Basejumper.com - archive

From: http://www.iol.co.za/...e-mountain-1.1213555


Not going to bother hiding exit point since it's been all over every second media page over the past week, that he's jumping Table Mountain.

Edit to add: From another source...

it sounds like from the jumper with him that he experienced turbulence under a good canopy and depressurized/decked?

However the news report sounds like he had a cliff strike due to an off heading???

I hope he heals quick

Another Report.

http://www.2oceansvibe.com/...ountain-jeb-corliss/

Poor Jeb, seems like South Africa does not bring him any luck...
Hope it is nothing to bad and that he heals fast!

Video of accident.
http://youtu.be/cqiV_O8cdWY

I hope this doesn't hurt the object, and that Jeb heals up fast.

Maybe it's a juju thing

Juju for what?
Take care,
space

hes lucky to be breathing looking at that footage.
jeez, heal fast Jeb..

 

Ledgestrike in fullflight, 2 broken legs, manually deployed canopy. Pretty close call.

Its a free world and anyone can jump anything, but I believe a few people asked him not to illegally jump the mountain with a camera crew and day blaze it like its christmas... South African local BASE crew have been working hard with the SAN Parks(south african national parks) to keep some sites open. We have a good reputation with building managers, police and Park officials, but when something like this happens it gives them ammunition to fire at us...

What happened to ask the locals??? Wheres the BASE etiquette????

I'm thinking twice before I take anyone to any of our exits again...

Bet they are some nasty fractures going at that pace

Fred I know what you are saying but on the other end, Jeb jumped that mountain before I even knew what BASE was. He has been coming to SA for a long time and was the first to WS off that object.
Also, jumping off TM is not illegal.
I don't think he did anything bad; he just got unlucky. Like riding bikes, the question is not if but when.

 

+1

I will also be thinking twice...

To my knowledge, it's not the fact that he jumped TM, it's the fact that a certain respected base jumper asked for site to be kept sacred and it was filmed for public viewing despite the request. (I may stand corrected on this)

bad juju ??? a myth or reality... you be the judge>

P.s. I wouldn't wish this sort of injury on my worst enemy, Heal up fast and fully Jeb

I have to agree with Fred. Even though jumping TM is not illegal this has soured the relationship with the park authorities (Something we have been working real hard on) for he did not contact them doing a big shoot like they did. .
POC I also agree he has been unlucky, and wish him well, but times changes and if he has been going about this the right way his unfortunate accident would not have caused so much negative vibes. His actions and motivations does remind me a certain Felix Baumgarten (back in the day) - and something about feathers and tar comes to mind...

He hit the mountain in full flight, broke his legs, tubling in the air and then been strong and conscious enough to deploy his canopy and save his life...

Jeb Corliss is a Legend!!

http://www.bigissue.org.za/...jured-in-failed-jump

Is this just a bunch of posturing if jumping TM is legal, or can they charge Jeb with something else?

huge bummer, hope he heals up fast..
is this considered a successful touch and go in his wingsuit landing project..

Well than no shit he didn't have a permit!

wow, i thought thats what I saw in the vid but had to replay it several times. wonder what happened on his judgement of altitude?

Scary stuff.

Of course that is their public statements. However when approached correctly, with respect and patience and if you are very lucky they do...
I know this because I have been lucky.. Therfore the golden rule, ask the locals

judgment of altitude is not that relevant if your goal is to clear a ledge by 50 cm in a wingsuit...

Isn't it kind of windy near Cape Town, South Africa? By comparison, tt's always very windy at the end of the South American continent south of Patagonia.

Someone posted on DZ.com that there can be downdrafts at table mountain. A couple foot drop when flying so close is all it taks. Get well soon Jeb.

Good point. I did not realize that was his goal but it makes sense.

Wow, Jeb! Pushing the envelope does have it's price...I hope you heal up well and quickly, and that you are able to continue on your path.
As for blazing the site...well, if proper respect wasn't paid to the locals and authorities, Jeb paid the price today. However, he was jumping all kinds of sacred sites long before many of us started BASE, and he has been a leader, setting the standards and raising the bar for all of us. I stand behind Jeb as a friend and a jumper, and instead of tarring and feathering him, I offer my services as disciplinarian and have my cat 'o nine tails at the ready....
Peace,
Karen T.
Base #763

is it ? or was he just lucky to go even that high?

I don't think he had a permit for shooting there which is probably how they can get to him.

To this day it is safe to say that there have probably been over a thousand jumps from the object. One of the vet jumpers had counted about eleven cliff strikes from the object and this was a few years ago. That same jumper had 180 jumps off that object alone and a cliff strike (#12 then...).

One of the top climbers in the country climbs TM on a regular basis without a permit.

And then every season the muggings happen, but getting mugged is an extreme sport and dangerous so they probably don't issue permits for that either.

Jeb has jumped TM a lot; he opened it for wingsuits; why should he have to call the locals when he pretty much is a local? Yes he will be gone and we will be left with the guy in green wanting show some authority... but soon another lot of tourists will get mugged and they will have other problems to deal with and they will forget about us as they did the twelve other cliff strikes before.

Well one thing's for sure, no-one's going to take the piss out of that guy with the balloons for jumping out of the way anymore...

(And damn, that's a nasty video. Here's hoping Jeb has a chance for a decent recovery.)

Well written, All the work put into making El cap legal was also burned by idiots....

Karen i think you stand wrong. i do rember back then,where Miles D and Shane were jumping the rail in TF,they were leding egde and they did hit the shit-fan,now i wonder why Jeb is different?
Also beeing a top jumper old timer or what ever dosnt make it ok not to contact the locals..
As posted before the place has been jumped legaly but Jeb and his crew had jumped it for 1 week with out a permit..THAT is pissing in some ones backyard to me..

Well back to the incedent:
If you guys look at Jeb´s FB profile you will see pics Jeb made hime self on a prior jump off the same object skimming the cliff in less than 1m/3ft.

I would say he were pushing it,and when you do so at some point you will get hurt or killed.

I do however think that its the MOST badass acsident pulled off EVER.Hitting the cliff midair,get unstabel as he does and then beeing abel to pull the cord,THAT is impressive!!!

Jeb,You and i dont agree on much,but you pulled it off,hats off and heres for a speedy and full recovery!!!

Pull the cord ???????

When did you go to journalism school ?

Faber probably pulled the cord more times than you did :-)

And I agree with him... Jeb did an outstanding job saving his live, respect to that!

My thoughts exactly. Reminds me of that guy on the rope swing who was amazed that his canopy "came out the bag."

Whether you like Jeb or not, he is a fixture in our sport. He has my respect and sympathy. Heal fast.

This is 2 pictures that Jeb posted yesterday on his facebook...hope he heals up quick and even more so, I hope they release the footage from another camera Fuck me, as tragic as this is now he is totally ready for landing without a wingsuit

I bet Jeff Nebelkopf has it on camera....
Would be interesting to see it up close, its got to smart, that's for sure.

That's sucks. Glad you're still with us Jeb and heal fast.

seriously guys, you are whining about ethics and other rights/wrongs of jeb...
isnt that a little bit twatty ?

never met him, read/seen a lot about him... he is a very colorful figure... he got burned, but survived...

all i can think of is to wish him a quick and full recovery...

time will come when we all will get the big story on the big screen about this whole accident...

people will always mess it up for others... everywhere... stop whining...

heal quick jeb...

No it wasn't. The then-superintendent of Yosemite, Bob Binneweis, said on the record in the November 1980 issue of Audubon Magazine (an org. on whose BOD he sat) that they designed the program to fail. The Flatbed Ten and some of the other city-geek yayhoos who painted rocks and threw trash provided convenient window dressing for the decision, but NPS never had any intention of allowing jumping to go forward.

Best to know what you're talking about before trying to poach a thread about somebody getting hurt and twist it into a data point in support of your ill-informed opinion.


44

+1

This is an incidents forum to discuss jump details and learn from them. Ethics/drama have nothing to do with the accident.

Some thoughts... Random variables usually follow normal distribution (aka Gaussian) - they're centered around their mean value, with some scatter in either "+" or "-" direction. Most of the time, deviations will be small, sometimes they will be large. In fact, 68% of the time, deviations will be within some +/- band of the mean value, called standard deviation; 95% of the time, they will be within +/- double standard deviation. (68-95-99.7 rule)

Applied to wingsuit proximity flying, we're talking about deviations from your intended trajectory. If you aim to fly just 0.5m from the object and standard deviation due to various factors (precision of flying and judgement; wind; changes in air density; flapping fabric; etc. etc.) is also 0.5m (an incredibly low and probably unrealistic value! - but just for the sake of example), then in 32% of flights you will be outside of this 0.5m deviation band, and thus in 16% of flights you will be on the negative side. 0.5m of intended proximity minus more than 0.5m of unintentional deviation equals... death. Or, if very very lucky like in this accident, a serious injury.

Any activity where the edge is approached within just a couple of standard deviations, sooner or later will end up in participant on the negative side of the edge, a point of no return. It is just simple statistics. No God aura surrounding you, no media attention, no money earned by doing it, no ninja skills can negate this. If you're good at throwing knives and do the show where you throw knives as to just miss your assistant, you can only be repeatedly successful if you set the margin around your assistant at least several times larger than the random scatter of your throws. But if you try to throw each knife within a fraction of an inch of your assistant, you'll kill her very soon.

Wingsuit proximity is now being pushed into this fatal margin where random factors are large enough to throw you in negative proximity in statistically significant percentage of attempts. There's already plenty of them on BFL. Stop the madness, people! You can't beat the randomness every time if you leave yourself no sufficient margin for error. Random variables will eventually beat the shit out of you.

in reply to "Wingsuit proximity is now being pushed into this fatal margin where random factors are large enough to throw you in negative proximity in statistically significant percentage of attempts. There's already plenty of them on BFL. Stop the madness, people! You can't beat the randomness every time if you leave yourself no sufficient margin for error. Random variables will eventually beat the shit out of you. "
...............................

If this guy's a leader, pity the followers.


An angel saved him , do you think they'll save you???

For some reason, I think Jeb will insist upon all black hospital gowns, bandages, and non-slip socks.

I'd bet he does not remember pulling
was probably just raw instinct/reaction.

Sure hope his GoPros survived cause
if the footage is good then he can sell
it to help fund his landing ramp stunt.

This assumes, barring paralysis, that
he will still have the unrelenting desire
to go beyond 3 standard deviations...

Great work, Yuri -- and there's a related and overlapping notion that in some ways has even more applicability to proxy flying because we're talking about predominantly ballistic trajectories.

It's called "circular error probable" or CEP and it was a term of art during the days when nuclear missile accuracy was discussed more often than it is now. It basically means that for a given level of precision, half your trajectories will land within a circle of n radius from the mean -- and the rest will land outside of it. From Wikipedia, which explains it better than I can:

In the military science of ballistics, CEP (also circular error probability or circle of equal probability) is an intuitive measure of a weapon system's precision. It is defined as the radius of a circle, centered about the mean, whose boundary is expected to include 50 percent of the population within it.

The original concept of CEP was based on a circular bivariate normal distribution (CBN) with CEP as a parameter of the CBN just as μ and σ are parameters of the normal distribution. Ballistic munitions with this distribution behavior tend to cluster around the aim point, with most reasonably close, progressively fewer and fewer further away, and very few at long distance. That is, if CEP is n meters, 50 percent of rounds land within n meters of the target, 43 percent between n and 2n, and 7 percent between 2n and 3n meters, and the proportion of rounds that land farther than three times the CEP from the target is less than 0.2 percent.

This distribution behavior is often not met. Precision-guided munitions generally have more "close misses" and so are not normally distributed. Munitions may also have larger standard deviation of range errors than the standard deviation of azimuth (deflection) errors, resulting in an elliptical confidence region. Munition samples may not be exactly on target, that is, the mean vector will not be (0,0). This is referred to as bias.

To apply the CEP concept in these conditions, CEP can be defined as the square root of the mean square error (MSE). The MSE will be the sum of the variance of the range error plus the variance of the azimuth error plus the covariance of the range error with the azimuth error plus the square of the bias. Thus the MSE results from pooling all these sources of error, geometrically corresponding to radius of a circle within which 50 percent of rounds will land.

While 50 percent is a very common definition for CEP, the circle dimension can be defined for percentages. Approximate formulas are available to convert the distributions along the two axes into the equivalent circle radius for the specified percentage.

Accuracy Measure: Probability (%)

Root mean square (RMS): 63 to 68

Circular error probability (CEP): 50

Twice the distance root mean square (2DRMS): 95 to 98

In other words, when you proxy fly, you need to know at least generally what your CEP is because your CEP does in fact define the sufficient margin of error Yuri's talking about -- and as soon as the lateral or lower edge of your CEP falls inside rock instead of outside it, skill checks out and all you're living on is luck.

Or to set aside all the rocket science and put it in operational terms you can recite on the edge just before 3-2-1-CYA:

Don't push it when doing it at all is pushing it.


44

Fuck, just when I think I have Jump, arch, pull and land figured out.

It is also interesting to note how different leaders pushing the envelope of what's possible approach error management.

I remember Robi's words from the wingsuit seminar he gave at Bridge Day several years ago: "Never proxy fly over the object, only to the side of it (and that side must be convex or straight, not concave)." That was safety mantra several years ago. What do we see now? Everybody is trying to shave off every millimeter left remaining above the terrain. But I don't remember seeing in recent Robi's videos that he's trying to shave the terrain as close as possible, compromising safety. Instead, he seems to manage inevitable random deviations by giving them room on both "+" and "-" sides, not just "+" side. By doing a slalom through gulleys like on Need 4 Speed, he gives himself a symmetric margin of error where he can actively compensate for deviations left and right, vs. having an asymmetric margin when you push the limit of distance above the terrain. He's close above the terrain, too, but that seems to have a healthy (for Robi, not for the rest of us) margin of several CEPs.

In summary, Robi has some smart risk management calculated into his amazing flights. Whereas tying balloons close to ground and trying to cut them every time is bound to an accident as margin for error in this case is not symmetric by design. It's akin to trying to stick out of highrise window frame furthest, or stand next to a spinning prop closest, or low pull contest: the winner is the one who dies.

they are called error ellipses, dumb ass.

Just for those wondering about the possibility of charges, they had a radio interview this morning with some Government figure and they stated that they would be charging Jeb. But on the bright side, this is South Africa, pretty sure it will just be a fine.

wtf?
So you guys thinks its less inportant about objects than all theese "aaww a superboy who push the limits has got hurt heal fast my love"comments?

Dont get me wrong i didnt want Jeb to get hurt,but it seems that each time a high profile in the sport gets hurt while doing somthing they shouldnt do it gets the genneral symphati but if its a unknow kid,there will be a hunt down..

Sorry but im freaking sick of it, it stinks.

I think its relevant to discuss ALL aspects of a incedent in this fora.
If the site usaly can be jumped with a permit and a acsident occur with out a permit,i think its a issue. If some one jumped a cliff in LB in a way the locals or people usaly has agreeed not to then its ok if your a high profile?

As of the acsident. we all know that proxmicity flying is the new killer in this sport,Jeb knows it but want to follow his dream(respect to that),he has shown serval times to cut it narrow,it were a matter of time before he either got hurt or killed,lucky he didnt got killed..Jeb is a smart dude and knows the risk,it only shows once again that even the best in this sport can get hurt or killed no one gets free.

