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So, i havent posted lately... i was humbled 2 weeks ago, i had gone to a local A, much smaller than any of my objects at 220 ft. All went well, after exit, canopy opened quickly and full, i unstowed my deep brakes... my first mistake. Ive always had enough altitude to fully pop my brakes and surge firward, well as habit served me, this is what i did, i held my right toggle to perform a 180... not a terrible idea, but should have flat turned, but fully unstowing my brakes sent me into more of a dive, making my 180, damn near a 270. Resulting in a bouncing lading, going unconcious, wakingup with my front teeth half missing and two shattered ankles, so i wont be jumping from 6 months to a year, and i dont see any sub 300 objects in my future, i got lucky to get off as easy as i did, and having a family to provide for, ill stick to a little loftier objects, humbly posting this, i will post the video soon, i would love input as to what went wrong, altyhough the answer is lack of low altitude manuvering... i respect the sport more, although i thought i had a great respect before. Sitting on the same spot on the couch as i sleep, 24/7 for 8 days now... sucks, be safe out there.

Thanks for sharing your experience!

I am glad you are okay, hope you
make a full recovery, and wish the
long hard road of PT goes smoothly.

Yep, canopy skills are crucial in BASE
and the lower the object and/or tighter
the LZ, the more important they are.

So I guess you have plenty of free
time now to edit some of my vids

Your profile says 10 BASE jumps.
How many do have total now?

220 feet is really fucking low.
What deployment method?

I have freefall 210' before...
the canopy ride is very brief!

Been there bro, broke myself on my 23rd jump
Lets just put it down to pilot error.

It's no reason to scare yourself off low objects forever, its just great wake up call to get the skills you need before jumping certain objects. I have walked down from many... well a couple of jumps now because of my new and improved respect for living.

Glad you're ok.

Thanks for sharing, your story may help somebody thinking about getting into the sport. Incidents like this many times to make the forums. Did you freefall it?

Thanks for sharing... I dont think it matter what sport your in. I will never forget becoming a motocross rider and after mastering a small set of skillz and thinking "I got this"===WAAAAM next corner lots of pain...bike on top of me. dislocated knee, etc.

You will be taught respect. I respect all the adventures now. From BASE to climbing to wakeboarding.

I was PCA'd, i have more BASE canopy jumps than 10, but only 12 actual BASE object jumps now, i am a balloon pilot, as well my fsather, so i sub 1500 balloon jump regularly, probably around 40 this year. Doesnt change the fact that i have never tried a 180 that low, all my low level steering (by low i mean sub 75 ft) is usually pretty minor, i can hit landing zones as faer as accuracy, but when climing this A. And looking down, the thought of the needed canaopy manuevering didnt cross my mind, i should have downwinded, and just ran it out, wasnt real windy, but enough light breeze where i had planned in my head, this 180 before my exit. I appreciate the wishes, as soon as i get in my wheelchair and wheel to my computer, ill get the video up, i was very hesitaant to post it, but i do feel alot can be learned from it, not so much with alot of you, but if it opens a few new guys eyes, ts worth a lil humiliation.

Many thanks for sharing your experience, your video will be usefull for the BASE community!!!

All The best ;)
Mario

http://www.youtube.com/user/myfmlywgndrgs?feature=mhee#p/a/u/0/gWv1NeCRMtw

anyone can fuckup
it takes a big man to admit to it publicly
it takes an even bigger man to post a video of themselves with a synopsis of the fuckup.

good job (on posting, not on fucking up). Let's hope this opens some mooks' eyes to the fact that training MATTERS !

Holy WOW!! So that landing area looks F'in huge, why in such a rush to turn it? Were you trying to make the road? Are there obsticles we cannot see on the vid?

Not rippin on ya, but I would think the masses would agree that 12 total BASE jumps is a bit shy for attempting a 220ft. PCA. To answer your Q about what went wrong, low level of experience jumping low objects with short canopy rides. Decision time is reduced drastically with low objects even with large unobstructed landing areas.

Hope you heal well.....that looked painful.

Even with a flat turn, what was the motivation for doing such a low turn? Things get very tricky at such altitudes. How strong were the winds? I assume you were jumping downwind?

Dood......glad ur still here.....

The winds were 5ish. First jumper, the one in the road did a flat turn into the wind nicely, second jumper, the go pro holder did a downwind and ran it out. As i should have, yes, i was trying to 180 into the wind, and hit the road... no obstrcutions worth mentioning. Just desert.

Holy shit man, glad you survived that. Thanks for posting your fuckup too, that takes balls and I appreciate you sharing your lesson with the rest of us.

What's the site elevation? Things happen fast down low and even faster in thinner air. I can see why you planned a 180 before exit and a 220' PCA is a bit low to start with but a flat 180 from that height is very doable.

I once heard a wise man say, "never in full flight." Here's why.

