Basejumper.com - archive

Well I just got back from some ground launching, sorta....

I used my Dagger 266, a 60 meter dynamic climbing rope,
pulled by my little Toyota truck, and a homemade cutaway
system --- piece of PVC as the handle & nylon rope attached
to a foot of vinyl covered steel cable routed thru a riser's
3 rings.

I wore th harness, set the canopy on the ground, and tied the
climbing rope to a 2" stainless steel ring hooked to the 3 rings.

My buddy in the truck drove forward while I kited the canopy.
Once it took shape he eased on the gas and I gained altitude.
At the apex of ascent I cutaway and then landed the wing.

So we did this 5 times ---- me 3 times and him twice (he only
has 4 tandems). On the 2nd run i lost the toggles and had to land
with the rear risers and over amped it which hurt a little. In the
past I'd only landed on rear risers using smaller, ellipitical canopies
and putting down a 266 was totally different. Now I understand
why some of the people I saw at the Potatoe bridge biff in when
landing on rears. It takes more skill than I had originally thought.

Of course for subsequent runs I ran the brake lines thru the guide
rings and did not have to worry about loosing the toggles...

Last I heard, combining square canopies with engine towing is asking for disaster. I'm sure somebody else will confirm this or dispel it as an urban legend.


Sorry, but I consider that bullshit. I've said this a million times, and I'll say it again; landing a BASE canopy on rear risers is the easiest thing on the world. Anybody who biffs in at the Perrine while flaring with rear risers is a fucking tool and shouldn't have jumped in the first place.

Btw, I'm a shitty pilot.

mind posting pics of your cutaway system?

 
The term for what happens when that goes wrong is Lock Out.

Lee

The best advice i've gotten on landing on rears is its softer to not flare and plf than to stall it out on your ass. obviously doing it right is better than each of these options.

Ease down there, cowboy.

The first time that anyone does anything (and landing on rear risers is a "thing" in this context) they can't be expected to get it perfect. That's why we have that thing we call "practice."

Plenty of folks have screwed up rear riser landings because they forgot to practice them somewhere like this span. You calling them a "fucking tool" isn't going to encourage them to practice where other people can see them.

While that may be true. I think the more important point, rather than 'landing a BASE canopy on rears is hard' is that 'landing a BASE canopy on rears is different than landing a small elliptical canopy on rears'.

For those of use with more skydiving experience than you, (most people on here, haha) this might be something to think about. I know it has reminded me to try some landings on my BASE canopy on rears in a nice controlled environment. Probably better than figuring out the differences after I drop a toggle on a low jump. (not that I'm planning on it)

Edited to add: Tom beat me to it.

Jup, and skydiving is different than BASE jumping.

As mentioned many times before, this type of towing is a BAD idea even with a cutaway system!

Not trying to flame you or call you stupid or anything, just trying to warn you.

I know. It's one of those days.


There was a time when one jumper could call another jumper a fucking tool and both of them would listen carefully in the hope of learning something. When did we all become a bunch of sissies? Where is the Ray Losli wisdom when you need it?

My point is; I can't believe people are still breaking legs over rear risers landings. There is no excuse for doing so except in a tremendously small amount of landing areas that 99 percent of jumpers will not ever have to land in anyway. Failing to properly execute a rear riser landing is failing to properly understand the history and motivation of the LRM is failing to give a sport the attention it requests.

I'll add that the Perrine is not a good place to try a rear-riser landing for the first time. Try a dropzone.

Hi,


I will add my voice that I think you should be careful with your towing system. In paragliding towing is quite popular, and for towing special systems are used, e.g. break points, towing systems with varying force etc.

A fixed rope as you seem to use it can quickly lead to really nasty accidents, as mentioned already it is called a lock out where your canopy flies away from the towing direction straight into the ground without a chance to recover. A rope with 60 m seems ridiculously low to me and asking for problems...in case of a bad situation (lock out) you have nearly no time to react.

Have fun with your canopy, still !