What can we learn from this?
Well thouse who cut it close will get hurt or killed.If some one else will tell this slider off kid how Jeb could have avoided this pleace say so.
To me its one of theese some times shit just happens,Jeb by his knowleged on a area(that i dont know shit about),misjuged his jump or left his safe margen to a werry minimum.It could only have been avoided if he had flewn in a higher altitude,but that wouldnt apply to Jeb´s dream about kanding a ws..

Oh by the way i call things the way i want,i find it funny to call it "pull the cord" if you dont like it,,oh well i dont really care, cuz i pull my cord call it a chute and if its leaving a bag then so be it

None of those strikes were while filming for HBO after juming it for a week and i dont remember ever seeing anything on facebook...and none of those strikes got this much attention...

Brilliant reply, you have a point dude!

What I have been trying to say though is that one doesn't need permission to jump off that object. Jumping off TM has never been illegal.
Where they can charge him is with the film permit. Many production companies on small stuff will try and get away with this; it is not the first occurence and is really a negligable offence in my opinion.

Fred; mixed feelings here for me. To me Jeb is a local. The previous incidents had just as much exposure with the parks board as they have now. Facebook or no Facebook, when something happens on that mountain anybody who has anything to do with the mountain knows about it. But you're right, Jeb being high profile, if they need to make an example of someone they would probably do it with him.

 

Hey Patrick.........Does that make me a local jumper too???...(I dont think so) .....I've also done only two Base trips in SA. - And I'm a South African Citizen as well.

Do you know the object as well as the locals, possibly better than some locals?

Yes he was advised against it.
Look maybe I am being a bit too much of the devil's advocate here but I just don't think it is that big a deal. We are only BASE jumpers, really nothing special. In a country where last year over 400 rhinos were poached, crime is permanently on the high, there are bigger problems to deal with for authorities than something that didn't even make the 7 o'clock news. It will pass and we will jump off TM again no doubt.

based on the video of the exit, does anyone else think he may have gone head low, thus burning through a little more altitude than he might normally lose? Could have definitely had something to do with coming short of his target...
This specific mountain seems like one may need a perfect exit, transition and flight to make it...
Point is, shit happens, and if you're doing jumps where you cant fuck up the exit or you'll hit a ledge, maybe its a good time to reconsider if your exits aren't always perfect.
dont listen to me, i don't have much WSbase experience.

Can you maybe give some technical details on the jump with WS? What would be interesting to know is that how high is the start and what's the distance / height to the ledge which Jeb hit?

All the best for Jeb and I wish him a speedy revocery!

Unfortunately not since I don't ws BASE.
Others who do are quite pissed off at the moment and don't regularly visit these forums anyway.
Sorry.

+1

are you and 44 missing something here?

Jeb believes he is flying, and can alter his trajectory. pilots do this all the time. it makes landing on aircraft carriers possible.

your side discussion sounds more like ballistics than flight, marginalizing it's applicability.

flight requires a feedback loop. reaction time, response lag, and invisible air currents greatly affect precision. practice can help discover personal capabilities, which vary between individuals.

all we know is that Jeb failed to execute his plan.

why? winds? how many times he flew this line? micro meteorology? appropriate size of Jeb's error band? was Jeb maximizing his wingsuit's performance, or intentionally dropping for a closer fly-by?

it is all beyond calculation with the data available and thus merely speculation.

every incident creates unintended consequences and generates it's own incalculable ripple pattern. some will call to shut down BASE. some will call for restrictions on proximity flying. some will call for restrictions on egos (and insist on better judgement).

what some call whining are people reacting in shock and horror based on their own risk/reward profiles, their personal predispositions, and how this event personally impacts them.

I hope Jeb recovers fully.

I was flying back into London City airport after a business trip last week in gusty conditions. Over the runway, the pilot opted for a go-around. This "bail-out" procedure is possible in an aircraft with thrust. We encounted a radical change in wind gradient at the final moment; rather than risk a hard landing, the pilot opted for the go-around. Unpowered flight has fewer options and is way more committing in that regard.

The reasons why Jeb got into this position are, and possibly will remain, unclear. The statistical discussion just confirms that bad things can happen sometimes and, if you try something risky again and again, looking retrospectively, it becomes more likely that it will have bitten you back at some point. As for lack of safety margin - that might not be the case either. Just because an outcome is improbable doesn't mean it can't happen.

Ultimately, there is more than one example of when the available options for a wingsuit pilot were insufficient to account for [winds/poor exit/poor flying/choice of line/...]. Pity we can't "go-around".

I'm surprised Jeb is even alive. I would imagine he had to have broken his femurs, which can still be life threatening.

 
I hate to say it, but the chances that he will lose both legs are probably pretty high.

based on what?
where you with him or do you have news from the hospital?

Crossposting from blincmagazine.com
Jeff's post
http://www.blincmagazine.com/...jump.html#post101794

We would all like to see the video footage from the cameraman and Jeb. It's good to hear his injuries are relatively minor.

All those comments about Jeb and his flight.

None about Jeff Nebelkopf who passed the ledge easily (seen from above that is). So either Jeff is really good, or Jeb is a) not that good b) had a bad day c) wanted to get really close to the ledge to get good footage.

Take you pick.

Anyway, get well Jeb.

I was basing it on the fact that he hit his legs against a stone cliff in full flight. But in the post above he apparently only broke both ankles. Lucky, lucky bastard.

Good point, Faber. Like at TF, you only have to call the local police to be cleared and okay to jump for the day....and if Jeb and his crew didn't bother to get an easily obtained permit, well then, I absolutely stand corrected.
However, I have jumped with Jeb and must say that his demeanor is much lower key than the the others Faber mentioned in his reply to my post. Jeb's skill with aerials and now proximity wingsuit flying attracts a lot of attention to him, but unless he's changed considerably over the last few years, he doesn't seek attention by jumping from rails with a lot of fanfare and "look at me" antics. Not that this makes a difference on the disrespect to the locals by not getting a simple permit....
So instead of the cat 'o nine tails maybe I should break out the trusty auto-paddle???
lol
K

Proximity Flying appears to be BASE's version of Hook Turns.

both make for great videos.
both demand a high level of skill (or luck).
both make for spectacular, ugly, failures.

This is great to hear! I hope he is able to make good with SAN parks and the CPT crew. I'm looking forward to the outcome

your spot on.

Gotta sy from frefly souls post it sounds cool if Jeb is concerned avbout the area and will do somthing about it if posible.

Karen all(me inkluded) recording a jump does so to other to see,it is so TF rail jump all over again we just dont realice we all does it from time to time(again myself inkluded).

Also ive also jumped things i shouldnt,but got away with it,if Jeb had done the same as he has done many times before it wouldnt be a problem we all know.

Im glad to hear Jeb will be abel to walk again,now we can only wish he can have his wings back aswell :)

...and forgot (or didn't think of it) that the feet travel on a trajectory a couple of feet lower than the trajectory of eyes.

And that, Sir, is why we shouldn't make speculations that carry no weight.
Heal up, Jeb.

Edited to show Jeff's post to better make my point and validate my sarcasm.

Good to hear Jeb is doing as good as he is!!! MAN was he lucky! An impact at THAT speed! Holy shit! Gotta say i get pretty sick of the shit slinging thats going on in different places! The most important thing is that Jeb is doing good! Extremely good for the circumstances!

Jeb, if you read this, its great to hear you're doing good! Hope you're back soon!! I want to check you off my "to photograph" list!

Get well soon!!

One Love!!

- T

Jeb's only competitor is himself. When he passes the rock 1m above and posts pictures of it, it's more than enough to impress HBO and be done with the shoot. But he wants to do better. Closer. Even closer. And yet even closer.

If you can consistently skim the rock just 5cm above it, you have a very strong case to get funding for landing ramp. You show amazing level of precision of flying and investors feel confident that the landing show won't end in bloody disaster televised live to millions of viewers. If you're passing the rock meters above it, you won't seem to get any closer to making landing project a success. So, painting yourself closer and closer and closer to the corner is part of the game.

But we're not Jeb. We're just learning here. I see three lessons here.

1) Know your "standard deviation". Observe variations of proximity distance - actual vs. intended. Set your minimum intended proximity to at least 3x of the variation. For example, if on average the proximity varies +/-2m from your intended distance, set the absolute minimum distance to 6m. Never try to approach rock closer than 6m. That's more than enough! Don't get lured into this "closer... closer... closer!!!" game that seems to be popular now and feeds tons of fresh meat into smiling BFL mouth.

2) Don't forget that your feet are ~0.5m closer to the rock below you than your eyes are. For poor flying at high angle of attack, it can be even 1m or more. (it's your height times sine of the angle of attack)

3) Beware of situations with asymmetrical margin for error. (Flying too close to object, pulling too low are obvious examples.) In these situations, margin for error should be generously increased. For example, it's quite common these days to see people pulling at less than 100m in wingsuits. There's no groundrush, so people feel it's OK to pull at 100m or less. Wrong. Fluctuations do happen, and 100m is not enough of a margin. I'd say, 200m is the absolute minimum. If you have more and your flight mission is accomplished, pull. Don't waste the resource you might desperately need.

Good points, especially around the disparity in height between head and feet above an object - a fact that probably escapes many jumpers as this sort of difference tinkers at the margins for most of us - although this is reduced at higher glide ratios.

It's like shortlining on a static line - saving 6-7 feet of bridle line becomes significant when you're jumping from 100ft.

http://www.news24.com/...-faces-fine-20120117

oy vey, more speculation.

it's easy to find videos of people wingsuiting with bent knees. jumpers are also known not to fly in the most efficient body position to maintain a reserve in case things do not go as anticipated.

thus, how can you say with such definitive, cocky, confidence?



-----

now, since you like numbers, let's do some calculating...

assuming a 3:1 glide ratio, a jumper will move 3 ft forward for 1 ft drop. thus their descent angle would be inv-tan(1/3)= 18.4 degrees. that is the direction of flight, and the direction of the relative wind.

the chord line is the line from the leading edge of an airfoil to the trailing edge. since Jeb likes flying giant suits, his chord line is approximated by a line from his head to his feet. thus if his body (and chord line) is horizontal, his angle of attack will be 18.4 degrees to the relative wind.

airfoils generally stall before reaching such a high angle of attack. thus, it is more likely anyone wingsuiting at a glide slope of 3:1 will be slightly head low.

the above assumes you define things like standard aerodynamics!
(see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_attack)

I can also say with such definitive, cocky, confidence, that 2*2 = 4.


The difference in trajectory traveled by eyes and feet has nothing to do with a glide slope or aerodynamics. It has only to do with elementary geometry. The difference is equal to your height times the sine of the angle of attack. Draw two parallel lines representing the lines of travel of eyes and feet. Doesn't matter what angle these lines make to horizon. Now draw a piece connecting the two parallel lines - this represents your body. The angle your body makes to the line of travel is your AoA. The distance between the two parallel lines is equal to your body length times the sine of AoA. Since AoA is always non-zero, this distance is always non-zero. Your feet always pass closer to the rock below you than your eyes, it's easy to not know this fact and get a nasty reminder, like Jeb did.

Typical AoA for high-performance flying is in 10-15 degree range. So, your feet are closer to the rock than your eyes by [your height]*sin(10 to 15) = [your height]*(0.17 to 0.26) = 1 to 1.5ft, or 30-50cm. If you're flying poorly, at high AoA, e.g. 45 degrees, than the difference is [your height]*sin(45) = 4.2ft, or 1.3m. Quite significant when you shaving the last remaining meter off the rock.

Again, your glide ratio doesn't matter, only momentary AoA at the moment you pass just over the rock (although for sustained flight, glide ratio and AoA are related).

Now, wwarped, do you jump wingsuit at all that you have such definitive, cocky, confidence in what you're saying?

for those less inclined to calculate anything...

wingsuiters (and parachutes) fly forward. obviously, some force must propel them forward.

aerodynamic forces generally get broken down to a lift acting perpendicular to the chord line, and drag acting parallel to the chord line. gravity is the only other force available.

thus, to fly forward, the lift vector must be tilted forward, which means the chord line must be below horizontal. that means a wingsuiter must be head low and a parachute is trimmed to be nose low.

basic stuff. nothing allowing the feet to be lower than the head when wingsuiting (at a constant glide slope). the feet WILL follow a different path than the head. (just because someone can jump high enough to see over an object doesn't mean they can hurdle it either!)

Basic stuff, indeed, you just don't see it right. While head is lower than feet relative to horizon, head is always higher than feet relative to relative wind, or, which is the same, your trajectory (otherwise, your AoA would be negative). Ski jumpers land on their feet, not heads, exactly for this reason, even though on some big jumps their heads can drop slightly lower than feet, relative to horizon.

Coffee time?

you are thinking about this too much
yuri is correct, in this instance
look at this, wwarped

Perfect, thanks - I was too lazy to draw a pic. Now, rotate the pic to represent different glide ratios and you'll see that the distance between lines of travel for head and feet does not depend on glide ratio, only on the angle your body makes to the line of flight (= relative wind), aka AoA. It's always positive. So, if your eyes aim at 10cm above the rock to awe the world, your feet are destined to be chopped off.


P.S. I see now you did two examples, for different glide ratios. Excellent illustrations, thanks!

we obviously were writing things at the same time. I definitely agree that a wingsuiter's head and feet will follow differing paths.

if you are matching your angle of flight to a talus, your feet will be closer to the earth, by the amount you mention.

I preferred the standard horizontal definition. Jeb failed to clear the edge of a cliff, which is a point, not a line.

thus, a 6 ft jumper flying at a glideslope of 3:1 must have their feet 2 ft above anything the head passes (including any ledge).


edited to add:
I'd prefer if the second sloping line showed the path of the feet, and a ledge was added. that would represent this incident better.

You got it backwards. Head must be Xft above anything the feet pass, where X = JumperHeight*sin(AoA).

Really, a cup of good coffee is all it takes.

Imagine on the lower line, at any point, a ledge. I doubt the ledge he was aiming for is At the end of a horizontal line. I'm no longer near autocad so I can't make another dwg. Just cause the glide is 3 to 1 it does not mean that's the angle of his body. Refer to angle of relative wind above

This pic of Jokke is a perfect illustration. He's head low, but if he were to hit a guy in red t-shirt sitting on the rail, he'll hit him with his legs, not head. The shot shows just the moment of "impact":



If you were to hit flat ground instead, head will contact ground first. But it's a totally different situation from what we have here (and with totally different outcome).

Perfect. He is flying with a glide between 2 and 3, however the linear slope of his body is at a much lesser slope than 2 or 3 to 1

Here's another interesting parallel I thought of years ago:

Parachutes were designed to slow our descent toward the earth. Swooping involves intentionally approaching the earth faster, while under parachute.

Wingsuits, in the context of BASE, were introduced (among other reasons) to help the jumper get more separation from the object. Proximity flight involves intentionally decreasing your separating from the object.

