Basejumper.com - archive

Snowkiters are now doing BASE type of jumps with power kites. Check out this video with music by Flying Dutchman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISAR1CXp0Oc

Er.. Not even close. In BASE, there's no middle ground - you either do it or not. You can't gradually become a jumper. With kites, you can start hovering at 1ft above the snow, then 2ft, ... 30ft. Yes, there's danger and lots of skill involved, but the equivalent of a BASE jump for you would be to stand on top of a 3000ft vertical wall, launch the kite and land softly below. Can you do it?

thats very very cool.
I would say thats much closer to speed flying or acro paragliding than anything that as to do with BASE jumping.

that does not make it any less amazing.
I have never seen that done on skis, yet another sport. too bad kites are about as expensive as a parachute and you need several sizes to be able to consistently kite.

here we get a little closer to base

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=sgXx41eZg10

Yes, you could.
Ski gliding is very similar to BASE jumping and paragliding.
Snowkiting is similar to both.

The difference between a kite, and a parachute, is that the kite faces the rider, and the wind to inflate. In BASE jumping and paragliding, the wing is behind the rider, and inflated by forced wind while free falling.

In certain winds, BASE jumping is rather difficult.
With a kite, if there is enough wind to keep it inflated, you could step off any object, at any height.

you say:

then you say:

I think that in a way is contradicting.

Most BASE jumpers will agree that what you do is not BASE jumping.

It does not make it anyless or anybetter that what either of us do individually.

Personally, I just love being in the air, whether in freefall, a plane, or a parachute.

well, kinda.

your making a lot of long tosses there.

There are LOTS of sports that 'fly off of cliffs or hills'.

paragliding, BASE jumping, Wingsuiting, hang gliding, snowkiting, speed gliding, ground launching, slingshot-sailplanes, etc.

BASE is the art, or sport, of jumping off of something with nothing more than a magic backpack.

Kiting, or paragliding etc is the art of ALREADY having a good flying wing.

very small amount of similarities with BASE jumping.

that does not make it any less cool, or difficult.

Ski Gliding can be many things.

while skiing, using a parachute to ground launch, using a speed glider to speed fly, using a hang glider to ski fly, using a paraglider to ski fly.

all of these are VERY different sports.

If you step off a 3000ft cliff, what makes you think you'll be able to do a soft landing in the small landing area between the boulders? Did you try to do it first, say, from a hot air balloon or helicopter to practice?

If you do, I want to be your cameraman.

Somebody just posted a video of someone doing it from a balloon... scroll up...

Pretty slick, if you ask me

 
OK,

Check out this video.
Adam Koch uses a kite to jump off an Aircraft carrier and a few cliffs.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THUeB0cFo5w

What is the minimum height that you can BASE jump?

300'?

And you get 1 second of freefall maybe?

With a kite and wind you can jump off things lower than 300', and you could even jump off a bridge, and ride away.

are you still trying to say that Kite surfing is like BASE jumping?

I spent a month on Maui in febuary 2002 learning how to kitesurf, a little over 2 years later I sold my kites (for cheap, as the next gen kites were already taking over) and started skydiving / BASE jumping.
no one is saying kitesurfing is weak. IMHO, its an extremely dangerous sport, probably 50-100 times the skill requirements of BASE jumping.

That kite cliff Huck was on Kauai? near shipwreck beach?

I have free-fallen 180'
Many have gone much lower.

of course, ITS NOT BASE JUMPING!!!! your canopy is open, and flying before, during and after you jump off the cliff.

as an outsider please understand our reluctancy.

please show us video where you "jump" (albeit with a pre inflated canopy) from anything like an antenna, building, a verticle cliff...

Where's the freefall??

...and land on hard ground, not in the water from ridiculous heights one can dive without anything like the pro Adam Koch did, and not cutting away to land a normal parachute like the guy in the balloon video did.

Add to that, make sure the ground is not sloped!

true, but it is a kite. it is NOT designed for opening shock. a good chunk of jumpers attempt to minimize canopy time. (it has even lead the expression "dirty high puller.")

the sports differ greatly in important details. (that is why I moved it to this forum...)

the beautiful thing is that YOU get to choose what to pursue to make YOU happy. go for it.

I think the only people who ought to make statements like that are people who are very familiar with each of the activities they attempt to compare.

