Basejumper.com - archive

I was thinking the other day about how sports tend to get safer as we learn more about them, I'm sure it is true that BASE has progressed a lot from the earlier days, and is a safer sport than when it began, (not that I am in any way saying that BASE is a safe sport, it is without a doubt a dangerous sport that you have to be on top of your game to take part in). I was also thinking about the ways in which sports get safer, safer equipment, safer techniques, more knowledge about what can go wrong, often because it has gone wrong... and new methods of dealing with problems that can arise. Learning from our mistakes, if you will.

Take motorsports for example, back in the 60s and 70s it was considered to be a very very dangerous sport, it would not be rare for 3 or 4 drivers in a top series to lose their lives each year. As equipment and knowledge improved and grew, today, although not a safe sport, it is many, many times safer than it was in those days.

My question to discuss is, do you think BASE will continue to get safer? If so to what extent, where does it, if it does, become impossible to get safer? What do you think will be the main aspects making it safer...gear...knowledge...something else... and how do you think it would change the sport if it were to become safer, to whatever extent.

This is a difficult discussion unless we define safety and the context in which we can use this definition.

As things become 'safer', more people will try 'it' and more people will try 'harder' things within the context that 'it' is...

One question we could ask; are statistically less people dying per BASE jump? And; are statistically less people getting injured per BASE jump? To what extend of the injuries?

To be entirely honest, the question doesn't interest me very much anymore. It did at one point, but I have since learned that risk analysis and management is one of the most individual games you can and should play.

I think there will continue to be gear refinements to reduce the likelihood, or negative effects, of gear malfunctions. But we're going to need some sort of emergency system along the lines of this before I'd start using the word "safer".

I think that BASE could get a lot safer if it was "legal", i.e. if jumpers didn't have to jump an unknown location at night so not be nicked for tresspasing or whatever.

(Not a jumper here, don't flame me....)

 

Training, training and more training. I have come up with a new aid for teaching slider down/off experince at the dropzone. A slider with removable steering line grometts. A person can exit plane with a sail slider, leave the brakes set and release the extra grometts installed on the rear of the slider. After that release the brakes and have a good simulation of what it is like to fly with "free" brakelines. I see this as a way to gain invaluable experience without having to do it in 15- 20 second intervals.I see WAY TOO MANY people getting in over their head with regard to canopy flight. If more people draw a line in the sand with regard to training/ experience WE would be turning out better prepared safer base jumpers. OK my rant is done.

Hey Pete, any chance you can post pics of your slider design? It sounds like a great tool for learning/practicing flying the line mod.... and a hell of a lot less risky than trying to fish your toggles up through the slider grommets mid-flight.

Awesome, I want that slider for my slider-up BASE jumps! I love flying with the lines free. I feel it increases my control range and gives me a better flare.

Yea, I promise pics as soon as it returns. It's out with a novice jumper now.

What about the guide rings on the risers? Do you levae the lines out of those? If so what happens if you have a premature brake release? The brake my fire and hang up the slider.

Well, I guess this is skydiving. If that happens you can just cutaway huh?

Jaap, I feel this things place is in a training environment, not in the field. Shit happens you know, it would be really bad if ONE side released during inflation. We know all jumpers do all preventative maintenance required. I do not want to say absolutely NO, but I do not have enough performance data yet to say YES!

Stow your brakes as you would for slider down,just dont' release them before the grometts.

Yeah, I realize that. I'm not really interested in your invention because I like to keep my BASE rig stupid simple...

It was a bit of a jest towards your slider idea, as I've generally found flying with the lines free to be much easier than with the lines through the grommets. Maybe it's just because I'm biased since most of my jumps are slider-down these days, but I don't recall that the transition from lines-through-grommets to lines-free was a particularly difficult one.

I think the particular canopy control issues that pose problems with beginning BASE jumpers (like myself) can easily be trained on a slider-through-grommets setup as well.

That said, it never hurts to make things more realistic, so I definitely encourage the idea. I just think the gains are marginal.

Also, I should add the question of why you don't just jump a slider-up setting with the lines outside the grommets? I have done this on several skydives on both my Sabre 170 and my BASE canopy. I never had a problem of the slider not coming down, but even if it did, I'm pretty sure some pumping on the rear-risers could fix it.