Both swooping and proximity flight take an advanced piece of parachuting gear and use it for the opposite of its primary design. (Even modern swooping canopies still have the primary goal of arresting descent).

here is my lame editing of epi's drawing to represent what happened in this incident.

interpret it as you will.

exactly

and you can see that the offset does not depend on glide angle, it's a function of momentary AoA only.

we agree with the reality. getting a head past an obstacle does not ensure the feet will clear. (be it a hurdle or a ledge.)

the jumper will maintain a head low attitude.

using terms like "above" or "below" seem to have muddied the message.

agreed

If you are flying a wingsuit and clip a cliff with your legs, is it speculation to say that you're going to be fucked up? He seems to have had a miraculous escape in this case.

Secondly: It's a message board. On the Internet. People speculate. I'm amazed that you're amazed by this.

you forgot the balloons.


44

Interesting, if somewhat obvious points raised by all so far.

I am going to paste my reply to someone on dz.com who quoted the old: 'there are old pilots and bold pilots, but not old and bold pilots' line and said the only exceptions are Yeager and Corliss.

For the record I am more of a Bob Hoover fan myself .

I will link the video I was referring to and also I will include a transcription of the highly relevant part to this incident.

video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZBcapxGHjE

It is a BBC interview with Bob Hoover, who IMHO is likely one of, if not THE, best pilots ever. Period.

In fact, I think you could safely say that due to the kind of experience and amount of it that Bob Hoover has amassed flying, that at the time of that interview, he was a far better aircraft pilot than anyone could realistically become a wingsuit pilot, if for nothing else just due to how much more time you could spend flying a plane than a wingsuit.

Given the above for context on the interviewee, here is his statement, that I find extremely relevant to this incident.

starting at 1:34 and ending at 1:54...

"It's not how close you get to the ground, but: 'How precise can you fly the airplane?'.
If you feel so careless with your life that you want to be the world's lowest flying aviator, you might do it for a while, but then, a great many friends of mine are no longer with us simply because they cut their margins too close." - Bob Hoover


Secondly, I would like to say: Get well soon Jeb.

As much as many people thought this result was eventually inevitable and there is controversy about permits etc, it still sucks to be broken, so here's wishing you a speedy recovery!

Most Excellent job Living the life you choose of being a BASE Jumper and staying Alive while Doing It .
Heal Fast Jeb .
.
& To all here who Always fly 100% on all there perfect BASE jumps . Fuck all of you.
.

So I have it on good authority that TM is burned and so are the rest of our SU cliff jumps throughout South Africa. Apparently this is such a royal cock up that even our newly formed legal relationship with some Parks authorities in the north of SA are damaged.

I would just like to thank all involved for your efforts, they do not go un-noticed.

To anyone coming to SA from overseas, I will no longer be sharing exit points with anyone until I have their full trust. don't count on jumping any of the sites I have opened on your first trip to JHB, maybe the 2nd trip.

I don't support shit getting burnt and I would hope the rest of the world doesn't either.

sucks that jeb hit a cliff, sucks more that he said FU to to the locals

I was on Tm 2 weeks ago, and on the Berg, and got permuted, and I also film TV shows, but i try and be cool about it.

the Safrican BASE jumpers are smart,informed and now dead in the water cos of jeb

sorry to Gloie and Fred.... you guys did some good work with national parks, and now some asshole is gonna be looking for a bribe and a stashbag...


pay your bills jeb, then get better
Much love!!!!!!

I figure this is what happened to DW too

This is not correct. Lift and drag are usually defined perpendicular or parallel to the relative wind and not the chord line.


Given a downward sloped glide path of 3:1 resp. 18.4 degrees and assuming an angle of attack of 10 to 15 degrees you are still correct in asserting that the head ("leading edge") will be lower than the feet ("trailing edge") - but relative to a horizontal line only!

However, this is not the correct measure when judging whether you pass an object or not. What is relevant is not the horizontal line but the path of flight. Relative to this path the head is higher than the feet, so Yuri is correct that your eyes will have more distance relative to the object than the feet.

People seem to be complicating this.

We don't have any form of thrust in unpowered flight; we are just falling to put it bluntly.

Simplistically, by the time the feet have reached the same horizontal position over the ground that the head was at, the height above that point over the ground will be lower - by an amount dependent on the glide ratio and your height.

complicating?
its getting rediculous!

whats the next step?...figure out the perfekt measurement for a bellycam setup to "aviod" contact with obstacles in flight???
if we are start thinking about strategies how our bodyparts got the best angle to go as close as its possible (talking about the thickness of the hairs around the balls) its getting rediculous!!!

its fucking obvious that traveling with 150 km/h with less than 3 feet space got NO margin of error,...
not even talk about turbulence or wind influence or lack of contaclenses........

Jeb was simply to low to clear the ledge,...he is a human beeing like all the others that fucked up in the past,...not the first time that somebody simply misscalculated a situation,...the reason why is only known by him...let him take position to the hole thing when he is able to,...

hope he get a speedy revovery!
peace...

http://www.youtube.com/...xI&feature=email

“If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.”

respect

This whole think really saddens me more than it makes me mad...
We have not only been doing good work getting jumps legal (with park authorities)but also in the international BASE community getting SA on the map and getting loads of jumpers out here having fun jumping with us enjoying our exits.
Now both relationships have suffered and all the hard work undone because of selfish acts.

Really not cool!

This will be my last post on this matter - before I get mad and personal
One good thing is I enjoyed all the technical info in this thread, thanks

according to this article (previously linked), jeb did apply for a permit but was denied

jeb, heal well, heal fast

I had the same thought. By all accounts, he made it through the wires but obviously was slightly too low. His upper body made it through.

Wwarped is correct saying that the lift vector is perpendicular to the chord. The angle between the relative airflow and the chord line is the angle of attack. This causes the lift vector to be tilted aft, thus causing a vector in the direction of drag. This is known as 'induced drag' or 'lift dependent drag'.

While all these aerodynamic terms are being thrown around and dissected to calculate how accurately a wingsuit can be flown, you cannot ignore the rest of the elements in the Lift Formula. Example Rho. Which is the density of the air. Everyone knows a canopy and thus a wingsuit performs differently at high elevation airfields to sea level drop zones. And the difference between summer and winter conditions. Well the same happens over rock outcrops like a ledge. We can spend all day trying to pick the fly shit out of the pepper and calculate in theory how close a wingsuit can be flown to a ledge, but in reality a simple thing like the temperature of the rock will affect the air density above it, causing a loss or gain in lift. This is why they created the aerodynamic term to cover all unforeseen circumstances: Shit Happens!

+1
Stop this bullshit discussion about vectors, angles, bla bla bla.
If you sneeze while passing the edge you are dead. If you fart really bad while passing the edge you are dead. If you try to pass the ledge really close it is just a matter of time until you hit it, regardles of all theoretical calculatorial assumptions.

 

Agree 100% with Mikki 'Tat-man' ZH!

A lack of respect for Proximity/Terrain flying, combined with a "gotta get closer" attitude- It's only a matter of time.

How many people have already died trying to get the shot? People should try and learn from other's mistakes. It hurts less.

On another note- I'm sick of hearing people say that they touched the trees or bushes on purpose while proxy-flying. That's crazy talk!- Who in their right mind would purposefully try and fly head, belly or hands first through trees or bushes??- Just admit that you fucked-up!


reiner.

I touched the grass many times in Switzerland with the locals... which don't look like a local ;-)

+1

OT:


Sorry, but this is wrong. If you bring induced drag into the discussion you should be exact about the definitions. Lift is always defined perpendicular to some relative wind. If we look at finite wings indeed we have to introduce induced dra. The downwash (caused by the finite wing) combines with the freestream velocity to result in a local relative wind which is kind of directed downward. It is canted downward by the induced angle of attack. The lift vector is canted backwards by this induced angle of attack.

However, it is perpendicular to the local relative wind! The angle between the local relative wind and the chord line is the effective angle of attack.

Lift is not perpendicular to the chord line but perpendicular to the local relative wind.


And hey guys saying aerodynamics is bullshit and so on because it is "anyway dangerous" to do proximity flying. This sounds somewhat like "theory is bullshit" from so called practitioners.

I see it vice versa: If you start flying that extremely close to the rock as Jeb you better have also the extremely fine technical details dialed right in, otherwise it is indeed a matter of mostly luck and not proper planning and execution. I would be surprised if Jeb had not thought about this somewhat before.

Its fine to understand the extremely fine technical details, however.
It does not take much if any technical knowledge to realise that it is impossible to consistently fly that close to a solid object without hitting it.
There will always be variables outside of the control of the pilot.
I am surprised that Jeb did not realise this before now.
It's also worth remembering that the type of wingsuit flying that is now widely practiced with a healthy safety margin was until quite recently looked on as an impossible stunt that could not be repeated consistently.
Perhaps someone has to prove the limit and I think Jeb has done this now and survived, hopefully this lesson will be learnt without anyone having to die.

ok,...aerodynamics are no bullshit,...its very interesting and knowledge is alway the key to succsess,...

what about that:
evrybody know the ground effect,...when a wing flys close over the ground you create something like an aircusion, every airplane uses this effect during landing,...
BUT;...
if the space between two surfaces is to smal you create a lowpressure area,...YOU GET SUCKED TO THE GROUND!!!
many airplanes crashed due this during lowpasses without landinggear extracted...

take 2 pieces of paper, blow between and you see that they stick togehter, bernuolli principle,...

and wait !!...one more!!!

the earth is rotatating with 1670 km/h around itself,...on the equator,....in middel europe its around 900 km/h,...so,...
that means the wall is an moving object that moves with almost the speed of sound at you!!!!
hard to calculate and correct the distance to the object for sure!!!
now it comes,....take care about the direction you fly,...for example:
north to south,...the wall comes at you!
south to north,...the wall goes away and you are safer!
for sure it depends on the hemisphere you are flying at,...
and from west to east its even worst,...means no proxy possible (because WS are to slow) and east to the west...Fatality fore sure,...!!!!
very important for finding and open new exits!!!

so,. thank you very much for you attention,...
hope it helps to make Proxyflying safer,...

sience is wonderfull.....
cheers!!

actually, I'm not sure I agree. "Lift" is used loosely and can mean a variety of things.

- it can mean Total Aerodynamic Force. (which is typically drawn perpendicular to the chord line. a quick review of L/D curves shows this is a bad assumption. I made this bad assumption earlier.)
- it can mean the vertical force that resists gravity.
- it can also mean the force that acts perpendicular to the relative wind, and thus creates the "magic."

it really depends on how people view and define things. those who play with wind tunnels will view things differently than those who play in cockpits.

most data is generated in a horizontal wind tunnels under steady conditions. Drag is the penalty that retards and acts parallel to the wind stream. Lift is the desired force, acting perpendicular to the relative wind, and counteracting gravity.

Lift balances Weight
Drag balances Thrust (which requires an engine)

all users love these conditions and can easily talk to each other.

-----

inclined flight (and especially gliding flight) complicates things.

- theorists will say Lift = Weight, and thus lift must be vertical.
- pilots think lift always acts perpendicular to the fuselage.
- others will insist that lift acts perpendicular to the relative wind.

it leads to confusion in these discussions.

see:
http://www.free-online-private-pilot-ground-school.com/...amics_in_flight.html

Too much speculation going around here. Only Jeb knows exactly what happened. If he broke (minor) both ankles and has got a banged knee why are many telling that he hit the rock with his feet? Why not with his knee (actually, if you imagine it, such a bang would cause the 2 or 3 forward flips his body had after such impact)? I saw many pictures of Jeb training a slow forward speed position without losing too much altitude with his knees deliberately down from the body line (like an inverted spoon)... and he could have broken his ankles on the landing which he hadn't too much time for prepare.

+1

+1 from me as well..

I´m no WS-Pilot in base and I never will be one.
But in my experience, you always loose if you want to be tougher than the object..

For me, the best way to base is to do it until you are old and then you should quit.
It should be your decision, not the choice of the ledge..

If you hit a ledge in full flight, the ledge always looks smarter than you afterwards.. That´s a fact.
The ledge doesn´t care if you knew about angles and vectors, if you contacted the locals in front or if you had the most badass vids on the planet..
(but honest, who outside our community cares about these vids anyway..?)

Does it give you more peace in heaven if you know what went wrong after the strike..?

Close, closer, .....?
what´s next?

Is the next step to determine the speed and distance to the ground where you can slide your tip-toe over?
"hey look at the 20 different shots from my overall mounted GoPros, where you can see me, (and only me!) sliding down the slope in the valley with my feet in the grass, proudly brought to you by daredevil energy drink and triple x-man wingsuit fom suicide factory..?"

Once in a movie, a guy said: "Stupid is as stupid does."

It´s your choice to show that you are a smart guy...
In my opinion, smart guys do everything to survive a jump..
Maybe you know the words:
"Who dares, wins.."
But this is not a rule without exeptions.

That Jeb managed to stay alive is outstanding and impressing.. Tough guy, indeed.
Heal fast and a full recovery...
I respect his knowledge in base and the person itself.
He has pushed the sport a lot.

Would be interesting to watch, what Jeb and every other extreme-proximity-flyer has learned from this..

Take care out there..

In aerodynamics, why isn't anyone mentioning "ground effects?"

hey!!! read my post above...I DID MENTION IT!!!

Do you have a link ot the "getting sucked in" bit you were talking about? I've heard of the increased lift but never the potential for the opposite.

too many words.

no one should count on ground effect during such a fast pass by a ledge.

ground effect boosts lift by disrupting the wingtip vortices. generally, pilots notice it best when their wing is less than a wingspan high.

the surface underneath can greatly influence ground effect as well. a hard, flat surface is the best. shubbery is not.

 
For me, the best way to base is to do it until you are old and then you should quit.

Everyone gets old, hopefully... ;-)
You will know when you are "old enough"..

almost everyone wants to live long but most of them don´t want to be "old"....

What I´ve meant is, for me its better to walk away from base.. not beeing carried away in a body-bag..

I think another lesson that can be deducted here is that in the moments of extreme concentration on the star field effect of rapidly approaching target, it's easy to lose track of our body/gear real dimensions... they "shrink" to become a small sphere around our eyes, extending only to shoulders or chest, at most. We can forget that our body (or gear, canopy) extends much farther than what our attention overloaded with all the visual information can reach.

Imagine you have to walk between two high voltage wires with just a tiny room to spare. If you pass slowly, your attention will rapidly be switching between the two points of danger to give an equal margin to each, as if you had part of your brain and eye on each end. In this case, the situation is slow enough that your brain can do this mind trick of monitoring these virtual cameras mounted on parts of your body exposed to deadly danger and multitasking the incoming info the same way computers multitask (by giving each process small, interleaved, chunks of CPU time).

If you fly through the wires in wingsuit, however, there's no time for this switching between these virtual eyes mounted on your extremities. Your "coverage" shrinks, and the greater your speed is, the smaller the coverage - your eyes become the whole you. You no longer have time to think about your extremities, you simply concentrate on flying through the center of your target as precisely as you can... flying your eyes. You adjust your flight as to center the point from which "stars" are flying out in star field effect on your target. BHAMMM! - "Jeez, how could I possibly have forgotten about my legs?!"

That's probably how Dwain Weston died, too. When you try to fly through a 6x6ft (or whatever it was) box formed by rails and wires, you'd tend to aim at the center of the box with your eyes because there's only a tiny margin for error and because your eyes in extremely fast developing situation become you. Add poor glide, high AoA flight mode prior to impact (due to exit spot being too short to target), and as a result his feet were traveling on a lower trajectory with 4-5ft less clearance from the bottom rail than his head. His eyes flew right through the center... but not his lower body.