Are you basing your opinions mostly on rear riser landings while you still have the toggles (slider down/off) or they are captive (not using the LRM or jumping slider up), or are you basing it on rear riser landings with both toggles thrown (or brakelines released with line-release toggles)?

Either. I've done both many times on skydives and BASE jumps, including the use of slider-up LRM on skydives to simulate full toggle releases (before I had WLOs).

My second jump at BD 2005 was an intentional 360 line-twist to WLO toggle release on both sides followed by a rear-riser beach landing in the second circle, if it's worth anything other than bragging points.

Alas, apologies for derailing the thread. To me the more important lesson is that I'm not going to tie my square canopy to a car, cut-away or not. Enough people have died doing this on a windy and boring Sunday afternoon.

 

So what?

I biff in plenty with both toggles in my hands, never mind rear risers. Anyone who starts blurting the old cliche 'if you can't .......[add whatever here]....then you shouldn't be base jumping in the first place' is a spoon and needs a reality check. Shit happens, people fuck up, circumstances conspire. Want proof, check out nick dg's list.

example one: anyone who can't deal with twists on a base jump shouldn't be......tell that to slim

example two: anyone who can't exit without going head down shouldn't be......tell that to Dr. Nick

example three: anyone who can't track well enough shouldn't be.....tell that to Carl Boenish.

Step down off your pedestal before you fall down off it. Fucking up can happen to anyone. FACT.

Nicely put....

I had a toggle drop from a 220ft A and had to land on rears, I spudded in (but walked away from it)..... does this mean I am a tool and should not be BASE jumping?

In your case...YES.

Ah thanks.... at least I now know...

well there are some differences amongst tools. one could be a very sophisticated machine, or could be the simplest of all tools... the wedge.

take your pick.

 

ouch,atleast you knew it already from the top atleast
I jumped off 600ft lost the toogles in aprox 400ft stalled in from aprox 6 ft,if i had walked away i wrobaly would have been dead as of today,it were a "great" reminder to slow down..

yeah pink hat wearing mincers shouldnt be allowed BASEjumping..

Very nice. How was it when you cut away (with the release of tension on the rope?) Was it pretty smooth?

i did it several years ago with almost the same "system"....
the cutaway was on the highest point of climb with a round canopie,...towed behind a van...
the only reason why i still have teeth in my mouth is the fact that i was wearing a fullface helmet

maybe a factor was bad timing during the cutaway...
whatever...
be carefull out there

i'm assuming you weren't very high when you cut away .. correct?

...or did your half of the cutaway system slingshot back into your face when you released it?

 
Not bad but there is more advanced tec out there all ready. You might look into what the para glider people are doing before you reinvent the wheel.
Thoughts:

Haveing the pig tail on the handle should help but I have had exposed swedges push through the loops before.
You really need a week link in there.
You need a way to moderate the tension on the rope.
Lock Out ocures when you get off the wind line and your body is pulled out from beneath the canopy. You must actively keep your self in line. It can quickly reach the point that you can not correct for it. the only way to stop it is to slack the line alowing you to turn back to the wind line.
This can happen from just a small change in wind direction.
60m is not near enough line.
At the least you need a cut away at the other end. If things go bad you will be very bussy.
Keep the rings in the toggles where you can reach them.
Armor and a REAL helmit.

haha. 105 basejumps and 287 skydives and he's a fucking expert. or is that 287 jumps total?

Total, and you know it. Note how I also pointed out I'm a shitty pilot. Glad to see you're still reading the forums. I hear Adam R. is looking for a mentor. Should I give him your phone-number?

 

'heckered'

HEY.




Actualy, I am pretty sure that i have more experience with BASE canopy towing than most of the people posting in this thread, i just now noticed that this thread was about it.