I've got no idea if ski gliding is similar to BASE, because I've never tried ski gliding.

I'm assuming, given your statement, that you are an expert at all three? And not just generalizing about them based on videos you've seen, or people you've talked with, or things you've read?

"the sports differ greatly in important details. (that is why I moved it to this forum...) "

They also have many similarities, and the sports are moving in the same direction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f2LFUVgEjA

That video is a good look at what is happeneing in ski gliding.

All four sports (BASE jumping, paragliding, ski gliding, and power kiting),
are using an airfoil wing. The canopies differ in size, shape, ratio, bridle, and controls.

BASE jumping is now moving closer to ski gliding. Jumpers now have wing suits, and fly as close to the cliffs as possible.

"I'm assuming, given your statement, that you are an expert at all three? And not just generalizing about them based on videos you've seen, or people you've talked with, or things you've read? "

I am one of the pioneers in kitesurfing and snowkiting. Paraglider, surfer, skier. I have family that BASE jumps.

See in the beginning, we used kites for traction(being pulled accross a surfrace). And because they were airfoils, we could also jump with them.

One of mans greatest joys, is the joy of flying.

So jumping was not enough, we wanted more airtime.
We started jumping off cliffs(mostly in the snow), and getting hangtime in minutes.

Because a kite is smaller than a parachute or a paraglider, it can turn much faster. My foils range from 4.9m2 to 12m2. This leaves a lot of room for looping the kite, spinning around, hanging upside down, etc. And the harness is much smaller.
You also have the freedom to change the direction you are flying in.

Kiting is moving closer to ski gliding.
Now we want to design kites to maximize airtime.

Kites are also being used to step off objects and freefall.

Is the goal in BASE just to free fall?
If so I would think that skydiving would give you the most time in the air, the most time to fly.

In MOST cases, YES!!! Without the freefall, whats the point.

Beat of luck with snow-kiting though. If the Base community is real lucky, people will start paying more attention to snow-kiting. Then we can jump in peace.

I think it would be a mistake to assume that the entire sport of BASE is moving in that direction, or in any specific direction. Some jumpers are definitely moving that way, and you can definitely see some awesome video of it. But that doesn't mean the entire sport is moving in that direction. I'd definitely be careful trying to generalize about the entire sport based on either a few jumpers or internet content (videos or discussions). Much of BASE jumping, especially in North America, is still done underground.




If you wanted more air time, why didn't you take your kites out of airplanes?

That's an intentionally obtuse question, and I'm asking it to illustrate how an outsider looking in might misconceive your sport. Is it possible that you've misconceived BASE in a similar manner?



I think it might take a lot of explaining. Regardless of the freefall time, the feeling of a BASE jump is much different from that of a skydive. Doing a hop and pop from a Cessna at the DZ might give you approximately the same altitude as a big wall BASE jump, but the feelings are completely different, and in the end it's the feelings that define the activity.

It seems you don't have that big of an understanding of what BASE jumping is.

its definitely not only for the free fall. its for the relative motion (cant get that skydiving) its for clean air jumping, purity, etc.
probably a lot of the same thing draws us to our very different sports.


If anything, I would say that Ski Gliding, Speed Flying, Snow Kiting and Paragliding are the sports moving closer together.

I really don't think BASE has that much in common with any of those.

I, Like you, have experience in all these sports, speed flying, paragliding, BASE, kite surfing. and I find very limited similarities, even from the videos I see, between BASE jumping and any of these. the closest I saw was that Balloon jump with the kite. and he didn't even land it!



maybe you just wan't everyone here to compliment you on how bad ass your HUGE freaking boosts are in the mountains?


well, those are freaking SICK!!! I would much rather see fluid steep terrain riding that water boosts any day.

A few more things, your kites are small. ish. they turn really fast, but you don't. you can do 'loops' with your kite all day long, and stay in the same place.
Your kites are on 15-35m lines. meaning that your 'recovery arc' (do you even know what that is?) is HUGE.

OK, here, we will give you this. NOW THE FIVE SPORTS WE ARE TALKING ABOUT HAVE ALL PROGRESSED ENOUGH TO BE ABLE TO DO THEM IN THE SAME LOCATIONS, CLIFFS, ETC!
I think thats about it.

your not 'jumping' a kite. 99% of the time, the kite is doing ALL the work, not a wave crest in water, or a kicker in the snow.
like all of us have said, BASE is probably the farthest away from the 5 sports we are talking about.