Similarly, for example, landing on a narrow road with trees or light poles on the sides - if you concentrate only on where you will be touching the ground, it's easy to forget or underestimate the dimensions of the canopy, and clip a tree or hang on a pole. Instead, quickly looking up on the canopy to get a fresh visual of its dimensions prior to the moment of utmost concentration, trying to spread your attention, "exploding" your gray matter all over the boundaries of body and gear and installing little virtual eyes in extremity points can help you safely fit the whole camel through the needle's eye without contact.

Just brainstorming here.

 
It's impressive that Dwain managed to get his upper body through those wires. Fatal error though.

DW had a natural talent of executing the feedback loop faster than most can. So even with his relatively little WS experience (obvious from his exit from airplane) and even less that of proximity flying, he managed to perfectly execute "observation-correction" loop and fly [his eyes] through bullseye.

When converging on target while flying wingsuit, you do get quite a bit of Superman feeling. Superman always flies with his body stretched along the direction he's flying. Wherever his chest and shoulders can pass through, he as a whole can pass through. It's easy to forget while flying wingsuit that unlike Superman, we have a finite angle of attack and thus our feet are always lower than the head, relative to direction of flight. Extra room should be given below your trajectory as seen by your eyes to allow lower body still be attached to your mighty Superman's chest.

At the risk of seeming to be stirring something up, here's a thing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xceW5DAMRfg

At the end the Jeb and the Interviewer have this exchange:

I: Do you know what went wrong?
JC: Yea, I do. I do know what went wrong. He wanted to go over the railing by, like, 5 ft or something.
I: So he wanted to do something spectacular
JC: He wanted to be close. But 5 ft? I mean, c'mon. That's just unrealistic.

Good catch!

Lessons learned from this accident may seem obvious once you come to think of them. But I must admit: it never came to my mind, before I started thinking about what happened here, that feet travel on a trajectory 1-4ft below eyes' trajectory. Never. Not that I've ever approached terrain below me this close that it would matter. But it might happen to anyone that you make a mistake, or a downdraft would push you down unexpectedly, and you have to dig out. In this case, it's essential to know that you must dig out several extra feet than your eyes tell you to allow your feet pass without "touch-and-go". Something tells me that quite high percentage of wingsuit pilots didn't realize this, either, until now.

And several of them are now dead or got injured.

+1 from me as well..

I´m no WS-Pilot in base and I never will be one.
But in my experience, you always loose if you want to be tougher than the object..

For me, the best way to base is to do it until you are old and then you should quit.
It should be your decision, not the choice of the ledge..

If you hit a ledge in full flight, the ledge always looks smarter than you afterwards.. That´s a fact.
The ledge doesn´t care if you knew about angles and vectors, if you contacted the locals in front or if you had the most badass vids on the planet..
(but honest, who outside our community cares about these vids anyway..?)

Does it give you more peace in heaven if you know what went wrong after the strike..?

Close, closer, .....?
what´s next?

Is the next step to determine the speed and distance to the ground where you can slide your tip-toe over?
"hey look at the 20 different shots from my overall mounted GoPros, where you can see me, (and only me!) sliding down the slope in the valley with my feet in the grass, proudly brought to you by daredevil energy drink and triple x-man wingsuit fom suicide factory..?"

Once in a movie, a guy said: "Stupid is as stupid does."

It´s your choice to show that you are a smart guy...
In my opinion, smart guys do everything to survive a jump..
Maybe you know the words:
"Who dares, wins.."
But this is not a rule without exeptions.

That Jeb managed to stay alive is outstanding and impressing.. Tough guy, indeed.
Heal fast and a full recovery...
I respect his knowledge in base and the person itself.
He has pushed the sport a lot.

Would be interesting to watch, what Jeb and every other extreme-proximity-flyer has learned from this..

Take care out there..
+1, well said Hajo

Uhmmm, would the Team Captains Obvious please stop their plusing orgy and repeatedly stating that object is tougher than you are? Doh. Thanks, we didn't know that. We thought ledges were like your mama's tits - soft and pleasant to touch.

Regardless of anything, people won't stop flying in close proximity above objects. Not Jeb's close, but quite close (e.g. 2 meters). In this case, lessons learned from this accident can be life-saving.

P.S. to Team Captains Obvious: ever hit your head on a low door frame? Well, didn't you know that concrete is tougher than your skull?

You have definately made it aware to the ws pilots out there, i am sure half of them never thought of that mate...

There is one very serious question regarding this incident that no one has looked at yet...

Will having 2 broken ankles mean that Jeb will no longer walk like a 7ft tarzan that got gangbanged at a gay pornstar convention?

Well, deploying after an object strike and flying to the landing site is outstanding. He is Hard To Kill. The old climbers who did a bunch of hairball stuff and pulling it off get that moniker when they outlived most of their buddies. Plain old rock climbing is pretty safe. The big mountains kill climbers like flies. These men and women put up super difficult routes in the mountains and it ain't like Yosemite. Sooner or later a falling rock is going to burst your grape, or you are going to bite it in an avalanche, or you will break some bones and die slowly on a ledge.

A friend of mine got married when he was 40 or so, and 25 of the best climbers in the country stood up and toasted him with a loud, "HARD TO KILL!!"

As for the locals, they are the ones who deal with access on a daily basis, so their wishes should trump everything unless they are just whacky. The SA posts seem pretty clear.

Hard Alpine climbing is more dangerous than generic BASE in my opinion. More injuries in BASE. More fatalities in the mountains. I am talking about sick hard routes on big mountains. Not climbing El Cap.

Ok. The flip side to this coin is access. I'm not really talking about Jeb here, although it probably applies in some sense. This is just a summary of the old day ethics. We constantly had problems with skydivers coming in and burning sites.

It has been said that the object has seen a high number of jumps. So there is probably no question that the authorities are aware of it.

Some places are like that. Out of sight, out of mind. Don't make noise and force them to act to stop it. On sites like that, it is a very good idea not to get hurt in a way that brings attention (I'm sure many have quietly limped off with a broken ankle, and I am sure he would have if possible).

We always had illegal objects that were in that class. Sure they knew we were doing it. Nobody ever saw us, so it never made the news. They didn't want to hassle with us and it went on until somebody totally blew it.

Getting killed is absolutely the worst way to shut down a site that is legal. I warn all of you about the importance of this. Europe is extremely tolerant of people dying in their mountains, but at some point, enough might be enough. Don't get whacked. It is bad for the sport. No kidding. The worst PR.

So if all of this is true, he not only jumped after asking for a permit, but filmed it. Helicopter? How was it filmed? If it was quite the spectical, that ain't cool. El Cap is illegal, but having 7 jumpers do a 7 way in the evening when tourists are in the meadow rubs their noses in it. Not cool.

There is also another side. Seeing the cool stuff that is going on right now is probably GOOD PR. I could have done 1000 El Cap jumps without incident if allowed. Seeing so much ability that is now out there with WS's is in the jumping community's favor.

In the really old days, people used to like to spend part of their vacation watching the cliff divers in Acapulco. There are some sites like that now. Tourists dig it and it won't be stopped. If you tried to shut down Bridge Day, West Virginia would blow a fuse.

The cool stuff that Jeb and others are doing is actually a good thing. People watch it and think it is cool. So they have sympathy for jumpers.

On a so-so site like this one sounds like, an incident could lead to a specific law prohibiting jumping and that would be it. Nada.

Always be aware of the integrity of the object before you jump. I see so many incidents now that were avoided 30 years ago by just forgetting or not knowing The Code. Don't try it if you aren't good enough. If you know somebody who needs to work up to a certain site's difficulty, point them in the proper direction. We always had to do a ton of self policing, because there were almost no legal sites.

And never ruin a site just because you want to get on TV. Back in the old days, you could be on the front page on every single jump if you wanted to. Those types of jumpers were shunned. The ethic was to do your thing and nobody would know about it. Ever.

I remember the first building that got 100 (illegal) jumps when it was under construction. Doing it involved getting with the locals. If something was goofy, come down and don't jump.

You used to be able to back off of any jump, even if your friends went ahead. Nobody ever questioned it. There have always been many cases where jumpers should have backed off but didn't. The number of good objects is finite. That means every single one that gets shut down ends up shrinking the object pool.

Don't be the one to get stuff shut down.

Do everything possible to not attract attention, even if it is legal. That includes getting hurt or killed. If Jeb hadn't been hurt, this wouldn't have been much of an issue.

Don't blow a site. Doesn't matter if you have the most jumps off of it or not. You will answer to those who come along ten years from now.

So take this all with a grain of salt. I have just seen so much happen over the past 36 years. BASE requres a set of ethics, like climbing. It has to be adhered to.

Don't confuse the fact that an object is legal with the notion that you can do something stupid. I can count down some fantastic US sites that were burned. Two of the best sites in the four corners area were

1) Helicopter brought in to film and then a minor accident

2) Hordes invaded, there was a fatality, and that was it.

We used to keep those sites secret. You couldn't even go without somebody way up the food chain allowing you on one of the loads.

Great post but it's nothing that has not been said (written) time and time again. I think its safe to say a large majority of the "newer" generation of jumpers respects your generation. IMO, you guys/gals were/are fuckin hard core. You set the stage for what BASE is today. That said, it's changed nearly at 180 degrees. You guys RESPECTED base, today's gen. does not. It's become too "mainstream" with TubeYou and other online sources. I agree with you dont burn a site just to get on a Showtime documentery but people like Jeb and others seeking the fame dont give a fuck.

I feel for the locals on this one. Seems somewhat parallel to the fight on legal access to US Natl Parks. Lots of time, energy, money, etc. is put in then one or two glory-hole whores step in to fuck it all up.

Yeah, I know how things have changed. I'm not jumping anymore, but I know a ton of active jumpers.

We used to have assholes burn sites. They were skydivers who dayblazed or got hurt.

There were also some bad apples who would do stuff like climb a building's window washer track in a clown suit during the day and then jump off in front of a zillion people. You know. Small penis syndrome.

Today it is coming from within the actual BASE community. Mentors aren't doing their job.

Same problem, really.

As for Jeb, he is really pushing it, and I have nothing against him making some money to fund his habit. The top climbers are all sponsored now. He is good. There are others that are good but like playing on the down low.

I am not really calling Jeb out. It is just unfortunate. If he hadn't gotten hurt, there would be no news.

Just use some common sense.

I'm old...old enough to remember BASE ethics, old enough to have seen my favourite sites burned, I'm a pretty mediocre BASE WS pilot,( the oldest one I've run into), but I'm not ready to walk away from this amazing sport yet, so, respect those sites, they are finite, I may never fly like Jokke, Tigern, or Matt,but I'd like the chance to keep working on it. Patriick is dead, Shane is dead, DW is dead, I respect the people that push the boundaries but don't have any desire to be a dead legend.....just a pteradactyl who gets pleasure from the experience.
We can all learn from Jeb's incident, I wish him a speedy recovery.

165. May 2011. Mirko Schmidt. Wingsuit proximity.
167. Jun 2011. Bryan Hirn. Wingsuit proximity.
173. Aug 2011. Olivier Labauve. Wingsuit proximity.
175. Sep 2011. Fabrice Rieu. Wingsuit proximity.
176. Sep 2011. Nico Müller. Wingsuit proximity.
178. Oct 2011. Rob Kelly. Wingsuit proximity.
179. Oct 2011. Antoine Montant. Wingsuit proximity.

Seriously?? That seems like basic common sense to me.
If people didn't realize this on their own, they should never be proximity flying above terrain.

Holy fuck. 7 deaths. How many people were even making proxy flights?!

Let's find out!

I think we can now safely say that hitting the ground while proxy flying is only as bad as tripping and falling down the stairs. A knee owie and some boo boos on the ankles? No big deal. Go Jeff Corliss!

who is jeff corliss?


44

Ha ha. :-)

. . . I hope Jeb is able to recover. I like him and his movies.

Be safe out there folks. Cheers!

Not all proxy flying ...

Yep. I've been a climber for along time. And when I was younger alpine rock and ice was the business. I've seen way more fatalities in climbing during that time than in BASE.

But then again there are way more people participating in climbing than BASE.

They're both pretty hairy. I'm glad I moved on to other things in my life like marriage and kids. But my memories are find :-)

 NO shit......My mentor had me all screwed up ass-backwards... thank g-d Marta and Jimmy came along and straightened me out. I don't know what would have happened if I kept hanging around that guy..... he was always kinda sketchy. ....... or maybe "Dodgy" as he would have described it.

Back to the point....... Jeb ... heal well .... heal quick..... and as always ... stay safe ... or at least stay safer my friend. Glad you are still in one piece. Give a shout when you're feeling better.

Back to stealthy B....... live long and prosper.......see you soon.

Yep. This has always been the problem with BASE.

As for Jeb, even a nitwit like me knows that he is wayyyy good and pushing the limits. That is a good thing.

I am not saying anything bad about him. I am just describing the care and feeding of the best sites. It has always been that way.

I don't WS BASE (although I do hit objects regularly) but I think I have a solution.
Jeb only just clipped the cliff so we are talking inches here. What we need is a portable "Exit-Boost-Step" that you can stand on to give you the margin of error you need. About 8 inches should be enough and it could be made to look like a rock and biodegradable so you don't have to walk back up and get it. Awesome.

I've not patented this, it's my gift to the community.

Eureka! Proxy fliers should use a reverse periscope, the lens would be 4' below the eyes so the body couldn't make contact before the periscope hit. If the 'scope hits you simply pull up!

Yes, thanks, I already know that I'm a genius.

Thanks for your generous gift. Chinese already invented and patented it, in preparation for Jeb's visit.

Good brainstorming going on here! If Nobel Prize were to be split between all laureates here, each one would get a dollar!

Another idea: if you're a contortionist, you can bend in half and put fake legs into wingsuit. If you were to chop them on a rad proxy flight, you'd be totally safe! Just like that circus trick with a girl cut in half with a saw.

You're right about #173 and #175 (although BFL doesn't provide any details about 173 other than it was Prodigy), I missed the details.

But #179 was "involving flying a long turn and passing under power lines. His body was found dead on a ledge under the power lines, entangled in his bridle." Failure to execute difficult line due to being unexpectedly too close to objects is essentially, a WS proximity fatality.

Ok, just five proximity fatalities. Ah, that's nothing. Continue dying, people!

The latest news i had was that Olivier had a stroke when he jumped, and probably pulled straight away because he just felt something was going wrong with him ...

For Antoine, i don't think we can say it's wingsuit proxy. If you die landing doesn't mean that you were swooping. Hitting the ground doesn't mean that you were doing proxy flying ... You can stay away from ground even when you fly below the powerlines, but Antoine had too little experience with wingsuit flying to fly the good line, especially with the tony ...
Proxy accident is when you want being close to object and hit it, not when you try to avoid it far away but hit it because [not enough skills|misjudging|...]