On my Sabre 170 I even stowed my lines the regular (non slider-down) way, and they never blew up on opening.

Not saying this is good advice for beginning skydivers, but I think it's a valuable exercise in the hands of a heads-up jumper who is flying a conservative canopy and capable of landing on rear risers (in case he has to. But then again, he'd also have to with your slider idea).

Two cents...

I would never advocate st. lines outside the grommets on slider up deployments. Controlling some and not others is asking for mals' and possible damage. Knock yourself out though.

Yup.

We all knew that Phil Smith was living on borrowed time after he made 100 BASE jumps back in the early 80s. Nobody could do that many and survive for long... so conventional wisdom went.

While I won't argue it is a trivial matter and that it doesn't come with any risk, I wonder if your opinion is based on experience (yourself, perceived or hearsay) or on your own reasoning and judgement.

Either way, I hope you can elaborate on some of the potential problems one may run into. I'm well aware your a much more experienced skydiver and BASE jumper so I'm seriously curious if I may be overlooking some risk...

Edited to add; I have done at least eight jumps this way and not had a problem. It's not a large enough sampling to say it's a safe thing to do, but at the same time it is large enough to say that in fact it can work at least eight times...

No.

In my novice opinion,
BASE gear is safer
BASE knowledge is greater in many domains
BASE teaching is also good
thus making BASE jumping safer

unfortunately many people get into BASE and have no business in that activity, keeping incident level too visible.

back in the early 90's, I knew a skydiver that complained of consistently brutal openings. he sought advice from many people. he felt the openings messed up his back and made his construction job difficult.

he finally realized the brake lines were left OUTSIDE the slider grommets. he claimed his openings improved greatly once he corrected the rigging.

'course much has changed since then. and he was deploying at terminal speeds...

use care if rigging your brake lines outside the grommets. check out the results on a hop-n-pop first. make sure the slow speed openings are acceptable before moving on to high speed!

Very interesting. I would have guessed (and my experience confirms this to an extent) that the openings would be slower, since the slider isn't pushed down as aggressively as with the steering lines through the grommets.

he jumped an original Sabre, which were notorious for opening fast. at the speed they opened, the A-D lines could easily drive a slider down. the thinking was NOTHING restrained the tail, so it inflated wickedly fast. think instant, complete pressurization. not pretty.

edited to add:
maybe DACRON lines would have made the situation tolerable...

Pete,

Would you be willing to start a new thread with the photos, and possibly a diagram of the slider.

Also, an address for you where folks interested in purchasing one could get it would not be a bad thing.

Thanks!

Think lineovers, lineovers clearing at high speed causing fabric damage. During initial inflation at higher speeds, the canopy has alot of chaotic events happening. I believe the slider serves as as a focal point to the load distribution from the canopy to the lines. Take some lines out that controll and they are free to do what they they will. I said before "Knock yourself out". Get belly mounted video, air to air, gather as much info as you can on your own. Do ask the questions, go to manufacurers for advice. There probably has been more people than you think that have tried the same thing, why have we not all adopted this type of setup? My .03

maybe so, but fishing your toggles up through the slider grommets is so much fun once you get the hang of trying to counter the turn while not dropping any toggles and staying calm while the canopy is spiralling and you are trying to focus on something else too...

I'm not sure what amount of learning/practising the line release mod is needed?

Sure, it feels weird at first, but other than holding onto your toggles everything should be able to be figured out by the pilot through feedback from the canopy, even on 15-20 second flights.

It seemed really useful to simulate slider off/down brake line routing to evaluate DBS, but doing a hop'n'pop high enough to be safe makes it hard to have good references on movement.

Vented canopies also seem to make finding the correct DBS tricky if only doing skydives with the canopy.

I don't see an unreasonable amount of risk in fishing your toggles through the slider grommets on a decent altitude hop'n'pop.

At worst you'll screw it up, get scared and cutaway and have a reserve ride instead of staying calm and fixing it.

Either way I think it makes for a great learning experience.

I did the same thing four times on an original Sabre 170, didn't have any problems. It may have had Dacron lines. Again, not saying that means anything, but my openings weren't hard.

Right, that's pretty much what I expected. But that's what hook-knifes, WLO's and reserves are for, right?