Kudos for posting! Another way of making 180 when altitude is at premium is to start with making a smooth, nonaggressive 90 from full flight by using one toggle to preserve overall speed, followed by carving flare with another 90 degree turn, finishing by leveling the wing when you've completed the turn. I think it takes less altitude than a flat 180 turn because you use full initial speed to flare and complete the turn at the same time.

http://www.youtube.com/...#p/a/u/2/RAk1J4EjxjM

holy shit..how long did it take for your slider to come down?

definitely took a minute, i attribute it to the deployment bag super slow opening, just not thrusting the slider down all the way, i dont wingload to heavily, im a big lanky skinny fucker. so i fall slow and ive had slider issues like that with most of the base canopies ive jumped, it eventually comes down. =D

What did your mentor discuss with you before your jump? Did he discuss the best options for you and how to go about achieving said options?

So, what was the reason to do a 180? Landing area too hairy? I mean, you don't always have to land into the wind. I nearly died because I tried to do the same for no good reason. I mean, if it a field of cacti or landmines or powerlines, then do radical maneuvers. If I had the option on that object, it would be at most a 90 degree turn due to the major hazards or low turns on BASE. The canopy is not in proper flight for the first couple seconds after opening unless you do a low pull slider up. I mean think about it, what if the winds were like say 15mph. The canopy behavior would have been so different. I would think you would want to jump 90 degrees off the windline since there is no major object hazard.

I too am curious about the MSL of the jump. I have seen people turn 180 around from a lot lower, including one jumper who turned a 180 from 225' ff and stood it up.

Also, did you pop both toggles before initiating the turn? On lowish jumps and with object avoidance I normally only pop one toggle to begin the turn and clear the other once I am well into the turn, only letting it up if altitude permits. Someone please correct me if this is a bad habit, as I still consider myself to be somewhat new.

Kudos for posting your mistake and I hope you and many others learn from it.

Glad you're ok. Why didn't you land down there where the camera guy was? Im not asking about hind sight, Im asking because the video didn't show any obsticals down that way.

I didn't land by him because he was downwind, and the MSL was close to 3000ft, hindsight , I should've downwinded. But I had the jump executed in my head already, and it was a 180... My mentor wasn't on this jump, my mentor situation is funky. But, the thought process was I was with 3 people, 1 who had freefallin thus A before, the other from Europe who jumps sub 200 bridges regularly, and a good friend, also their lowest object, they downwinded it right before me, Europe jumper static lined it, freefall jumper PCAd my good friend and I, after my wreck, he climbed down to help me out. So i knew I had the experience with me to get off safely, and had I down winded it, I'm confident we wouldn't be discussing this jump. But all is hindsight. Glad i could share this, without getting flamed for it. Trust me I crushed my own ego/pride, although if you know me, you know there's not a lot of ego to start with, more so pride.

Look how nicely you have integrated the picture I took of you at the end of the video. Well seeing that video again gets me some flashbacks. Still glad you're ok, given the circumstances. CU again in 2.5 months!
Get well soon!!!
Cheers

You probably saved at least one life posting this...
So, which better rewarding!?!?

Well damn. Glad you are 'ok'. Maybe one day you will laugh about this. I know its nothing to laugh at now. Thanks for sharing this. I hurt my foot on a down wind landing, didn't break anything, if I had tried to turn it around I may have taught you the lesson instead of the other way around. Be safe. Hope you heal fast.

I can't wait friend! I owe you a few drinks. Thanks again.

Bones heal... Glory is forever!

Man that is Rough . good to see you are all right .
This kind of low altitude turn I think hurts badly more people under a Good flying Wing than 180 deg. off Headings . & Man that is a Hard Lesson you just Learned .

( Arm-chair Quarterbacking ). as people point out . A down-wind strait approach is the 'safe bet' .
But even though the Tail-Wind on initial starting of a Deep-Brake, flat-turn 180 turn. Robs the performance @ 1st . There is Nothing wrong with doing a Deep-Brakes, 180 turn to get on your final Approach & Flair . But That takes A Ton of solid Technique & practice from the low Alt. that you guys were exiting from .

On Vid. , It's pretty clear on the aggressive canopy dive angle with toggle being pulled on the carve that that was diving hard for a non-recovery .
GOT TO SAY THIS AGAIN . Glad you are OK & Posting this to get verbal on the subject . & Posting this for a learning experience on getting Low Alt. jumps to fast for beginners .
.
edit to add : (more armchair Quarterbacking)
Tailwind on free airflow objects after Opening . Always makes for all 180 turns a little non-responsive @ the first second of pilot input for the pivot or Turn . Especially when you are cramming it all into a tight & low landing .