By the way, all that doesn't make any difference for these guys

Multiple edits because i try to fix my English spelling

Yeah, I guess we can argue about terminology ad infinitum, but what's common to all these fatalities (except for medical case you mentioned) is that they all resulted from failure to precisely judge and execute flight line between the just-after-starting-to-fly and just-before-pull-at-reasonable-altitude phases. On a WS BASE jump, one can die during these 4 phases of jump: exit (unstable exit resulting in cliff strike, or failure to clear the ledges in the first few seconds), full flight, pull time, and landing. We're considering only full flight phase here. Obviously, if you're far away from any objects, you can't have any problem (other than a freaky one - heart stroke, bird strike, alien attack). So, you only have problem if you're close to object - terrain, trees, wires, bridge rails... Whether you're intentionally get close to object or not intentionally, matters only for classification of a successful jump. In one occasion, you can say, "I dove to the ledge to do some cool proximity!", in another, you can say, "I flew at my best L/D ever and juuust cleared that last drop that gave me the full 2000 meters of altitude!" In the former, we call it a proximity flying, in the latter, we call it high-performance flying.

But if you fuck up, the difference doesn't matter, really. It's the same as we call all landing accidents, well, landing accidents. Whether you were swooping, or you were just a student and dropped a toggle or flared to high, or something else, doesn't matter - it's a landing accident. Your intention only matters if execution is a success; if it's a failure, we usually classify it by the phase of the jump. In our case, whether you were intentionally close to object or as a result of poor performance or random factors - you failed to execute the line in close proximity to objects without a hitch, so it's a proximity accident. In other words, you proximity flew whether because you wanted to, or because of topography of the site, or because of poor performance, or because of random nature factors... but you proximity flew and died = wingsuit proximity fatality.

But then again, everyone can have their own classification.

so is he dead?

The Flatbed Ten and some of the other city-geek yayhoos who painted rocks and threw trash provided convenient window dressing for the decision - Yep these would be the idiots!

#176 was not proximity flying

Does this mean Jeb's luck jar is now empty?

It doesn't seem like he brings his luck jar with to SA

"Sail"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Veg63B8ofnQ

holy shit, I didn't stop laughing for 20 minutes after seeing that

Marry me

Yeah,,go for it kitty!
No parachute base jump!

http://unofficialnetworks.com/...ngsuit-flying-72240/

[Eureka! Proxy fliers should use a reverse periscope, the lens would be 4' below the eyes so the body couldn't make contact before the periscope hit. If the 'scope hits you simply pull up!

Yes, thanks, I already know that I'm a genius.uote]

Kind of like the curb ticklers you see on ghetto cruisers only a bit longer.

Kind of like the curb ticklers you see on ghetto cruisers only a bit longer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHhDuAg-yPE
where your feet are when you fly

Jarno doing a flyby past hot airballoon, with an IDT 1000fps camera

Nah, I didn't write that. Just quoted it to sort of disagree. But I don't jump much, then again I'll be 59 this summer. Is that old?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gLQhtRndpM&feature=related


I guess this is the latest video released of his POV?

LOLhahah .. ..that's funny twisted .
& heal up get well Jeb .
.

I’m still amazed how he still managed to open and land safely. I hope you have a quick recovery and continue with the wingsuit landing project, Jeb.

I hope it is not a repost in such a long thread:

http://www.hbo.com/...ter-jeb-corliss.html

He loses his helmet on impact, at 1.13.

Ronald

Best part was hearing the beep trying to
cover Jeff Nebelkopf saying: "Ah Fuck!"

The apparent lack of any evasive action prior to impact is, essentially, a Q.E.D. of the hypothesis that he "forgot about legs" (didn't know that feet travel on a lower trajectory than that of head).

On the other hand, this fact opens the doors to a new extreme sport I just invented in my head: wingsuit swooping. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you heard it right: wingsuit swooping. On a plato or shallow talus (like the one Jeb hit), a swooping pond is constructed, with its end on the edge of a drop high enough to fly away and deploy safely. Wingsuiter flies steep after exit to gain additional speed and flares to achieve level flight for 1-2s just above the pond (possible with modern suits), dragging feet on the water. Points are earned by distance and artistic expression (e.g. Blind Man - backfly swooping). Special prizes for those who chow and stop before the edge, still alive: they landed the wingsuit! Touch-and-tumble past the edge? No points.

It's a long stretch, but then again, no one in 1950's could imagine that flying a parachute at 70mph across water and dragging feet is possible!

Just brainstorming here - you're welcome.

His helmet stayed on

It seems that it's Jeb's, no? The way "Ahhhhh" is said (more like someone experiencing excruciating pain ~1s after the impact), timing (after flip is complete and his flight is stabilized), and the increasing noise before impact (echo from being so close to rocks) that stops sharply after impact (while cameraman is still over the rocks).

It's probably a balloon (it can be seen there before impact).

That is a little bit too much speculation, I think, without hearing Jeb's personal account of the accident.

Yes, it is a possible explanation that Jeb indeed "forgot about his legs".

But another explanation is possible as well: Jeb knew very well it was going to be extremely close and he tried to balloon / maximize glide / whatever you do instinctively when you think you are going to die (and what you think was "no evasive action" ... perhaps it was?).

This thread has brought forward many interesting points and probably has enlightened several people to technical details they did not think about before. But I would leave it at that and not try to "know" what Jeb knew or did not know about his legs and their trajectory.

Without hearing Jeb himself it is rather vain to speculate about his perceived knowledge and planning of the jump.

I highly doubt Jeb will ever step forward and admit such an epic fail. It's not just us jumpers looking for technical details. It's millions of people, major TV and news networks, who view Jeb as a hero, as an amazing athlete doing things nobody in the world can do (flying through the cave they fly airplanes through, for example... nobody from about a dozen of talented jumpers who were invited there could do it... ...wink-wink... only Jeb! ...wink-wink... he's The Only One! ...wink-wink).

So, even if he says that he saw that he was too low and was digging out, I personally wouldn't believe it.

Play the video in a tight loop around the impact. That's not digging out. That's not flaring. That's not "whatever you do instinctively when you think you are going to die". That's just normal flight, just as if he was 100ft above the rock, not 1 or 2. If you filmed someone walking through a low doorframe hitting their forehead, it'd be just like this - zero awareness of the danger until only after the fact.

Anyway, speculation or not, the discussion here was good as it brought forward quite real results.

Well the answer is very simple. I was flying to close and messed up :) I was going for a black balloon that was basically laying on the rocks and was going to try and kick it with my foot. In order to do this I had to fly low and flat between boulders. My left foot clipped a boulder that dragged me into a flat ledge that I took at the waist at full speed. If I had not clipped that boulder i might have made it, I might have still impacted. It's very hard to tell from the footage. Everything happens very fast. But when you go for a flight where inches are the difference between making it and not making it well impact is very possible. I knew this and took the risk and paid the price for pushing way to hard. I take full responsibility for my actions and am just happy I still have legs to do rehab on.

This is not my first time getting hurt and it will not be my last. I push it, always have and always will. One day I will die and I just hope that when I do, it will be doing something I truly love...

Jeb

P.S. I want to thank everyone for their support. 99% of you have been very very nice to me :) For the other 1% I agree with you 100%, I am a total dumb ass :) I am human and humans make mistakes. I am sorry for what ever inconvenience I have caused anyone...

Hi Jeb,

Thanks for the reply! Quite enlighting because indeed at least for me it would have been impossible to see the black balloon, clipping a boulder etc.

Glad you got out comparatively unhurt and are healing well. Get well soon for your next jumps!

All the best.

I hope you heal soon and are completely restored, all the very best to you.
Tim Harris

So Yuri, my old and respected friend... ahem... turnabout is fair play:

"I highly doubt Jeb will you ever step forward and admit such an epic fail?"

44

I thought it was his helmet too until Sinister said "no." Then it was like, "if he's right, then it can only be the balloon" and a closer look confirmed that. You can see the balloon right before impact and sure enough, there it goes with him.

Which makes more sense, of course. If Jeb had hit hard enough to knock that particular helmet setup off, Yuri wouldn't be contemplating a meal of the big black bird that goes "CAW!"

Guess you and I are both getting too old to see as well as the young guns.

44

Sure - kudos to Jeb for admitting such a silly thing as trying to kick a balloon almost lying on the rocks, and kicking a boulder instead.

The rest of the analysis (asymmetric margin for error, wetted area, focus of concentration) still stands.

What we missed (and that's another lesson here for those eager to learn) is how one's value of life affects such an analysis. It assumes that one values their life. But if kicking balloons is worth dying for, the margin for error can be pushed to zero, wetted area can be ignored, and concentration can be 100% focused on a soft target, ignoring the hard ones. And fucking up access to site for the whole world is an OK thing to let happen, too. Applying any analysis, laws of physics and statistics, ethical considerations to such an individual is an epic fail. And if such an individual dies this way, they'll say "he died doing what he loved... kicking the balloons".

FAIL!

That wasn't an admission of anything, just an epic continuation of the cogent, learned points you've already made, with a nice little extra layer of whining on top.

You've been around whuffos too long, though; their thinking is seeping into your brain and coming out of your mouth when you start baggin' on people for having fun taking risks you feel are unacceptable.

You know, I watched Dwain turn himself into red spray and rapidly cooling meat, watched his leg land three feet in front of me, and watched Jeb walk up the tracks in disbelief afterward, his black jumpsuit mottled from flying through the blood cloud.

As I recall, there was nothing but kind words and hero worship on these boards about him after his epic fail, all well-deserved, of course, but nonetheless blind to the fact that Dwain betrayed the trust placed in him by the organizers way beyond the point of potentially endangering a legal site -- to the point, in fact, that the chief sponsor and the bridge company president both ducked to avoid being hit by him.

Fortunately, we all see a little more clearly now, plus Jeb lived so it's easier to fire shots at him than if he'd dismembered himself. But really, Yuri, think about how silly you sound, on a base board, scolding him for taking chances you (and I!) certainly wouldn't take.

Back in the day, Yuri, you rocked the parachuting world. You were the point of wingsuit pioneer spear.

Then Dwain rocked, did things no one had seen, dared or even dreamed of doing.

Now Jeb rocks -- and not just when he hits them. More whuffos know about Jeb, are inspired by Jeb, are motivated by the art he creates, than perhaps any other parachutist in history.

That is something I'd prefer to celebrate, not criticize and denigrate.

Yes, Jeb screwed up totally, starting with losing his fear of Table Mountain but also tabling his respect for it and relegating it straight to playground status, and culminating in focusing too much on hitting the balloon and too little on missing the rocks, but you know, like... so what?

Life is dangerous.
Wingsuiting is more dangerous.
Proxy flying is even more dangerous.

And trying to kick balloons while you're proxy flying between boulders is beyond dangerous.

It's priceless.

Ya-effing-HOO!

44

Are you mistaking me with Real Yuri? I'm the Fake Yuri, pay a bit of attention, would ya? Really, really fake. So fake that it makes me almost real.

And I agree - kicking balloons is priceless (if you so desire), but why not do it on a solo jump, with no media, somewhere where fucking up would not affect anyone else? It seems Jeb doesn't do what he loves just because. I highly doubt that Jeb can even exist without media. And that's an epic fail, my friend: to exist only to feed the media behemoth.




P.S. I know SA jumpers won't like hearing this, but personally, I'm happy that what happened didn't happen at Sputnik in Schwitzerschnitzel land. Wanna kick balloons? Jump in Kazakhstan, with Borat doing coverage. There are some terminal jumps out there. Nobody will care if you fuck up there. Have at it all you can.

SAIL!

Well, that explains why you sound like a whining whuffo wannabe.

And now I owe an apology to the Real Yuri.

44

Yeah, it's quite an epic fail of you, Robin Heid, to send all those PMs and write in great length here talking to a wrong guy. And you are a... journalist?! I wonder how many stories you wrote without checking if you're talking to the right person.

SAIL, idiot!

 Just a question here, Why, when flying that close to the ground and apparently between objects would you want to try and kick something potentialy changing your airfoil and flight path by lowering a leg, I mean even if he hadn't kicked the rock couldn't he have posibly started a turn or something of that nature or lost what little altidude he had to begin with.
I never jumped a wingsuit so I don't know how sensitive they are to inputs.

Indeed, though I must say it's better to get faked out once in a while than to be one all the time.

But back to Jeb and the 1 percent of which you are so assiduously a part. As former US president Theodore Roosevelt so famously said:

"It's not the critic who counts,
not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled,
or when the doer of deeds could have done better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena;
whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;
who strives valiantly;
who errs and comes short again and again;
who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause;
who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and
who at the worst if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly,
so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."

44

Please do not ask that kind of questions from this yuribase dude. Nobody wants to read his endless mathematical and theoretical equasions, nobody gives a shit what he thinks about most anything. Because that is all he has to offer, quasi-scientific nonsense and theoretical babble that is most of the time pretty far off from the real jumping environment that it is blatantly obvious he has very little experience of his own. Although he's very keen on sharing his valuable insight and expertise on anything that even remotely has to do with wingsuit flying. So please godfrog, just don't ask.

Kerkko
BASE1184

Sorry if this sounds a bit harsh Yuri but I needed this, my head tries to implode every time I see your posts. Please stop posting and go jump. I feel better already.

To Jeb, utmost respect to you for saving your life after the impact, regardless of the size of the fuck up.

It was a general question for anyone, did not mean yo offend anyones sensibilities.

@44
the yuri you are thinking of is Outrager.
yuri-base is this guy (aka veter).

Did anyone notice this little nugget in the HBO video?

"is it on? is it on? is it on?..."

Yes!! I watched it a second time so I could pause and count the gopros

Thanks, Goo. I know. What a brain fart on my part confusing a fart brain with the real Yuri.

Not as painful as dragging rock instead of balloon, though -- and a much quicker recovery time.

44

As to "why", Jeb answered above. He knew that an inch or two makes a difference between life and death in what he was trying to do and decided to play this Russian Roulette anyway (if you don't value your life, why not?). ("Whatever happens, happens." - Dwain Weston before his Darwin jump.) He pulled the trigger. The gun fired. The bullet went through the skull without damaging the brain (as there was none there), and the patient lived. That's an executive summary of the accident, right here.

But we can't stop learning here, we're learning machines, aren't we? (Hey, even this Robin Hood guy learned to SAIL here. ) It intrigued me, too, to answer this question: how much we can really change our trajectory in the last second when we see that we made a mistake? Can we flare and pop up a couple of feet? ten feet? or only a couple of inches? or millimeters? Answering this can be useful for lots of people who might be delusioning themselves into thinking that they can always "flare", as if it was a canopy, to hop over the obstacle.

If you've seen the videos of some close calls, it seems, a couple of inches at most sounds about right (i.e. look at this spectacular tree strike here at 3:48: http://vimeo.com/36778012).

Those who f10ck may say that they can peel off the f10ck like mad dogs. True, f10ckers always easily impress themselves. But to peel off is a premeditated decision. Your internal time counter starts after you changed body position and started feel the effect. If you had only 1 second before hitting an object in wingsuit, all of it will be spent just changing the body position, the noticeable effect of it coming only after it's too late.

Can the magical, Nobel Prize winning Wingsuit Studio give us an estimate?

For proximity above objects, a fast, steep flight mode is usually used (analog to front risers in canopy control). Let's take sustained speeds of 120mph horizontal and 80mph vertical as an example of the approach to soft balloon hard boulder. That's at sea level; if the strike occurred at 2000ft AMSL, the equivalent speeds will be approx. 126mph and 84mph, respectively.