SO-

Green man, your release system is totaly solid. for a release system. but Personaly, i would NEVER-EVER NEVER NEVER hook into a tow system without a drop release (will explain in a minute) or a weak link. preferably a drop release if i was BASE canopy towing, well, any non paraglider towing. you were doing something that has killed at least one person i know of.

so, I do this thing a bunch. well, have done it a bunch. its been awhile. I use FIXED lines, because i dont have the money for a payout setup, and payout should be used. I have towed anything from a saber 150 to a tandem 400 to a 1993 paraglider. for fixed length towing, you MUST use a VERY long line. the shortest i would do it with is 200meters. 60heavy rope is, well, one of the sketchier things i have heard today. and thats saying something.

ok, next point. for parachute high speed towing (paraglider towing is SLOW airspeed) even a BASE canopy at .7 loading is fast. communication is vital between tow operator, and pilot. (hand signals WITH visibility at all times during tow works[NOT at night on a pavement 5000' runway with light posts on either side ]) get radios, if not one in the pilots helmet, a SMART person with pilot at launch point has it.

finaly, and most important, the RELEASE. risers are easy to get, work reallty well, but in a lockout, one would take more than appropriet time to get at it, like a smart guy wrote earlier, a downplane with a truck

so, use a 2, 3, or 4 'ring' cord release system. basicaly it is a combination of a 3ring riser idea, and a paraglider tow release.


take 4 lengths of cord, (the best is about 6mm kermantle cord, or 1500lb spectra) the longest one 10', next 6', next 3', next 2'. attatch either end of each line to either side three ring on harness.

now, you might see what im getting at.
pull the apex of the longest loop through the tow LOOP (this MUST be a 5' circumfrence flexible tubeing-covered rope at the pilot end of the tow line.
to make that, thread the tow rope through 5+ feet of 1" flexible tubing, tie a knot to make that a loop of hardend rope.

so, as i said, pull the apex of the longest loop through the newly made tow rope loop, and pull it back toward the pilot, pull the apex of the 2nd longest loop through the loop of the 1st longest, then pull the apex of the 3rd longest loop through that, and so on to the smalles, the last apex should go in you teeth, mollars. i used a bit of duct tapeto make a bite place on this.

now, to tow, at any point you can just relax your jaw, and your free. you dont have to find a handle.

I have used this a lot, and i still think that fixed line lowing parachutes is the most dangerous thing i have gotten good at.

watch out. not playing.

http://uncutvideo.aol.com/...db2ff42105363ec7916a

ok, these two kids are my paraglider freinds, and i traded them my OLD base dagger 222 for an extra paraglider so they could tow it on a lake behind a boat, they took video.

they KINDA did it like i told them, i gave them the drop release that i built, and it worked really well, there is even a lockout midway through the film, where my freind SHOULD have released, but he was low over water so no worries.

their line is really short for my taste, and there are a few close calls. the long lines are good for a lot of things, one being the fact that when you release from a tow, you drop and surge, a lot.


edity to add-
dont worry, i only gave them the harness and canopy, no bridal/pc.

I hadn't yet realized that you could use the 3ring concept like that. Great idea. Thanks.

neither did we for the first few hours. but in the last few years,,, its never failed.

just be sure if you do it that the easy-slide tube covered loop on the pilot end of the tow rope is big.long enough so that the apex of the big loop on the 4-'ring' will not get caught on the knot. if it can, it will. and be sure that the loops on the rig have no twists in them, that includes the tow rope. it will twist the release rig and make it fail, or, not fail. whatever.

and be sure the mouth loop is in your molars, not your front teeth. i want pictures if you mess that up.

we have gotten HUGE tensions on the fixed length lines, due to wind sheer. we switched from three ring to four ring for that reason.
i want to put my load cell on that, to see what force it is.

 
That brings someting to mind. any body still have a copy of the old, think it was Patreak, of them towing an elipticalbehind a speed boat. Was it one of the Traveling videos?

Lee

 

expert?

nah... just the dumb kid who has done it lot and learned from it. there are a lot fo things with parafoils i do that i probably shouldnt. i know you know what i mean.