Most of these activities are new.

Kiting, or ski gliding off cliffs gives you the same rush of coming to the edge, and stepping off.
Obviously in BASE there is more free fall. In kiting the kite is already inflated.

I think in the beginning in BASE jumping people wer trying to jump away from the cliffs. Now there is a small bunch of BASE jumpers trying to fly as close to the ground as possible.

I first saw this in Warren Miller's Jouney. A skydiver in a wingsuit flew down a mountain, 20' above the ground.

Now what if after you pull your chute as a BASE jumper, you have a skigliding chute that allows you to stay closer to the ground?

It spins up, you spiral to the ground and die?

If you want to see some really good proximity flying (that's our name for what you're describing), check out Superterminal, or Fly The Line or Soul Flyers 2, or get on skydivingmovies.com and do a search for "Phoenix Fly" "Soul Flyers" or "VKB". Most of the video you can find (including those) is at least a couple seasons old, and the most recent flights are pretty much mind blowing.

I was actually thinking "the off heading rate goes way up and you lose half your proximity flight getting enough clean air to open that high performance canopy"?

well of course there's that, but your malfunction rate also goes through the roof, so to avoid the spin-up-and-die scenario, you have to wear a reserve and then open high enough to be able to use it. Then you start jumping from airplanes so you have enough altitude to still be able to play, but now the FAA is involved and you need to be a master rigger to make any mods to your superglide(tm) wing, while fiddling around with pencil-packing your reserve every 120 days (oops did i say that out loud?), and then everytime someone plows into the slopes the USPA investigates and creates more BSR's and demands that you pay fees to pay for their new headquarters in washington, which in hindsight accidentally taints cheney's gay daughter's view from her whitehouse bedroom, and she gets daddy cheney's friends in congress to pass a bill outlawing skydiving. Back to base jumping...

Agreed.
Paragliding-approx 20 years
BASE- Approx 40 years
Speed flying- ~8 years
Kitesurf- ~8 years
Snow Kite ~15 years

Wrong.
there is a HUGE HUGE HUGE HUGE difference in the "rush" or feeling. i would say speed flying, and paragliding, and snow kiting off cliffs are similar, but BASE is WAY WAY different than these. in activity and feelings it gives you

yeah, but thats not the idea. there is a chance it might happen that way, someday.

BASE canopies are very very very very different in flying characteristics than speed flying wings, and for the most part, are progressing AWAY from speed flying.

I think the closest you will come to what your thinking about is the very limited 'swooping' that Jimmyp pioneered and was featured in Continuum II. I bought my first BASE gear from them, a smaller than normal BASE canopy for more control while swooping. (as well as better wind penetration)

but I only used the 'swoop' technique for a few jumps. I found that the canopy ride is just a way to get safely to the ground. here and there you can carve around trees to make it to the LZ, but this is just icing on the cake. hardly a spin off of Ski Gliding.

If you're hanging onto a kite, you're not in freefall.

Realize you can't learn everything from YouTube.

who really gives a rats arse who calls what what? seriously you people need to get a life

First of all jumping off a cliff, or bridge, is nothing new.
Going over Niagra Falls in a barrell was good too until it was outlawed.

"Jumping", as we should call it. Involves coming to an altitude, falling off, and landing.
What you do in the air, who cares?
How fast you go, so what?
Do you use something to break your fall? OK.
Skiers and boarders jump off cliffs without a BASE rig all day long.

You cannot say that the feeling is not the same.
Some flying involves more risk, more calculation, and more consequences, and more skill!


From someone who used to jump.
It's not the flying that scares me now,
It is the landing.
Landing at higher speeds will yield a higher injury rate.
That is why I prefer to jump with kites ... more control.

P.S. I do have a life! The wind was great today, and the waves not bad either!

Best Winds!

For something really funny check this out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y91RRfDlG4


"What the hell is an aluminum falcon??"

Wow... are you serious?

(outloud)
Maybe he thinks he is serious?
(\outloud)

my statement was not directed at you, just the general tone of this thread.