So, you're 1s away from your target and see that you're a bit too low. How far away you're from the target at this moment? Total speed is V = sqrt(126^2 + 84^2) = 151mph. Distance is then 151mph*5280ft/mi*1s/(3600s/h) = 222ft. You're 222ft from the object of 1ft in diameter. How accurate can you be in your judgement of distances and sizes when you're more than 200ft away? Can you really see that you're 2 inches too low? or that's 2 feet too low? or can you project your wetted area into the target to see if you clear all obstacles? (That's just some rhetorical questions here, no need to answer.)

Ok, you're 222ft away and you see that you're low. Reaction time (just to make decision) is what? Let's say, yours is 0.2s (Myth Buster's dodging bullets was a good example that it's more like 0.4s+ before they even start moving a single muscle.) So, you have 0.8s left. You start changing body position. How much you can change your body position in 0.8s? Not all of this change will have time to make an effect on your trajectory in 0.8s, so let's say, the effective time is 0.5s and you, in 0.3s, managed to change your flight mode from steep 120/80mph to shallower 100/50 (which I think, is very unrealistic, but let it be).

So, without correction, at 120/80mph flight mode, you'll be 92ft forward and 62ft down from the start point of 0.5s ago:



With the correction, you'll be 93ft forward and 59ft down from the initial point:



So, you "popped" about 3ft up.

Is this realistic. I doesn't thinks so. It's not possible to change body position in a fraction of a second and see immediate noticeable effect on the angle of attack, which also changes only gradually, essentially, having the same time-delayed behavior as the trajectory itself. If correction is only 110/70mph, you pop up only 1 foot:



I think even that is a very optimistic exaggeration. I think it's unrealistic to think that you can pop up more than 1ft if you noticed 1s before impact that you're low. And if you forgot about wetted area or made a mistake in distance judgement, you're automatically fucked.

Solution? Don't try to kick balloons laying on the rocks, silly! Put them on long strings so that they're flying high above and far from any obstacles, make sure they're not pushed down by the wind, and kick them all you want!


P.S. I dedicate this post to Kerkko, whose head will implode after reading it. Fuck the Finns! Fake Yuri, imploding Finn brains, one at a time.

Is a technical analysis made with Line Rider (http://www.linerider.com) really applicable to this incident?

there is an inherent delay after changing aerodynamics.
you focused on that.

so?

you sort of missed the obvious. bending his knees may have been all Jeb needed, especially considering the nature of his injuries. sure, it would hose his aerodynamic purity, and may have caused him to tumble. but he did anyhow and survived.

maybe since you can't quantify it, you will never understand the mystery of being human. we all have our motivations and impulses that defy logic.

just because you had a cliff strike, doesn't mean everyone should stop jumping cliffs. sure, it may be right for you, but we are all different. Jeb will continue to follow his path, no matter what you think.

No doubt. We can only wait in horror what's the next thing he's going to fuck up for the rest of us. New York City - done. South Africa - done. What's next? Sputnik? If not him, some other idiot will, who'll try to replicate Jeb's balloon kicking. Laterbrunnen? (ok, that's kinda gay place anyway.) Eiger? Dolomites? Brento? Big French flights?

We can't change Jeb, but we can pull lots of useful info out of this, including some things that at least can help his cocksuckers not to repeat his retarded goofups.

With all do respect...

This thread has gotten really far away from discussing an incident. I wouldn't miss it if a mod froze it.

base is about following your individual muse, and be willing to pay the price for flawed judgement. Jeb is paying.

Jeb has pissed some people off.
I have pissed some people off.
you have pissed some people off.
TomA has pissed some people off.

do you really think any of us will change?
isn't it time for to give it a rest?

BASE, is about your ego. Nothing more, nothing less

Julian said this to me:
"we can either jump to enrich or define our life, your choice. but to try jump to define who we are, simply means we need others to know......"

Best BASE related quote I've ever heard.

http://bonjourbluesky.tv/...rash-angles-cams-884

Finally some POV's. IMHO, the black balloon was too low if that was what he was aiming for. (at 1.58)

Ronald

Table Mountain crash all angles..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEFCQRwj28w

There is no denying it, that was one hell of a good save!

Well done on the recovery Jeb

it looks like he was flying full performance during the whole flight...

Was that black balloon snagged on a rock or plant? It appears he intended to hit it. Once he does is rises to the height of the other balloon but does not fly off. Was he was aiming for the the balloon , which was snagged and lower than he anticipated. resulting in the collision?

Jeb can fly low and dirty. So can a bunch of either people these days.

I can't believe that he lived. He was reacting incredibly fast, which is the result of a good mind.

He impacts and goes unstable. He regains stability but then it is clear he won't outfly the remaining talus. He deploys and impacts immediately.

If he had hesitated in any of those movements, even by 1/4 of a second, he would be dead. So I am very impressed with the save. All of us have seen hours of Youtube videos of wild wingsuit flights. Nobody gets to see a save like this.

We used to say, "If You Think, You Stink." Meaning that you should do all of your thinking beforehand, and incorporate all of your experience.

That is how he lived. He didn't think. He did.

Now back to the arguing of the rest of it. As for cutting it close, we have all seen him and others flying low and dirty on videos. It isn't anything new or earth shattering now.

Glad you survived, man. Great save. Now ponder if it was cool to jump an object with a sketchy access issue with a bunch of cameras following you around.

It sounds harsh, but the real issue will always be about preserving access. Don't rub the local law's nose in it. They will react.

wow! Talk about a last minute deployment, too. Scary.

Clearly, the center of the star-field effect - impact point - for chest camera is the ledge:



So his eyes were telling him that he's going to clear it by a small margin. And they did. He just forgot about his legs which were traveling about 2ft lower than the chest, a simple geometric fact of flight that, according to a poll, 45% of WS fliers didn't know - until now. Clipping the boulder with the left foot was just another consequence of that, it didn't change his trajectory even slightly. Even if that boulder were not there, he'll still impact waist down.

Darwin tried, Darwin failed. Looks like Jeb is tougher than Darwin.

wwarped, NOW is enough. There's nothing more to learn here. Lock the thread, you have my permission.

Can't remember who 1st Posted this here ??? . but it's priceless & fits right-in .

> ..." Let's all just pull out our Dicks & Piss on each other ".
.

Some actually like that shit

434, some of your friends died probably by exact same mechanism... Should they know this before, they'd be still with us. Now that this is known, some fatalities that otherwise were chalked into the future, would not happen, as people will now be aware of this in their flight planning? You call this shit? Shame on you.

Pardon? What are you talking about?

yuri base, stfu.

jeb- close call mate, .5 second canopy ride?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LEFCQRwj28w#!

RayLosi was likely commenting on how some people like to get peed on. Not referencing the wingsuit accident/situation as "shit"

target fixation and bad judgement are nothing new. it happens all the time at the dz.

it is one reason swoopers get rides in vehicles with flashing lights and sirens. USPA has struggled to stop these accidents.

<sigh>
you are so fixated on your beautiful math and how it can save jumpers, you seem to miss these basic points about human behavior.

http://www.youtube.com/...&feature=related

My friend Dr. Geo is probably dead because he trusted to much in theorie, glied angles, equations and so on.
He once worked on an equation for a entire week that was modeling the start phase of a wingsuit launch. He was a great mathematician, a great physicist and an excellent Wingsuit Pilot. He was so smart, the swiss ETH asked him to come to Switzerland to work on his jet engine wingsuit project with tax money :-)
I'm 100% positive he was a much better mathematician and physicist (and Wingsuit pilot) that you will ever be.
But in the end, bad judgment and object fixation killed him. Sad and simple like that.
I did not waste 1 minute to read your theoretical bullshit in this post. It is useless. And has nothing to do with the real world. Go and jump, have fun and try not to die.
And please get it into your head and be realistic: Your equations will not save anybody! They have absolutly no value for the Wingsuit Base jumpers

Mikki, I feel with you that yuri_base is getting way out of line. What started as a technical discussion now becomes a tirade, including pure allegations about Jeb's or other jumpers' perceived knowledge and planning. Yuri, I think it would have been enough to make your point about the feet and their trajectory once and refrain from amateur psychology afterwards.

However, Mikki, I really feel uncomfortable about the attitude towards proper "scientific" thinking you and others seem to propagate here.

What you seem to advocate amounts to "I choose not to know what can be known". I am not sure what method you recommend for wingsuit flight planning instead...trial & error???

Several people over the world do fly extremely close to objects nowadays, that's a fact. Simply saying "well leave yourself more margin for error" does not help at all because no one really quantifies where the margin becomes "acceptable".

I strongly believe that in this realm of extreme proximity flying the technical and scientific details should be understood as far as possible. Otherwise residual risk is augmented unnecessarily. The alternative is trial and error which is more painful and deadly than thinking ahead.

Jeb, maybe you can chime in again, that would be great.

First, thanks for the "all-angles" video. The "save" you show here is most impressive. I am very happy to hear you are making good progress.

When looking at the video it seems that the black balloon is floating higher after your unfortunate strike than before. Question then: was the black balloon maybe floating lower than planned because it was stuck somehow or pushed down by a thermal?

Thanks, and hope you will soon be fully recovered.

Hey MIKKI,.... 1+

and folks,...

i think only one thing in this discusion is for sure:

EVERYTIME WHEN SOMEBODY OPENS THIS THREAD A BOOK COMMITS SUICIDE!!!!!!

What I wanted to say is that you should use common sence instaed of scientific thinking.

If you try to fly so close to an object by only a few cm, you will probably die somedays anyway. It is not a matter of knowing that your upper body could make it but that your feet will hit the ledge.
All the theoretical knowledge will not help you if you fly that close. Factors like downdrafts, piloting tolearance, thermals and so on are much more important. Knowing that the impact point of your head is not the same as your feet are not that relevant.
A good planing of the flight is important. But if your plan is to fly only a few cm above the ground the chance that you die is very, very high and that is in general not a good plan. many jumpers are pushing Proximity flying. But I think Jeb is one of very few jumpers with the goal to fly that close to the ground. And I think he is totally aware that the chance is very big to die on this.
99% of the proximity flyers don't have this goal and think that the risk to die is much bigger than what they gain by flying that close.

hahaha, very true :-)

Also knowing Jeb have been training for his projects with all kind of resources needed. He have always been using the best gear he could get (personlized) He have the best people ranging from stunt to Nasa innvolved in his project, and he knows very well the risk he takes. The media show is to make money doing what he does. I do not agree with Jeb in what he is doing or saying sometimes, but I do respect his work. He knows he will die one day, and so will the rest of us. I just do not like to talk so much about it.

Jeb is the first BASE athlete I have met. No one else I met have put down so much effort to be where he is today.

Also as mentioned before in a post here. Jeb have survivel instincts way above many of us. Great job job to survive that one, even I do not like what I see wich gives me mixed feelings.

We probably differ in our projection of the future.

What is common sense "not to do" nowadays is "normal to do" tomorrow.

When people started base jumping it was common sense to get as far away from the object as possible and not jump underhung objects for example.

When people started taking wingsuits of fixed objects it was common sense to fly away from the object as far as possible to have as much object separation as possible.

When people started flying closer to objects it was common sense to fly only laterally close and not vertically so that you can always "break away".

When people started doing proximity flying also in the vertical dimension with "no easy outs" it was common sense to fly steep with high speed so you can flatten the glide if needed.

You see? Nowadays it is what you call common sense that you should not fly only cm above the object. I believe we will see here the same development as in other areas of base and in a few years more people will fly rather routinely extremely close to objects. People like Jeb are the pathbreakers towards this, as have been other people for earlier advancements of base jumping. You cannot change this, progress is happening, no matter what is considered common sense nowadays.

Now, I am only saying that in this area of very small margins for error (no contradiction here) scientific thinking should be included so as to understand also very fine technical details and minimize residual risk. Such flying will have become "manageable" with acceptable risk as have been other advancements before.

I wish Jeb all the best on his courageous path and hope to see he will manage all this without further incidents.

Having made my point I will leave it at that :).

Hey Eduard,

springst du noch viel?

A-m-a-z-i-n-g. It's amazing how some people get an erection in their brain when they hear the name of their idol. Jeb replied to your post, and you're like "ZOMFG!!!! I can't believe JEB CORLISS *HimSelf* replied to *ME*!!!!!!! My God talked to me!!! Uh! Oh! Ah! This is my day! More! More! Make me come, baby!"

I can't believe how many cocksuckers are out there whose rational thinking fogs up instantly when their idols become the subject of such democratic, it-does-not-matter-who-you-are thing as analyzing and learning from incidents, for the benefit of everyone.

Do a thought experiment, please. Imagine that it was not Jeb involved in this accident. It was... it was... (queue in the suspense drums)... it was SANGI!!! (Sorry, Sangi, I couldn't resist ). Bwaaaahahahahaaaa!!! Can you imagine... no, can you just imagine the fucking epic shitstorm that will be here if it was Sangi?!

Imagine that the guy in this epic Darwin screenshot is Sangi:



With legs planted into the rock, while brain still doesn't know it. He's smiling, he thinks what a great YouTube video he'll make. He'll show 'em all how it's done! He just forgot about his legs... And it's Sangi. What will all the cocksuckers say then?!

Imagine that the guy in this picture taken on that trip, is Sangi:



Will you crack some jokes about Russian Roulette here? Or lack of brain? What did he try to say by this picture?

See, nothing is different, just the name. Same jump, same mistake, same consequences, for jumper and jumpers around the world.

Now, do another thought experiment (Michi - don't do it, please, as you'll collapse in convulsions if you do it).

Imagine it was not Table Mountain, but Sputnik. Again, Jeb vs. Sangi. As a result of the accident, Sputnik is fucked for everyone else. They build a high net preventing flying into the crack. They catch jumpers landing in town. They check bags at cable car station. They remove the magic box with porn magazines on exit. (Michi, would you like a napkin to wipe your tears?)

What all the cocksuckers will say THEN, huh?

"Hi Sangi,

Thanks for the reply! Quite enlighting because indeed at least for me it would have been impossible to see the black balloon, clipping a boulder etc.

Glad you got out comparatively unhurt and are healing well. Get well soon for your next jumps!

All the best."


"What started as a technical discussion now becomes a tirade, including pure allegations about Sangi's or other jumpers' perceived knowledge and planning."


"Sangi, maybe you can chime in again, that would be great.

First, thanks for the "all-angles" video. The "save" you show here is most impressive. I am very happy to hear you are making good progress.

When looking at the video it seems that the black balloon is floating higher after your unfortunate strike than before. Question then: was the black balloon maybe floating lower than planned because it was stuck somehow or pushed down by a thermal?

Thanks, and hope you will soon be fully recovered."


I doesn't thinks so.

The wave of shit here will be bigger than Japanese tsunami, and everyone will turn into a exploding nuclear power plant shredding Sangi into protons, neutrons, electrons, and some gamma rays.

"You fucking idiot, what were you thinking?!" I don't even want to start, I'll leave it to your imagination.

Oh the wonders just the name does to people's thinking...

Having made my point I will leave it at that :).