I dont have a picture of the release, we mostly did this at night on a runway at my airport, mostly.

but, i keep a journal of all my rope huck ideas nd designs and systems completed and shite, so i have this, you can see whats going on. like i said, it works with only 3 loops, but in high speed towing of HUGE canopies it could hurt your teeth, it never ripped out of my mouth or the boys, but it def did pull on our jaws. NO FRONT TEETH>

Some great ideas here! Here's more.

With a big canopy and strong enough wind (~15mph), there is no need for tow, simply anchor the rope and kite yourself up. You payout the rope as you go up to maintain the angle of tension. (your end of the rope is not permanently attached to your quick release, instead it goes through (the excess rope just lies on the ground) and you control it with a tension mechanism.) Go up a few hundred feet, cutaway, turn downwind and have a nice little cross-country flight.

Now imagine you go up a big mountain (not WS BASE-jumpable) and launch yourself this way a thousand feet up with a packed rig and wingsuit, cutaway and fly. The launch canopy will fall to the ground (will need to invent something to keep it deflated while it's tethered). Land, hike up, repeat. Totally autonomous wingsuit mountain flying.

hey man, i have actualy done that. Me and my best jumper freind and the girl he was screwing at the time drove out to our local huge A to check out the rumors of new security, it was windy as hell, and we had our car-tow rig in the car. just anchored the line at 500', and i hooked in with the drop release with my dagger, now THAT was sketchy. ask alex, he thought i was going in on a few of the gusts. it was like the car was varying in speed by 20mph, it was 15mph, then 35, crazy. thats colorado wind for ya.

wasnt up a mountain, that would be a huge bitch to retreive all the tow line, set up, etc. but its a cool idea. even winding 3000' of tow line we were using at the airport took at least an hour. we couldnt afford a winch.

yeah, steady wind is paramount for this. Would a paragliding canopy in weaker winds (<10mph?) be a better setup than a smaller base canopy in strong winds then?

Ha!!
i had my Gin Bonanza as well in the car that day, and ALMOST grabbed it instead of my dagger, if i had, i would have been in the hospital for 3 months 2 days early.

but, i dont know, the only paraglider towing i have done is either the accepted scooter towing, or 1996 gliders, and they tow a lot differently than the new wings.

Not exactly related to the discussion, but cool stuff anyway related to using the wind.

Check this video out. It's non-powered sailing directly downwind faster than the wind. Sounds impossible, yeah? Here is the description of the vehicle, there's a picture of a bigger vehicle on page 10 here, and there's an explanation how it all works here.

Cool shit!

ok, thats totaly bad ass. i just spent an hour going through the files and sites on that idea. brilliant and simple. the best ones always are simple.

if i wasnt banned from every forum but this one, i would say lets move this to the bonfire.

sorry about the wait.

here is the sewn version. its a lot cleaner. it can be done with just knots, but we did/do it enough to make it clean.

hey I just made one of those!

didn't use it though, going to try another day.

what design did you use? 3 or 4? did you do it with nate? they were doing it today as well. the sketchballs.

4. I was putting together most of the mechanical parts of the system we were going to use. Actually it was what I was going to use, since somehow I became the test jumper...

With 4 there's almost no force on your mouth at all. I was using some really old suspension cord and I'm thinking it would be better to use something like dacron, then fingertrap a 6" piece over the loop that goes in your mouth. So you'd basically pull the loop through the 6" piece so the 6" piece can be a protective sheath. It seems like using a rubber tube or tape to protect the line from your teeth causes major hangups when you release. Then again, since the force is so low on the last line (approx 1/16 the total force), you should be able to tell when the line needs to be replaced long before it fails.

Other than that it seems like the safest system you can tow with. With an active and passive cutaway system, it's really easy to bail if shit goes wrong. We ended up planning to use a grigri to pay out line, which was attached to a riser, which was attached to a biner attached to a rope spanning the back of a truck. If you have a cutaway handle with 2 ends (looks like a Y) then either the person on the grigri or a person beside them, designated to cutaway if shit goes down, can chop the rope. Basically you end up with 3 people (jumper, grigri payout, cutaway person next to grigri) that can chop at any time, completely bailing from the tow.