There is no denying that!


Not at all; I'm not that cocky. I'm sure there have been many people that have tried this setup. I'm also moderately confident there have been close to the same amount of people that lived to tell about it.


I would never recommend it as a consistent setup to anybody. Lines through grommets has all the advantages here. But as an exercise to an aspiring BASE jumper to get a feel for what it's like to jump with the lines free; I'll recommend it any day.

 

My question to discuss is, do you think BASE will continue to get safer?
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safer?

please define.

gear is far better / more reliable than when i started in 1982

there is far more knowledge and it is much easier to disperse said knowledge

but ......................... it is not taken advantage of in far too many cases.
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What do you think will be the main aspects making it safer...gear...knowledge...something else...

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maturity and intelligence are the key components.

remember the guy that jumped a field packed rig in Moab after a TS challenge?

remember the guy that did the rollover tard at Moab?

both are fine examples of why BASE probably does not fit your probable idea of moving towards safer i.m.o.

Do you think we have more to gain if we exercise better judgement and increase our knowledge?

i do

be safe

kleggo

In my opinion, highly skilled jumpers on dodgy gear are safer than folks with little or no preparation jumping state of the art gear.

In the beginning, BASE had a high percentage of the former. I think we are moving toward the latter. I don't think we're there yet, and I definitely see folks trying to stem the tide, but I do, personally, wonder if it's just an inevitable movement that can be postponed, but not reversed.

I wasn't around on dropzones 30 years ago, but I've heard that something similar has happened in skydiving.

Inevitable? Perhaps. But I'd like to think not.

Very good insight Tom. It is true on all counts from my perspective as a jumper who has been around from the mid seventies and with BASE jumps as far back as 1981.

Presently there are way too many incidents involving the uninitiated jumper who gets "cocky" in both sports but I'd venture to say that there are far fewer in BASE.

LUCK? The younger skydivers are making mistakes by jumping equipment they are not ready for but with BASE that is not the case.

in reply to "I wasn't around on dropzones 30years ago "
.............

Neither was I but from my current perspective the modern day BASE scene has a lot of simliarities to the older time skydiving scene.

Most BASE jumpers appear to exhibit a willingness to share the knowledge hard learnt from hard experience. This is close to how it was in skydiving in the past.

Currently in skydiving it seems more like a lot of the information is being quoted from a book rather than from people's personal experience.

Of course there are many exceptions to this but perhaps a similar trend will envelope BASE jumping as it gets more highly developed and accepted and safer. ...perhaps not.

However, the idea of doing many 100's of jumps without a reserve must create a very different mindset .

without a main, actually....

If you think jumping in gennerally i would say yes.. BASE is becomming safer,BUT most people are pushing them selfs just abit each time they jump and gets more confident..
Look at the legal S in US were people whith less than 100 BASE jumps often try doing their first arials.. people are pulling lower in Swiss wally as theyre set to try track longer...
People will always get injuryed and killed in this sport´so even as you CAN do it safely-ish then most people dont tend to do so,atleast not on all their jumps..

Our equipment is getting better and better all the time,thanks to manufactors and thouse who takes the bigger risk of testing it before evryone else jumps it..

BASE will never be safe but it can be done in a safe as posibly way(ehm im not sure if my words describes it well enough as i think it).

Still safer than drug smuggling, 2 aussies sentenced to death by firing squad, another couple got life. Base wouldnt pay as much though of course

BASE???

Safety???

Risk???

These are relative terms that are dependant on many factors.

How safe YOU are in BASE is mainly determined by the decisions you make before, during, and after each jump. My safety and risk level will be different to yours. It will also be different for me with different jumps that I make.

All the equipment, technique, object access, training, skill, etc, will not help much if you make very poor decisions. In this scenario, it is not BASE jumping that is more dangerous, it is the individual that is participating.

A relatively safe jumper does a good job of risk management, that is, reducing the risks of the sport to an acceptable level. A dangerous jumper is one that increases the complexity and the number of variables in a jump without adequate risk management. For example, trying several new skills on the one jump instead of learning them separately.

The biggest variable in any activity is the human participating. If you can manage that, you are well on the way to minimising risk and danger.

I think the APF Safety Poster (pdf) sums it up quite well.