P.S. I've been to Sputnik exit, but after measuring rockdrop (precise measurement with timer, weak throw, and subtracting sound travel time gave me 5.8-6.0s) and doing overall evaluation, I felt I'm not ready for it yet, and backed off. As I'm sitting on top browsing through porn magazines, a guy rushes in, puts his V4 quickly on and hurries up to the exit. I chit chat, and couldn't believe my ears: the guy started skydiving 10 months ago, started wingsuit half a year ago, flew only Prodigy, and just recently got his new V4, and this is his second jump off of Sputnik. He said he threw rocks and it was more than 8 seconds. As I sat there speechless, he exited (exit was good, with the confidence of someone who never got hurt before), but flight was shitty - slow and stally, at probably 1.5GR (in V4!). It was obvious from flight, that he didn't have solid WS experience. Thank God, he didn't fly into the crack, and didn't do proximity on the right. Just flew straight to town, pulling way way short of it.

I'm sure playing with balloons and other soft targets will now become popular. Nobody is immune to unfortunate accident, but please, keep these stupid balloon kicking games away from jewels like Sputnik and other popular and beautiful sites.

Here's an idea for Jeb's wannabe's: try to swoop Borat's cleavage on big wingsuitable walls in Kazakhstan. Mount 10 GoPros on your body and try to kick Borat's buttocks with your feet, at the same time. Now, THAT's some real pathbreaking!

short answer:
respect to you for walking down sputnik (no sarcasm)
not so much respect to your rock drop method...

edit to add: maybe your rock drop method is actually not to bad and you just happened to hit a big bird on the head when you where throwing the rock...

Totally off topic but as you are you are so well qualified and skilled in physics and mathematics, I still cannot believe how wrong you can get your rock drop calculations. Like I explained to you already on these forums once, I heard first hand from the people who opened the exit in question that they LASERED it to 230m which translates into a rock drop around 7.5-8s (http://fly.bywire.org/b-a-s-e/freefall-chart). Which is also according to their timings and also corresponds pretty well to my overall feeling of the start having jumped that site a lot and several others in that range as well. How you can do a 5.8-6s drop on this site, absolutely beats me but maybe you need to have a university degree in physics to understand this. I only have on in computer science, so that´s my excuse. :)


I think with the level of skills in evaluating a site demonstrated above, this was a very wise decision.

Jeb practices, and obviously studies his video. he puts in time to get it right.

Sangi? ya simply can't say the same thing.

FAIL. you miss an amazingly salient point yet again!

(oh, and Jeb pays his medical bills, plus donates to others. if you want to ensure site preservation, please make sure your fellow Russians pay their hospital bills!)

Don't trust yer laser

Me and a friend were doing the drops, alternating, and came to the same result.

These days, people throw rocks like Olympic hammer throws, as if their exit will always be perfect. Sure, with such a throw you can get 8s. But you need to evaluate the worst-case scenario, not the best-case.


Maybe you always nailed it? The very experienced and respected Maury showed my friend his video of his Sputnik exit where he went head low and thought he's going in. I haven't seen it, but from the friend's words, the ledge/talus seemed to be really, really close, and it looked to him like 5s to impact.


Ph.D. in Physics here, worked for several years on experimental and theoretical studies of high-temperature superconductors. Then switched to computer programming. Good enough for ya?


Thanks. I just hope that the crack will still be wide open and with no blood stains on its sides when I come back. I'm sure many many jumpers are interested in keeping Sputnik alive, and would agree that stupid balloon games should be kept away from it.

I still think that the optimistic rockdrop figure posted on the sign near the exit should better be changed to a pessimistic one. Better to make people think twice than go like "ah, that's easy!"

I have to give some credit to you that regardless of the fact that you have local jumpers (some of them substantially experienced in this area, not me though) telling you some specs about a certain jump, you still through your PhD brain believe that you have the superior answer and the ultimate truth. Not too bad, this requires some serious self confidence, :)

Man, let me tell you one thing for a fact : I suck in a wingsuit. So if Sputnik would be 5s to impact I would not be writing this story because with my starts I would not survive a 5s rock drop with that kind of terrain below. I live 45 min from the site and jump there regularly so I´m quite (spoiled :)) well aware of the specs of this jump. We have also done some other jumps with way shorter rock drops and they start to be in the very end of my comfort zone. But for no way in this world Sputnik is in the 5-6s range, basically and solely based on the facts that

1) with my ridiculously low skills I would not survive this short start with the terrain below like in sputnik
2) I have jumped stuff in that range as well and I know how it looks like. And it looks a bit different, feels a bit different and there is reason for it why I´m not jumping regularly those exists. Unlike Sputnik.

You are telling that you heard a friend telling you that he saw a video where it "looked like it is around 5s range" and based on this (and some rock drops done in alternating universe) you are saying that the boys laser was false when they opened it. Seriously...

Now I´m not saying it is a safe or easy exit, far from it. It is exit for experienced and seasoned wingsuit BASE jumpers only. And them as well should treat it with respect. It is and always will be advanced jump where a small mistake can easily lead into catastrophical results. The rock drop is what it is but regardless if it is 6s or 8s, it is still short start and requires skills to do a proper exit. No place to practise for sure.


I could not agree more with the above. I also hope it will remain open and blood free for years to come. Also balloon free if possible. :)

That's actually your problem, you do not think, you imagine things and speculate. How I write an answer is for me a question of respect to a fellow jumper, no difference if it is famous Jeb or some unknown jumper X.

Why do you insist on being a pseudo-psychologist know-it-all? If a jumper answers to a question I suggest to accept it as stated. Why do you want to denigrate it like a second-rate lawyer who wants to prove desparately that his opponent is "guilty". If I really thought a jumper is maybe not honest with himself I would either keep it privately or discuss it with him personally. Certainly I would not stoop to do so on basejumper.com!

What's your goal really, do you want to make Jeb admit something along the way he is actually lying or deluding himself or so? Why???

If a jumper makes a mistake, pushes it too hard or whatever and gets hurt my idea is not to heap shit on him and second-guess what he knows or does not know but either offer help or friendly ask for an accident report or shut up.

Oh, and regarding access problem to table mountain...I am sure the respective SA jumpers are talking to Jeb if they feel he did not follow base ethics.

So, again, there was in the beginning an interesting technical discussion but then you made it out into a personal tirade. Does not advance the subject in any positive way. Just stop it.

Get a life.

Cool, man, I see no point in arguing with you who made a lot of jumps there and I made zero. Maybe me and my friend went to a different Sputnik in a parallel universe.

In my early BASE days, somebody would just show me an exit and tell me how much is the rockdrop, etc., and I would just jump. Now I don't jump until I thoroughly evaluated the site myself. That means, that if it seems to me from my measurements that I'm not ready for the site yet (even if a newbie with no experience just jumped in front of my eyes!), I won't jump it.

Next time, I'll bring some Russian porn to the exit. But I'm afraid in this case, nobody will jump it anymore and there will be a big group of dudes on top browsing through magazines. The exit will become very slippery and the rockdrop will be reduced to 3s from all the stalagmites growing on talus.

Gross.

You still fail to see the cause by carefully examining the effect, your mind is so clouded by your admiration of Jeb. You're stubborn, but not in a good way.

I'll answer your question directly:

My goal is to find out what really happened here, learn something from it, and in the process let everyone benefit from our gained knowledge. I don't have any idols, so for me, doesn't matter who is the subject.

I'm not saying that Jeb is lying in his statement. He simply states the effect, not the underlying cause, in a typical PR fashion. Just like with any big fiasco (for example, companies collecting personal information from phones, and when it's revealed they say they were simply trying to improve user experience - tons of examples of PR smoothing out/covering up the real underlying facts).

The information that we have comes from two channels. One is video that cannot distort the truth. The other is the jumper himself, whose ego is hurt, whose public image is important to him, and whose pocket depends on sponsors and media.

So, as a public person, he choses words carefully.

Let's analyze what he is actually saying.

"I was flying to close and messed up :)"

Sure. That's what happened. But if you knew that you need to "watch" where your feet are flying, not your head (as where your feet can pass safely, your head will, automatically, but not vice versa), why you don't seem to be flying in such a way as to give your feet some margin? Why were you aiming with your head instead?

I was going for a black balloon that was basically laying on the rocks and was going to try and kick it with my foot.

If you saw that balloon got snagged by the wind and was laying on the rocks, why didn't you abort the mission and try it on the next jump, with the balloon flying properly high? Or kick the silver balloon instead? If the balloon was brought lower intentionally, by your request, to make for better video and again, if you knew that you need to "watch" where your feet are flying, not your head, how did you plan your jump if it is obvious that it's physically impossible to kick the balloon in this configuration as it is "protected" from your foot by the ledge - it's in ledge's "shadow" of the trajectory.

In order to do this I had to fly low and flat between boulders.

Again, what do you mean by "I". Your head, your eyes? Did you figure in where your feet will be flying in your planning of the jump? How they will fit low and flat between boulders? It doesn't matter where your head will be flying, you don't have to worry about that, only about feet.

My left foot clipped a boulder that dragged me into a flat ledge that I took at the waist at full speed.

According to video, clipping the boulder may have caused you some damage, but did not change your trajectory even slightest, at least between the boulder and the ledge. Don't blame the boulder, it didn't "dragged" you into the ledge. And the boulder didn't jump up. Why didn't you see it? Isn't it because you didn't realize that you need to "watch" where your feet are flying, not your head?

You hit the ledge at the waist all the way down to feet, because that's what your projected (wetted) area was on the rock! Not because some jumpy boulder made you tip forward.

See, this is a typical PR talk where external circumstance (boulder) is blamed, not the poor planning.

If I had not clipped that boulder i might have made it, I might have still impacted. It's very hard to tell from the footage.

No, it's very EASY to tell from the footage, that you were DESTINED to hit the ledge the full length from waist to feet. It's easy to see from the footage released to public, how "it's very hard to tell" from the full, high resolution footage that you have. Can't you just draw some straight lines representing trajectories of different extremities of your body and see that there's physically no way that "i might have made it"?

Everything happens very fast.

Again, PR "softening" intended to make the audience "understand", sympathize. It's circumstances, not him. If everything happens so fast that you cannot process it, why do such reckless things?

But when you go for a flight where inches are the difference between making it and not making it well impact is very possible.

Hero talk again.

I knew this and took the risk

You knew that it's Russian Roulette and you pulled the trigger anyway?



Can't you just play real Russian Roulette, with real gun, in comfort of your home, instead of fucking up beautiful sites for everyone?

and paid the price for pushing way to hard.

Again, PR talked detected. Pushing hard is a noble, admirable reason. But you paid the price not because you were pushing hard, but because you were pushing stupidly. Not leaving room for legs because you didn't think about it cannot be called "pushing hard". It's Darwinism, simple and pure.

I take full responsibility for my actions and am just happy I still have legs to do rehab on.

PR detected! Humbleness, taking responsibility, and again, "I'm a poor puppy" looking for sympathy.

This is not my first time getting hurt and it will not be my last. I push it, always have and always will. One day I will die and I just hope that when I do, it will be doing something I truly love...

Big chunk of PR. Again and again, repeating the same thing as in every TV appearance, trying to paint a heroic image. But dying because of stupidity is not something to be romanticizing. Dying kicking the balloons because you overlooked simple geometric facts is as stupid as dying overstuffing yourself with hamburgers. There were people who died like that, and they died doing something that they truly loved... Oh, how romantic!

PR can be smooth and can convince eroused Jeb's admirers like you, but the video is not lying. It's clear that he's not aware that his legs are going to hit the ledge at their full length.

Do another imaginary experiment. Somewhere where people pass through the door frame routinely, make the top slab lower so that some people, who mechanically walked through the door many times without looking, would hit the frame. Install a hidden camera that will take a snapshot at the moment of impact. What will you see on pictures?

You'll see the door frame touching their foreheads or head tops, but their facial/bodily expressions will be totally normal. Their bodies still don't know that they're just going to hit it, their eyes are looking straight, they're smiling as usual.

If they notice that they're going to hit it, then the pictures will be totally different - you'll see the evasive action, you'll see their body is doing something to avoid the danger, and facial expression change.

But what we see in Jeb's video and stills is the former - total unawareness of the coming impact. His upper body is through and doesn't yet know that his lower body is already is pressing against the rock at 120mph.

Anyway, I thought if you're such a small baby that you cannot chew solid food yet, I'd chew it for you.

QED

One day long ago, I was playing frisbee. I missed the frisbee and it hit me in the nose right between the eyes.

I was a damn good frisbee player too!

When I was 10, I was building a scooter. I needed to split a wooden plank in half, lengthwise. Since the plank was almost as long as me and I had nothing to affix it to, I simply held it with my left hand and hit the plank with an axe, figuring, I'll just quickly pull my hand out of danger's way. Well, I was not quick enough and almost chopped my thumb off, and got my first scar.

If this moment was captured on video, it'll show hand moving away, just not fast enough.

If the video showed hand not moving at all and just holding the plank, that would be a perfect Darwin Award example.

Someone who gets the last word in, isn't necessarily the winner.


Keep talkin.


It's a shame such intellect is used to be such a troll.

Silence fellow trolls! The master speaks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z4m4lnjxkY

Why he crash is quite obvius, Im more interested to hear your analyzes about why he survived.

The more I see of pictures of this accident, Im surprised he managed to survive that impact at all.

As said before in the tread, he must have some incredible survivel instincts.

By the way, Jeb is more popular than Felix at the moment on FB.

Not in the internet overall : http://googlefight.com/...d2=Felix+Baumgartner :D

Pfff, even I beat Jeb

http://googlefight.com/...mp;word2=Jeb+Corliss

In the fight with stupidity, my resistance is futile:

http://googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=Yuri+Base&word2=Stupidity

Because most of the impact energy went into the bouncing action.

And this is another lesson we can learn from here, ladies and gentlemen:

Bounce is the essence of survival. If you're about to go in, just bounce!

 
Yuri- I don't know you, However, I just want to come in here and thank you!- I haven't laughed so hard in ages- I really enjoy reading your posts!

While everyone wants to bash you for your posts - I'd like to give you credit for speaking your mind- I can see from your posts that while you may, or may not have many years of experience in the sport- I like the way you analyze and rationalize things! I can honestly say that I have learnt a thing or two from reading your posts.

I'd also like to add that I really do like Jeb!, and I am glad that he has survived this accident relatively unhurt! I think as a person he is really genuine and very intelligent. There is much to admire in him! But like so many other jumpers around the world- I don't like the way he abuses the sites - Although, I do understand why he does it.

Yuri-It's a fact that you have brought up some real valid points and honest truths about what is what. I do agree with you........I've been reading these forums for years and you are absolutely right about one thing- If it was anyone else they would be totally flamed for that jump!

Reiner.

Not you worthy Yuri.

His body mass
His mindset
His reflexes
His angels
His Angle of attack.

You have to gice is something?

I know he said "may not have...", but it sure made me laugh! Yuri has been around a little while.

What is it now Yuri? 5, 6 months?

As a lurker with no experience whatsoever I do find myself thinking some retarded thoughts at times (based on my not knowing anything at all firsthand, such as omg put a wingsuit on just about anyone who ever fell out of a plane and they'd probably hit a 60m wide cave-hole) but this save has really made an impact on me. Jeb really truly showed how worthy he is of doing what he is doing.. Sometimes the most dangerous things can look so easy when we've seen 1000 vids but that save. That's pure skill. And so beautiful. Don't even need a PhD to see that.
Sorry about sounding like i'm in love.

