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Hi!

Just wondering, do you count delays or you mainly go by sight? Do people sometime use audibles on terminal jumps?

thanks!!!

F.

I use two audibles and an altimeter on every jump. You can never be too careful.

Ody

I do the same, but I am also considering adding a over the eye led to one of my audibles. Do you think it's overkill ?

thanks for the answers!

I like the L.E.D idea, I remember not earing my audible on my first aff jump!!!

F.

Audibles on AFF? Lucky you. We just had visuals, I just waited untill I saw my instructors pulling. It was a weird process. My instructors kept pointing at me, so I would point back. Then they would take turns trying to grab my ass, but I wouldn't let them. No sir, I'm not like that. Then they would just shake their heads at me and fly off. Once they were open I would make sure I was low enough so that when I would open, I would get pulled up into them when my parachute sprung out.

Funny. kind of pointless but funny. ;)

and by the way, Happy new year !!!!

F.

With you, Ody, no. you never can be too careful...

I count but it's hard. You know... counting down: 3-2-1 than having to count back up?! That part gets me every time.

jon

I draw an outline of my ding dong on an inflated balloon on the ground. I take it with me up the mountain. I jump, and watch the drawing while holding the balloon in my left hand (so I can still pitch with my right.) when my sharpie drawn chubby gets close to 4cm, I know it is time to pitch.

:-)

Laughing my ass off at gauleyguide. That was good for a chuckle.. Hope they now your kidding

Since no one bothered to answer the guy's question, I'll chime in: Time is too distorted in freefall especially in BASE to count with any reasonably accuracy. I use land marks on the object or the sound of the wind to judge freefall.

Great reply! Thank you 460! This is the beginner forum right?, how's a guy suppose to get answers around here.

I'm sure someone does...

audibles rely on barometric pressure, which can change throughout the day. in skydiving, a quick ride to altitude is required by at least one model to "arm." I doubt it will be ready to sound off after several hours of hiking.

audibles are also great when distracted by cranking out points, geeking cameras, etc. BASE jumpers seem to be a bit better focused on altitude. (something about the ground screaming by...)

I'm not sure what problem an audible will cure in the BASE environment.

I dont think audibles would work, dont they constantly readjust themselves to the ground elevation if they not gaining or loosing altitude. If you go for a hike with a neptune it will still read 0.0 at the top...

No offense implied but, I counted in the beginning for that very reason. Time distorts. Maintaining a constant cadence is pretty easy, if anything you're going to count too fast and I don't know of too many jumps where pulling sooner than later is a bad thing. As experience builds the visual cues will become your primary delay-o-meter. I strongly agree with using the sound of the wind for delays as well. I'd stay away from electronics early on. You need to build a natural sense of time without becoming dependent on things that can be mis-calibrated, run out of batteries, or just plain fail.

they do get touchy... and it's kinda unsettling when you forget that your neptune is in your skydiving helmet for your first jump off the ITW, and it starts screaming in your ear in the middle of your track... :\

I count on short delays (less than 3 seconds). I don't have any trouble counting that short of time. I count by thousands. one one thousand two one thousand etc.
As said before if anything, you will likely count quicker rather than slower than the actual time.

On long delays, (slider up more than 4 sec) I try to count but usually forget or stop, more focused on tracking or body position.. I pull when I get scared or by landmark

Most importantly... you WILL pull. longer delays ground rush gets scarier and you'll know its time. On short delays its a good idea to count because you might want to throw soon as you exit due to fear. The problem with that is you might need to take a delay.. build speed to counter winds, help with seperation.

Every person, every object, and every situation is different. Just find what your comfortable with.

That is what your mentor is for..right?

I agree that you WILL pull, but it can be too late. There's definitely a couple of busted up jumpers out there who made this mistake. With terminal, start high, and work down slowly.

Counting can get distorted but I still do it anyway.

Someone else already mentioned some sort of cadence, that works a little better.

When i was first learning I was told to yell a big word or a couple short ones after i exit. The goal was that i exit, yell the words, then pitch, and end up with a 1.5 sec delay. Hiphopapotamus worked nicely in the beginning.

I also like the "Jersey" method on handheld low freefalls. After exiting just pump your PC hand while counting. (Seems to come along with your opposite foot doing a counter movement)

Pulling too soon in a bad thing for most jumps - except from un-hittable objects.

Pulling early means you can't maximize your distance from the object. Not many people die from pulling too low, lots die from hitting the object they jumped from.

Using the ground has always worked for me......it can get tricky however when tracking over very steep terrian......judging height above the earth in FF becomes a bit more challanging as one tends to not exp. as much ground rush.

I'm specifically speaking on non-wingsuit jumps. Have no wingsuit BASE exp. so I cant comment.

An Aussie told me once in Norway, they go by this rule: when you get scared wait 1 full second then pull.

thank you guys for the honest answers, thats exacly the kind of comments I was looking for.

I started to get curious about this when I read that kjerag base club ask for 250 skydives and NO base jump experience for attending their fjc. I wonder what those guys teach to their students and hope its more accurate than "pull when you shit your pants."

anyone knows?

F.

"how to exit properly" comes to mind as a very important part of SBK (or any other for that matter) FJC.

From 3 years ago (IIRC) they taught count to 15 if you're tracking, or 8 if you totally fuck it up and aren't tracking at all. Not that there's any way in hell you'll accurately count to 15 on your first terminal BASE, it's more just to get you thinking about pulling before you're in the basement. By your second jump at Kjerag you'll be purely ground referencing rather than thinking about any concept of time in freefall.

i just exited a paraglider from 1k feet the other day slider up. time is so distorted, that it felt like i pitched my 38 after about 2, maybe 3 seconds MAX. under canopy i thought to myself, "that was too short a delay, i should have waited a bit.........."when i landed on the ground and watched video, turns out i took almost 6 full seconds, and opened quite low.

that was the highest ive ever jumped from, with my BASE rig, and the ground rush was completely different from anything ive experienced so far.............definitely need to be careful in a situation like that. was an AWESOME jump though, but time was completely distorted........

normally on slider down jumps, i pitch too soon in my limited experience, but for this one it was the complete opposite......