I give myself like a 75% chance of not dying.

beware!

also, if you are in what is called a 'lockout' (some fucking brilliant BASE jumper in a PM compared a lockout to a 'downplane with a truck', and he was totaly correct, I like his thinking.)

A lockout can happen at pretty much any angle, but usualy not faceing away from the tow truck with a BASE canopy, if you are towing to fast, it will happen in line of tow, then its no big deal, but with a payout setup, relly beware, this 'lockout' can happen really close to the ground. and IF you chop the tow line or get chopped, your horiziontal velocity will stop pretty quick, and you will surge, A LOT, into the ground. and break your tibia/fibia. and that sucks.

also, For payout, starting from the tow vehicle is best, OR, the top of something close behind it like a flatbed trailer OR, as we did it, running about 20' behind the car. get the wing flying, and SLOWLY increase speed. get to the point where you are just barely flying, then add about 5mph. there you can let off the brakes (rear risers work better, but dont do that near ground, to slow reactin, then massive movement) and climb, keep the tension of tow line the same for the whole tow.

and man, really, really buy something besides dynamic climbing rope. not only will the rope be destroyed if your towing on anything but grass, but 60meters is not enough. high point of 60 meter climbing rope is about 30 meters. maybe a little more, and even the surge from release then is intense.

lookout kids. i have said before, this is the sketchiest thing i have ever gotten good at.

do it on water of you can. there its pretty comparitively safe.

of course, this coming from me means nothing. but anything i say is sketchy. if you want to be safe, go do PCAs with no PC.

I've spoken with you a little about this in PM's but this info brings up a few issues regarding my situation.

I'm planning on pulling with a boat with me starting on the shore near water with a slight headwind to get the canopy inflated and flying. I've been practicing kiting so I'll have a better feel for when it's time to hit it.

I intend to have 300' of line with multiple wraps around a pulley so more rope can be fed out or released completely, sort of like a windlass.

My intention is to have a pilot cutaway as you've mentioned. The observer on the boat could release the line or cut the line with a hook knife in the event of a hangup.

The canopy is actually a 9-cell paraglider and I intend to release my cutaway once at altitude. Once I get it flying and figure out all the nuances, I've thought about building a cutaway for the canopy, and wearing my BASE gear over the harness. Cutaway, go into freefall, throw my PC, and land on the beach.

Soooo, do I sound like a lunatic about to hurt myself and others or does it sound plausible???

sounds familiar!

connect the '3loop' release to the risers of the paraglider you are cutting away. then, as you gain altitude, switch the loop from your mouth to your hand, other wise you could be missing a few molars after release.

remember that your not as high as you think you are. 300' of line usualy means 150' or less.

 

i was up there scouting some Es near that one huge mountain, and i also looked at some Ice jumps, obviosly land in the drink. the salty drink.

nothing really big enough, it is over water, but there were icechunks/burgs directly below the exits.

So I rigged up one of the cutaways you mentioned and it works quite well. With my full weight hanging on it the pressure needed to hold the last loop is minimal, it can easily be held with two fingers or your teeth without slippage or risk of injury. And when you release it the system cuts away instantaneously. Thanks for the idea.

I'm going to use a double wrap of break cord for an emergency break away to deal with excessive loading so I don't damage the boat or the canopy. I'm also going to use two observers in the boat; one holding the loose end of the rope wrapped around a horizontal barrel and one with a hook knife in the event of a hangup.

I'll let you know how it goes.

if you do have a weak link on the jumper, be sure it is on both ends of the cutaway rig, i fnot, it wont release.

its obvious, but just making sure.

I was actually thinking of doing it between the tow rope and the cutaway. Do you know the effects of water on break cord?

I do not. have not tested that at all.

Second that. Towing is unnecessarily dangerous, through and through. There are ways to pull off towing, but a BASE canopy and a rope are a really bad start.