& that is the key when doing this . Is to make it a Flat & ( SMOOTH ) pivoting turn while the whole time keeping the Canopy in Deep-Brakes from the time you Toggle un-stowing . NOT broken down into 2 or more stages of technique .
After Opening . You Un-stow into Deep-Brakes . The Canopy never comes out of Deep-Brakes & you only produce turning & Heading by letting-Up on the opposite Toggle for the direction of Heading you want .
Opposite Toggle input for Heading direction flown in Deep Brakes . Basically you are Flying in a Minimum forward speed in Deep Brakes . But the goal is to Turn in a smooth 'flat' a pivoting turn while doing it .
.

haha is this what your orthopedic surgeon told you? i bet your back in less than 6 : )

i'd say i'm glad you're ok, but being broken is never ok.

glad you didn't die.

heal fast.

im a year plus from my ankle break, probably could have jumped after 9 mo or so, but 16 months later now and im still a little leary of a hard landing.

i ff'd (handheld) 225' from an A, opened on heading - first choice for landing (in to wind) was a 120 turn - became apparent immediately on opening that wouldnt make that without winding up like you did, so i turned 45 other direction and down-winded it. tumbled on landing, but walked away clean.

so a new post from the humbled jumper seems proper, its been one month to the day from my accident i had surgery again last monday on both of my ankles, other then surgeries in i feel like ive made no progress, im still 100% useless, can use my legs, not even a little, left ankle has been through its final surgery so is on the road to recovery but just as useless as i was the day of the accident... minus morphine. so just for the new jumpers readying this post, the downtime from a poor decision is not fun. and to sounds very non base jumper... stick to smart decisions. i have a family, so believe me, my jumps will be perrine or higher. i have too many big objects close to home, as well as too much to live for. i wish you guys the best. i know some people love the low shit. its just not for me, no canopy ride. no freefall... no win.

Did you ever hear of this other pretty cool sport called Skydiving

 

epibase typed:

you can have poor canopy skills on much higher
jumps and find yourself way more fucked than
you found at that tower...

Very true statement... since most of us have
been jumping long enough to see someone
break themselves really fucking bad at a DZ.
So 14,000 feet is no guarantee against injury.

On the plus side -- you are young and thin,
both are going to help you heal faster than
an older, heavier person. I point this out
not so much to make you feel better but
driving home the message to any potential
newbies who happen to read this thread.

Again, thank you for sharing your experience.
I wish you a full recovery, which is much more
important than the speed of the recovery.

Oh and complaining about arthritis on a
rainy day when you are young is kind of
funny, so welcome to the club.

Epi.. kinda gettin over hearing your thoughts, I've already acknowledged the fact I'm new. Posted in beginners.... Already established my lack of canopy skills, I understand if i knew how to fly my canopy better I could have flat turned and probably been gone as jumper 1 did. A downwind landing and you probably never would've seen this thread. But on an average jump for me... 1400 ft ish. Canyon, our A, and balloon. I have 0 problem hitting the lz, stand up landings 95% of the time. I think since I've started base I've landed on my ass once and with this, my face once. So yes I tend to blame the altitude. Since I had 0 time to prepare s landing. And execute such safely. Again, experience is the number 1 problem. But I admitted that, so respectfully.... Stfu.

 

 

thanks, i appreciate it.

1 in 20 is quite a high chance, especially for a familar object.

When I think my odds of messing up a jump/landing (with potential for injury) are 5% - I don't jump, and certainly don't move on to stuff that is more technical.

Gotta give Illwreckyourbox a lotta credit for starting this thread.He has been Humbled. Some people learn by other's mistakes, some the hard way,....however a lot of newbies can learn by this example. There are a lot of misconceptions about what constitutes a safe BASEjump, my criteria is if it's not repeatable 100 out of 100 times then acknowledge that it's a gamble and really Russian Roulette and make your decision on whether or not the risk is worth it to you. His mistakes are obvious for all to see, and anyone that starts to analyze this as an inherently safe jump without the necessary Jedi skills is delusional, and he miscalculated the risks in relation to his skill set and has offered it to all as a lesson, right on Bro, the deserts hard and no place to be doing low turns,(and make no mistake about it , injuries were the direct result of an unneccesary low turn) but that's something everyone learns in a first jump course. heal quick, you got away with one. All the best to you, B.

