Basejumper.com - archive

I was searching for something on the BLiNC forums a little while ago and came across this gem:

http://www.blincmagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=17687

It's a thread from back in 2000 where jumpers posted stories of their biggest BASE blunders. It is three pages of pure gold, lessons learned that should not be forgotten, which is why I'm posting it here. Maybe we should continue that thread here? I'm sure that there are plenty of new stories to add (Jaap, can you think of any? ).

What is unique about this is that newer jumpers (like me) can read examples of specific situations (rather than just theory) that we may not have heard of or seen, and gain a better understanding of overall pre-jump evaluation (among other things). Maybe these could even be added to a new section of the BASE Wiki for future reference by newcomers?

edit: sorry if that thread has been repeatedly brought up here in the past by other newbs... either way it cant hurt having it on the first page for a while, right?

great idea!

Don't you know none of the DZ.commers makes any mistakes?

Here are couple of mine (actually the same twice):

Local 280A strongish tail winds. I jump downwind, that means a 180 turn to make it to the primary LZ (smallish anyhow), open, on-heading, I'm cruising down wind much more than I predicted, I make a 90, the canopy is sliding a lot, now I'm low over the trees. Decision time: try to make a hard 90 risking to pound in or do nothing and go for the trees...I did nothing and went for the trees.

Lesson learned: none (read next).

Local 240S. Strong tail wind...decide to free-fall it with tail winds. I jump, open on-heading right over the trees and land on top of one, not enough altitude to clear it or to do anything for that matter.

1st lesson learned: be careful with tail winds when opening right over trees.

2nd lesson learned: I'm a slow learner, should have learned lesson 1 after the first tree landing.

3rd lesson learned: should've done a rear floater into the wind.

4th lesson learned: chain saws and Banks rock

When I landed in a tree and was chased by an alligator...

http://www.dropzone.com/...post=2050426#2050426

you will never guess what happend to me I was doing A tard over off a 220 foot" A," and got line twist you would think I would have learned by now. I guess not so I landed .
.
in the tress and it was actually really fun the moral of the story is wear a helmet when doing, not so smart stuff and tress are your friend. like big soft pillows

I've had three incidents I would characterize as particularly significant learning experiences during my BASE career thus far... One was a cliff strike that I learned a great deal from, as I expect most people do when they walk away from that. The second was a tailgate hangup that never cleared, teaching me in vivid detail the importance of using tan elastics on the tailgate. Somehow the third stands out to me as worthy of note, though...

I was on top of a local 140' silo. We'd had some problems earlier with an extendable ladder that released when I touched it, and had come back a half-hour later pretty confident that security was come and gone, if they had come at all. We were wrong, as it turns out, and I had reason to suspect that I was minutes from having some unwelcome company. Anyway, I was on the top when I realized that the rail I'd originally planned to tie off on wasn't going to work, and started looking around for an alternative. I decided to use the cage surrounding the ladder I'd climbed up on. Looking down, I was a little wary -- the rusted metal of the ladder and landings looked poised to reach out and grab my pilot chute. "What the hell," I said to myself, "I'll just give it a bit of a launch to get clear."

I launched, never having seen the guard I expected, and gave it a pretty good push. I oscillated ("Hey -- what the...") back, foward, and hit hard, but walked away with a broken heel. So, umm... If you're standing at the exit point on a static line jump and thinking, "I'll just give it a bit of a launch", know this: If you don't push hard, your pilot chute might snag on the stuff below, and you'll be out a pilot chute. But if you do push hard, you will oscillate on opening, and maybe you don't have time for that.

I remember that jump...220A? More like 280A!

Do you also want to mention the roll-over 180 off the 240S?

dude that tard over in which Im refering to was off the dark side and I don't remember u being there but it could
be because I'm an iodiot
and what rollover are u talking about

....aligators live in trees?!?

My biggest mistake:

I started BASE Jumping and I love it...

i think at TW we rughly meassured TARD povers as the same as aprox 1-1.5 sec delays depending on how fast you do the roll over. i would say that if you jumped off 220ft as a TARDover it has nothing to do about your line twists that you landed in trees just below..

just my point of weiv