I don't want to come off as an elitist or conceded para-sports god, (because they all have them, your pushing it for snow kiting) but the reason people BASE jump and wing-suit is way different than anything any other sport can do. WAY different.

in BASE, the gear is there for ONE reason, and ONE REASON ONLY, to slow the fall and land. its not used to carve, its not used to launch (the idea of BASE is the exit, the zero-acceleration, the body flight, the wing-suit)

You may get freedom in all these sports, great freedom on the ocean, in the sky, on skis, but nothing, -NOTHING- you will ever do will come as close to pure human flight as the feeling of leaving a 1000meter cliff with nothing but a magic backpack. the kite is always pulling on you, the glider is always there.

I hate to be that guy, but BASE is the ultimate escape. even wing-suiting takes away from the purity. that 15 seconds where your flying your body just a few meters from the most beautiful places in the world, is a more intense, more free feeling than anything kite-surfing, paragliding, or ski flying will ever give me.


you seem to be the only one so obsessed with saying 'snow kiting is the same as BASE jumping'.

Its starting to seem like that stereotype that BASE is the most intense coolest insane sport in the world got to your head, and you want to be able to say that snow kiting the way you do it (and its very bad ass the way you do it) is as bad ass and as intense as BASE. It is. but its way way different.

"you seem to be the only one so obsessed with saying 'snow kiting is the same as BASE jumping'. "
I don't feel this is true. I just find some similarities. Then again I am glad it is not.
What I am saying is, snowkiting has become more 'like' BASE jumping in recent years. It is not the same sport.

Fair enough.

it has become much more like downhill skiing than it has become like BASE jumping.

Why don't you and Snowkite get a room

been there, done that. its all the same.

Are you guys confused?

Skiing, is the art of gliding down snow. In order to ski, you must have a slope. In the past, you either hiked up, rode a lift up, or got the plush helicopter ride to the top.
Some skiers(maybe .05% of them) liked to jump. And they threw themselves off of all kinds of objects, cliffs, halfpipes; in order to get airborn and fly.
Olympic ski jumpers had the cleanest and longest flights of any skier(and BASE jumper) ... that is offcourse until snowkiting came along.
Now with a kite, and a little wind. You can ski uphill, jump uphill, and when you get to the top; jump off a cliff and fly to the bottom.
A skier reaches maximum speed the same as a BASE jumper.
Before snowkiting, the biggest jumps that people lived from were around 200'. Now with snowkiting, we are talking about jumps in thousands of feet(sounds a little bit like BASE jumping now doesn't it?).

dOOd
u could ski on flat snow if u had a rokit or a sail of some kind

maybe u could ski on water, behind a rowboat or a lake on a hill
http://www.youtube.com/...&feature=related

water skiing behind rowboat = base jumping

i couldn't find any video of building, antenna, or bridge kite jumps (i did see the teeny-weeny little cliff jump) & the aicraft carrier (O) -please post links
i did see the balloon jump with the kite, where he cuts the kite away (or let's go of it) & deploiz a BASE (style) 7-cell canopy
maybe someone (not me, i don't have the mad skillz) could kite off a cliff, let go, & deploy a canopy - i'd call that base

BASE jumpers can write.

Here is Fabio Ingrosso doing one jump, sort of hovering like a paraglider from a small cliff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mmVSI3ZVSQ

Erik Eck's freak kiteboarding thermal lift.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RuE5t1-H9k&feature=related

Chasta 3 kiteloops on snow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJMgPku-efY

The bigger jumps however never look as good as the small jumps.
There is video of much bigger jumps out there.

BASE jumpres are write


clickies . . .
http://www.youtube.com/...&feature=related
that's some funny shit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mmVSI3ZVSQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJMgPku-efY
very impressiv soaring/aerobatics!

1 thing i bet we'll all agree on is; u can die doing either

bsbd

I with there was a snowkiter.com, id go there and post a shit load of base jumping video links Interesting sport though. Exactly like BASE besides the part where its completely and totally different.

there is.
http://www.kiteforum.com/viewforum.php?f=6


but BASE jumpers have a code of ethics when we jump, trying not to annoy any other jumpers. we bring this code of ethics and manners to the internet. oh. wait.

Hey cool,

I did not even know that forum was there.

You will see I posted my *I want to fly* music slideshow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsENcCPHkJw

I bet there will be some BASE jumping post coming soon! Ha Ha!

I saw some peter lynn kites in there. good stuff.