Stealthy, thank you for your post, I like your "repeatable 100 out of 100 times" outlook. A sound and safe criteria. Which is what all of my other jumps were, the tater bridge, low alt balloon, 1700 E, and 1400 A, all easily executed jumps. I fell my reaction time for mals, or offheadings is sufficient, however there's a lot of canopy control I need to practice. Most of comes with experience, I just got excited about a load that was being made, got on it well before I ever should have. Only regret is the turn. Wish someone would've just said, don't try a 180, but as stated in almost every incident post, its no-ones job to make our decisions. Especially when its not your usual group of friends who know your level of comfort. What in trying to say is own your fuck ups, because nobody else is going to live with you decision, nobody is taking on these f#%&d ankles I'm rolling around with. :) and no disrespect to those who aren't here any longer, but people need to stop trying to find fault with people from the load, nobody pushed anyone off an exit. And 95% of the incident forum is based on poor decisions. I know ill out a ton more thought into future jumps.

hey man, hope doing fine after your surgery! well, even though I probably shouldn't guilty or however you wanna call it? I still feel, I shouldn't have done the 180 as first jumper, agin I knew illwreckyourbox for probably around 12hrs, and me met the evening before that jump the first time for 10-15mins or so. Do I feel guilty, no, why should I, do I give a fu%$! what other people say about telling him not to turn, also no! But I still feel sorry for what happened, will I still do that jump again, prob. yes!
Ask yoursef, do you ask before every jump with a new jumper whether he's ok with that jump? And if so, he can say whatever he could, and then, your fault?
Even if, you could've jumped with a lot of super experienced professional jumpers in the past and still see sh...! He's done a bad mistake by himself, he learned from that, am I guilty because I did a 180 turn and landed softly! Man I'm sick and tired of the poor replies giving shit for something they don't have a clue about it! Two of my friends entered the BFL this year, experienced guys, no one could see exactly what happened and people still argue agout their skills etc. (both were close to 1000jumps, so evaluate your thoughts new)!
I am glad I can still have a beer with illwreckyourbox around christmas, do I judge him after what happened, hell no! He's a really nice guy, so shut up you computer jumpers if you haven't been there, get a life, and learn from this, but don't judge, cause it can happen to you as well on this 100% secure jump as well!
Look forward to sharing that beer in 3 months

Thanks hang, I do not blame you, not even a little. My 180 wasn't where I went wrong, although a downwind landing may have changed everything. I had no business being on the load. I should've come to play photo guy and learned by watching, and not going in feet first... Haha see what i did there? Yeah.. feet first... Oh well, this will just make me a safer jumper in the future. Look forward to beers, I may be walking by then... :)

I give you allot of credit for realizing this. BASE is odd in the fact that it "looks" so easy until you make 1 mistake. I always try to explain this concept to people with low jump numbers, and I am sure they walk away thinking "this guy is a dick and won't even jump with me". I remember feeling the same way when I used to ask people to take me out and they blew me off. I totally understand why now, it's nothing personal, it's just too much responsibility when you are still learning yourself. I am also impressed you took responsibility for your own actions and don't blame anyone but yourself. Heal Fast!

i fully understand where people come from as well all other BASE or aspiring BASE jumpers should think about, when you ask someone to be on a load you are asking them to be responsible for your life, and you cant get legal charges thrown on someone by making a fuck up, if you do as i did, you have to think about what that does to the poeple on the load, their day plans just changed drastically, now they have a burden to deal with, and if youre at a high risk object, now the law is involved, lucky for me i was middle desert. so no law to try to throw the book at my friends, and you also need know who you are jumping with, there are jumpers who if in a high risk spot will leave your ass there, broken figuring security will get to you and to get themselves out of any possible problems. so just another angle to look at when you ask someone to take you with them. when i started BASE my mentor asked, do you think you could perform CPR on a dead body... just some food for thought...

that being said, i got very lucky, i have amazing friends, one who just took a med type course, one i had just met, that was awesome... but as bad as i am broken and would change this if i could, i would do so more for their stress, and ruining what was to be a great morning to a normal day, than my pain and injury.

So, i was sitting in the bath tub, looking at my hardware, getting close to being hardware free... and i was thinking about my jump, my crash, my bounce... and i had a thought, not that it is redoable, but were all here to kill time right? i think? anyway, if i had jumped on rear risers and basically stalled my canopy in the dive i was in, would i have leveled? i know it wouldve been a timing thing. where if it were too high (not likely, from where i would have had time after turning like a banshee) it wouldnt fly from there. but swung my out in front of my canopy and maybe onto my ass ( probably causing spinal injuries, instead of a few shattered ankles) just dumb thoughts... anyone?

Not to be mean bro, but you really should take advantage of your down time to read up on parachute flight. You don't want to try and stall your canopy after making a low turn. You need to get the canopy back over head, and the fastest way to do that is with toggles. Hit them hard, and fast. Brian Germain just wrote an article on recovering from low turns here http://www.dropzone.com/...tail_page.cgi?ID=763

Talk to experienced canopy pilots and read up on the subject, so you don't ever need to go through that shit again!

im not offended, i know my canopy skills are what got me into this, and when i heal up enough, there will be alot more skyjumps made, with alot more self training under canopy, when i first started skydiving, the goal after opening and being square was just to get down safe. no major mals, just minor ones, pc in tow, minor line twists, locked toggle, so landed on rears. but no flat turns. etc. just front risers rear risers...

also thank you for the link