twisting occurs because the jumpers body is headed in a different direction than the canopy, and it has to twist to line up with the forward travel of the parachute. It often over-rotates, causing line twists.


In my experience 95% of slider down line twists result from (b) body position, and not from (a) deployment. I think the ratio is closer to 50/50 on slider up.

My bad. I substituted the word “linetwists” for “risers are crossed”.

A “deployment 180” is indeed where the canopy turns or twists as it moves to line stretch before reaching bottom skin inflation (most likely IMHO due to an APC because the jumper can't turn at that rate of speed).
As opposed to a “flying 180”, where, due to the jumper being in a a shoulder low or leg out causes the canopy to turn after the bottom skin inflation due to an asymmetrical loading of the harness.

Hope this is clearer,
Take care,
space

All,

Mark has now put a small video up on skydivingmovies.com.


John