Basejumper.com - archive

It appears to me that BASE equipment has become quite reliable. Actual gear failure seems to have become a rare occurrence. (Thanks to the designers!)

BASE seems to have evolved to a similar point as General Aviation. Most accidents result from the individual's decision making. They might be comfortable with a limited set of facts, they might be in a rush and fail to think things through, they might be a bit aggressive in pushing the envelope, etc.

In the US, accidents are investigated by the NTSB (National Transport Safety Board). The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) takes their facts and conclusions, creates best practices, and disseminates the information as widely as possible. Sometimes this involves added regulation, but more often it takes the form of an AC (Advisory Circular).

Once you feel you have adequate gear, and adequate knowledge, do you have adequate control over your mind/emotions? The FAA offers more formalized thoughts on the subject they call Aeronautical Decision Making.

Maybe it's time we as a community see what can be adapted for our benefit.

Thoughts?

see:
FAA AC 60-22

ps
This is NOT a suggestion for regulation, but if someone is offering sound advice, let's listen!

Why is this in the incidents forum?

I was wondering this also...

I put it here because it might be a good step toward preventing incidents.

Everyone wants to learn from accidents and incidents. Recently, it is not obvious where to place the blame or know what really contributed to a failed jump. The gear has gotten too good. So where should we look to learn from jumps gone bad?

How do we prevent another wingsuit death? If in looking at these we consider Aeronautical Decision Making, maybe we will gain a better insight. Maybe we will find something for jumpers to consider that will keep them healthy.

'course this is Tom's forum. He can move it out if he wishes.

I think this suits to be in the incident forum. Prevention is a part of the discussion.

We just finished a PHD on sport parachuting dangers. One article in the PHD is about fatalitys in BASE. We tried to create statistics and to figure out the incident mecanisms.

The mecanisms are devided in to factors, like human factors, equipment factors, enviromental factors etc.

Prevention is an interesting discussion in BASE because its an uncontroled "sport" and it needs to stay uncontrol and unregulated.

Can you please bring posts of similar nature and this one to the technical forum. I saw it in "Incidents"and thought another friend had just died.
Thanks in advance.
Take care,
space

I have seen a very close simularity amoung the different methods used to "manage" the risk we accept. From the MDMP (military decision making proces), to Compostie risk management, to the Aeronautical Decision Making process. I personally use a mixture of these and so far I have only to bruise my tailbone/ tweak an ankle. Maybe I have just been using a bit of the luck bucket for everyjump and its on fumes....

That was kind of my thinking as well. Incidents in my mind is when there is an incident not when you are speaking of the technical aspects of incident management.

So when we discuss the reason for a special incident/accident, does it belong in the tecnical forum, even if the discussion is about human factors and the actual happening of an incident.

Some information about an accident is sensetive and belongs in the incident area where only jumpers discussing incidents should be.

In my opinion, tecnical discussions is about gear and new equipment, or material etc.

"So when we discuss the reason for a special incident/accident, does it belong in the tecnical forum, even if the discussion is about human factors and the actual happening of an incident"

I would think anything related to an actual incident would be here, in the incidents forum. However speaking of aeronautical decision making sounds more like a technical discussion about a way to conduct investigations. In my opinion it doesn't belong in this forum.

Adam

I agree. Especially with the 'Oh fuck, what happened now' factor every time one sees a new thread in the incidents forum.

Wonderful.

Someone wants to open an honest dialog about possibly the single most important safety tool in BASE, the methods behind how to use you brain ahead of time, and all you mooks want to do is bitch about where the thread belongs.

Proof that there is little hope for many in this sport.

thank you!

the last 2 fatalities appear to be the result of the jumper's decisions. (The List contains others as well.)

reports indicate
- 2 talented jumpers
- 2 plans that appear to be thought out
- 2 jumps without BASE gear malfunctions
- 2 fatalities

so what do they have in common?
what can we learn from them?

(yes, I could have placed this under either fatality thread. it's kind of difficult to look at possible connections in either thread.)

you would be hard pressed I believe to find one that is not.



and yes, diablopilot, This thread has a lot of potential.
I think that a very in depth CRM/decision making process lesson would be great in FJCs. I recently wrote a paper on CRM and decision making for aircraft. I assume like Wwarped is saying, it can transfer over fairly well.

I'll bite, and throw this thought out there. (Disclaimer: this is just one amongst a million ways to look at CRM. It's not necessarily technically correct or even well-thought out. It's a point for discussion, so whether you are in aviation or not, rip away. I'm not even a good base jumper, either)

two large realms of CRM in action relate to...

A- pre-incident: preflight planning and the mission "setting"... ie who is on the crew, weather, mission complexity, etc, and,
B- during an incident: how a crew responds to an emergent situation, uses resources available to them, and brings the scenario to a logical conclusion.

When I have an inflight emergency, I probably don't have to do jack shit for a few minutes and nothing bad happens. Not that we would, but we could talk about the game last night, or send the nav for a cup of coffee, wait for the engineer to "get out the book..." and take our sweet-ass time thinking it through. Even amongst the BOLDFACE procedures, you rarely have to do anything fast. And when you do need to do something fast, you practice it often and rely on training until it becomes second nature.

Now compare this to BASE jumping, where I'd say "realm B" is quite different. In BASE there are a lot more varied things that go wrong quickly, and require immediate, precise action. In fact you could probably say that almost anything that goes wrong requires immediate, precise action. One possible CRM interpretation of this is that you need to practice practice practice your responses... and you have a lot of various responses you need to be good at. Bottom line: in BASE, do not rely on your ability to think through an emergency in situ, no matter how simple it may seem.

This puts a huge onus on your training and proficiency, and I think the community already is strong in emphasizing the need to practice backing up the canopy, kicking out of line twists, being good with body position, stable launches, etc. so that you dont hit the cliff when you have a 180'.

But when you start combining wingsuits with proximity and aerials and skis... it's a huge unknown area and the communal experience is low. The tough part is to anticipate something like, "hey I may have trouble releasing my skis" and understand the failure modes, and practice releasing malfunctioning bindings. Maybe people have been practicing this, I don't know since i dont wingsuit or ski base.

And if I wanted to apply a CRM perspective to proximity incidents, I'd initially suggest first considering "realm A." I don't know, can a wingsuit flyer chime in here, on whether or not it's typical to see someone calculating elevations and distances on planned proximity flights? What kind of planning goes into this kind of flight? How much is reasonable or excessive? How useful are pre-planned vertical landmarks in judging if you're well set-up for a close maneuver further down the wall?

I'm also sympathetic to the sentiment that at some point, too much planning and nit-picking sucks the life and fun out of an activity. But if it's my own life on the line... there's more I could say but this is long enough for now.

Wow. Is your yeast infection acting up? Do you need some cream or some powder or something? I think you need to schedule a follow up with your gynecologist.

Acute vaginitis, actually. It usually doesn't drip this much

colpodynia