I'm just upset that he had such poor body position, causing line twists.....

I'm surprised that Yuribase guy hasn't said anything about it. Or maybe he has but I haven't read anything he's posted for a few pages.

They DID detract a bit from the awesomeness didn't they? But then again it's not something one can practice too much. Suppose he'll nail it next time. Snag, flip, stable, pull, walk-away.

Or maybe he's just secretly learning how to land it. Isn't this sort of a milestone after all; hitting earth full flight and live to tell the tale?

Indeed. It was the world's first touch-and-go wingsuit landing, after all. Now he just needs to clean up the slide out and he'll be set.

44

The analysis of linetwists is so trivial that I thought it's simply not worth mentioning here. But I'll chew it for ya, bro.

Jeb's last name is what? Corliss.

Well, ever heard of Corliss Effect? (there was no spellcheckers in 1835, and typo in the name cemented with centuries)

"The Corliss effect is caused by the rotation of the Earth and the inertia of the mass experiencing the effect. The Corliss force acts in a direction perpendicular to the rotation axis and to the velocity of the body in the rotating frame and is proportional to the object's speed in the rotating frame. "

Corliss effect is responsible for rotation of weather systems, spinning water in the toilet, ballistic missiles missing their high-profile targets and killing children instead, and among others, linetwists! If you jump close to equator, you better compensate for the imminent linetwists and drop one shoulder. This diagram shows direction of linetwists in different hemispheres:



See how strong this shit is in South Africa? Europe is much safer, and there's never a linetwist in Norway.

If Jeb forgot about his legs, I'm not surprised he forgot about his effect, too.

It's that simple.

Next!

And aim better, for true touch-and-go.



This one was more of a slap-n-flop.

Yuri's posts have been on point, as they usually are.

Mikki,
+1

Yuri,
If I=U, I'd go fuck myself.

great first post ...

+ 1 jello


Who would've thought smashing your legs into the ground and nearly going in could end up being a career booster...

Amazing job saving your own life there Jeb, i guess some people really do have mad skillz!

+1
Yuri also made wing suit studio which I found quite amazing, lots of, lots of time, effort & knowledge is required to put something like that.
And I salute Yuri 4 that!!
Some people are provoked by his cold reality and certain thoughtfulness, and i don't see why.. points he makes are valid..and at least worth thinking a little about them.

p.s.BUT YURI I'm quite jealous on U about the stuff you've been smoking

Thank you, guys - Reiner, Lyndon, Svemirko, for your support. Thanks to all who sent me supportive PMs. I know I'm not the only one who can just say what one thinks. As Reiner beautifully put it, Life's too short to be anything but honest!

Now, as for what I've been smoking... Whitney Houston spent $7,000,000 on cocaine, but she couldn't afford what I'm smoking. And while I can't reveal my secret just yet, anyone can enjoy the secondhand smoke in these forums, free of charge.

Well, one last try, although you seem to be the type who is slow on the uptake.

Analysis is good. I agreed with your feet vs head analysis.

But random guessing and crawling into other people's head, be it Jeb, be it supposed "admirers" of Jeb, is clouding or better wasting your otherwise interesting analysis.

Thus, again for you: It is indeed one possibility that Jeb did not know about his legs being lower than his head. Note: a possibility. Even if you like to state it as a fact: It is not. Get it.

The other possibility is very simple: Jeb knows very well what possible trajectories are, where his feet are vs head etc., but sometimes people fuck up even though in hindsight they will fully agree that they had all necessary knowledge and still made a mistake.

So. If you discount this second possibility you are really not the scientific guy you pretend to be. Simple human mistakes happen often enough in base jumping. This could have happened here as well. You cannot exclude this although you strive hard to do so.

Why do some people go in after a low pull? You would probably analyze in depth that these people surely did not know about gravity and that canopies take time to open and you have to educate them about this...right?!?

Maybe the balloon was lower than planned and in the flight down to the ledge Jeb simply continued - pushed harder - although in hindsight he agrees he should not have done it. Could he have "paused" in flight before the ledge and take a second to analyze he would have elected not to go for the balloon.

That is called a human mistake - doing things where you wonder afterwards why you did something wrong. No lack of knowledge, no lack of planning, just a mistake! And now - surprise surprise - that is exactly what Jeb said in his post. No need to be an "admirer", just staying with the facts and respect what a jumper says about his own jump.

You do not have some magic device allowing you to get into Jeb's head and know exactly his general knowledge, his planning of this jump and his thinking before the strike, anything you say about this is speculation at its worst.

What you are doing in all your posts is a major scientific sin: overstepping factual analysis and doing pure guesswork, trying to squeeze something out of the data what is not there but you wished it were there.

I applaud your analysis in general. Leave away the speculation (or at least do not state speculation as "facts") and it is all good.

Interview:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...vp/46559800#46559800

Jeb, Wow, GREAT interview Am STOKED on what you've done for the "sport". You may have as you say, changed, but you are still a media w*ore. 99% fans love you, good for you, must be a chore to read all that fan mail.

uhhh,...thats Bad advertising for Apple´s I-phone,...

The negative 1% can be found here.

Great advertising, they can say the iPhone took the brunt of the crash and acted as body armor,saving jeb from further injury

I am not convinced that the folks over at Apple are concerned with marketing toward the huge population of people looking for their iphone to protect them from 120 mph impacts with boulders.

Damn,...you are right,....EXACTLY!

first i thought its bad for Apple because they showed that the iphone is not well build,...breaks by the slightest pressure,....BUT:
thats what the hole thing is about,....

something went terribly wrong and you turn it into something awesome,...!!!!!!!!!!!

go one step further,...it even safed his life,....!!!!
Folks,...go and buy I-Phones!!!!

jesus,...if only Steve Jobs would know what great lifesaving device he invented,.....
even better than airtec´c cypres,...that thing is useless for Base!

(i think nobody get the message)

I have no idea what you guys are talking about... I could not play the vid because you need a flash player and my iPhone does not work with flash

Doesent matter Mikki,...makes no sense anyway...

"Hitting a granite ledge at 120mph and being flung like a rock skipping across the lake, nearly dying, and facing possible charges for filming without a permit?"

"There's an app for that!"

Walt

Jeb on Conan:

http://teamcoco.com/...jeb-corliss-accident

http://teamcoco.com/...orliss-never-give-up

Help me Jesus…
Poor fellow American basejumpers!
Based on this you will be compared, judged and categorized in your actions. This is the mirror society will hold up on you as basejumpers.
I am really, really glad this whole media hype about a jumper with average wingsuit flying skills, overestimation of his own capabilities and bad judgment happens on the other side of the big pond.
It is sad a guy like Jeb will never experience what it is like to hike a nice mountain with friends, jump a sketchy exit and enjoy the experience with friends, then go home and just live from the moment without having to tell EVERYONE on this planet what a cool guy you are…
Actually it’s not sad, I don’t give a shit, as I said, I’m glad this happens far away from my doorstep

Great post couldnt agree more, unfotunately Im on this side of the pond.

Love you Mikki !
The best message i've ever seen here ...

+1

we all have our reasons for why we do what we do, this sport isn't worth dying over, however there is a place for all and I am starting to think that in the big picture there is no such thing as bad publicity. Surprisingly, I never meet anyone these days outside of our sport that is not familiar with WS BASE, and opinions (at least in person), have been 100% favorable and most people are in AWE, and this alone can only bring us more public support when facing the dictatorial powers that be. I realise in places such as the Swiss valley this may not be the case, and there will always be those opinionated armchair wannabies that criticise everyone, but if there are positive benefits from the media exposure, thank you Jeb,heal soon, and while I'm anonymously enjoying my backcountry zen I'll be grateful that you aren't there with your media.(meant in the most respectful way).
Mikki and Jeb,best to both of you, B.

Well...he was on Polish news like 2 days ago

In his skype interview he said he'll be in Europe for the summer, then have his knee surgery in the winter. So what side of the pond are you on?

jeb is the man, get well soon jeb

he says that he was thinking why pull, that he was dead anyways

Love ya, too, Mikki, but DOOOOD, you err hilariously by unequivocally declaring that the Jebster "will never experience what it is like" to do low-profile jumps when neither you nor anyone else who knows only his public persona (and vids) has any idea how many of the above-described jumps Jeb has in fact made because, uhhhh, he doesn't talk about those.

On top of that, you seriously misunderestimate the American whuffo's ability to appreciate daring deeds and the brass clankers needed to do them. Of all the many whuffos who have brought up Jeb's touch-endo-go landing to me, every single one of them spoke of their awe, amazement and admiration for what they saw -- and especially for who did it.

In fact, the only classic whuffo comments I've heard or read about Jeb's adventure are on this thread.

44

... and then he remembered this!

44

Jeb's life is BASE jumping and recently wingsuit BASE.

He is larger than life, loud and I mean LOUD, he wears black and did I say already that he is LOUD.

What you see in his videos and on TV is him, no act, no Napoleon RedBull complex. It's him doing what he loves, day after day, after injury, never stopping and for that I respect him.

He does hike up mountains with his friends and without a film crew. Although he'd admit his exits need work his wingsuit skills are up there with the best now.

Dean Potter has a similar Marmite standing in the climbing community, I guess it comes it with the territory.

Rocco is also pretty cool. Well, he doesn't hike up mountains, but he also loves what he does and when you see his videos it's him, no act, and his vids are loud...

This put everything in new perspective ;-)

Mikki get a little bit dramatic ....
you know how swiss people can get

i think you are right if you say, and i belive aswell that Jeb is totaly passionate to what he is doing.

but other people do that aswell!
maybe more than him...

yes,...he is LOUD and not acting,...

other people do that aswell!
maybe more,...

and dispite of injuries he will not quit,...

other people done or do that aswell!

he is enjoying the company of friends an ,hey, he even jumps without 7 gopros sometimes, simply jumping for fun and to celebrate the passion of WS flying,...

other people do that aswell!
and maybe much more,...who knows,..?
there is nothing special about that,...it should be that way and there is no need to make Jeb a better Hero,...
and thats what many people make scratching their heads or make them angry,..

we all make mistakes and missjudgement sometimes,....its not about throwing stones here,...

Jeb said by himself what happend so there seems no question left regarding the incident,....
everybody can decide by himself:

HERO or ZERO
and it dosent matter in the end,...who REALLY cares,..?


but i think when somebody makes a mistake, missjudgment , then luckly survives with less injuries than expected and a site get burned, due jumping without permission and stuff i think most people would be much more quieter , maybe embarresed,...but for sure not Loud,...


the aftermath is hard to understand,....and for many people anoying,...

" if you dont want that somebody kiss your ass, dont let it hang out of the window"

or the TV!

if you take all the coments and read between the lines maybe you see that thats what its all about.

little more etiquette would give a better reputation,...
Jeb sayed he learned alot and get a different view on some things,...thats something to cherish,...

p.s.
rocco is loud aswell and loves what he is doing,...Martin245 , that is a nugget!

I like drama almost as much as I like to stir up shit
(and I also like cool smilies)

I saw the HBO piece last night. For anyone who has ever been interviewed, you have to really be careful what you say, because they will edit it to fit what they had in mind before they even met you. the story is first pitched to a producer, with a hook in mind. Then they keep you talking on camera, steering you into the direction they want you to go, and then come home with the story that they had in mind months before.

I liked his honesty about life and death, and have felt much the same way. It is a really hard thing to communicate to "normal" people, though.

Lots of jumpers do all sorts of wild stuff and never promote themselves. There is really nothing to be gained by attention about BASE. It will never be legal in the U.S. national parks. Attention can burn sites. Was Table Mountain burned over this?

The jumping world would be much better off if everybody were on the down low as much as possible. I have never seen any good come from it.

Have a good life, Jeb. Having fun is way underrated.
Growing up and getting a real job is way overrated. I turned left where he stayed to the right, and have regretted it every day since. I miss all of my old friends and living the simple dirtbag life. Money and a couple of houses are just a ball and chain.

As for Dean Potter, I really admire him. He has always been a very introspective type of person from what little communication I have had with him. Dean is not about dying at all. He is all about flying. Totally different.

An interview with Potter right after an interview with Jeb would have been wildly different. Just shows the diversity. Dean is about the almost spiritual feelings. He is the real deal.

If a nice site gets burned (I don't know if that is the case here) for the sake of someone's glory seeking, that's just not right. You owe it to the ones who it jumped before you, who jump it now and for the ones who will be jumping it in the future to keep it open. Youtube can be cool and all, but people might want to pause a sec and remember what jumping is all about... If flying into shit super low with heaps of cameras filming it is your deal then there is nothing anyone can do to stop you. But when your big ego, balls or lack of brain start fucking up sites for everybody else - find some remote lonely island with a cliff big enough for you, your gopros and your balloons. You'll be doing all of us who aren't totally starstruck by c-celebs a favor.. What ever happened to leave only footprints, take only pictures? Seems it's all "look at me, Im so fucking cool, I fly trough trees, I live every day like its my last, yeah my life is so awesome and cool and extreme" these days. Thank God, for every flashy narcissistic jumper there are a hundred cool, down to earth guys with egos small enough not to affect their wing load

Heat, this philosophy goes back to the very beginning. It was always obvious that sites are finite, and after El Cap got shut down by skydivers (it was before BASE really started), there was a severe ass kicking coming if you put a cherished site in jeopardy.

The best of all possible worlds is for a jumper who just goes and jumps. Nobody sees it if it has access problems. Everyone gets together and tosses all go-pro's into a fire. Just jump because it is the funnest thing on the planet.

It is like that in climbing. The narcissism is always gonna be there. It is sort of a yin yang thing to balance things out.

I would love to hear about what happened to Table Mountain's access since the accident.

I will add that it was a remarkable save. Best save I have ever seen. I don't think you could cut it any closer, and it would have killed most people.

Site preservation is what it is all about. That and attracting a bunch of new people isn't good. It is so huge now. There are all sorts of trouble that can come from a larger and perhaps less well suited gene pool.

I generally concur with your perspective on site preservation, but please don't repeat the fiction that it was jumpers who shut down El Capitan:

It was the National Park Service. Period.

As then-Yosemite superintendent Bob Binnewies said in the pages of the November 1980 Audubon Magazine (the Society of which he was vice president!): "We had to open it up to be able to manage it at all. Now that we know what the results are, our management ban will stick."

And what NPS did was, aided and abetted by city geek-heavy USPA, design a jumping program guaranteed to fail, thereby providing the "results" of which Mr. Binnewies spoke.

For example:

First, Jumpers were restricted to an 0800-1000 hrs jump window each day. This became common knowledge around the park, so El Capitan Meadow and the road that ran between it and the mountain became clogged each morning to the point of impassability with tourists and other looky-loos.

In other words, the NPS scheduled the "circus" about which it later used as part of its justification for the aforementioned "management ban."

Second, this scheduling forced the jumpers to hike up the night before and camp out, which required (most of them, anyway) to hump a sleeping bag and food and water and extra clothes instead of doing a nice little day hike and making a sunset load, when the air was generally as calm as it was in the morning.

Third, the rules were designed for a USPA-sponsored skydiving event, not a wilderness activity requiring a backcountry permit, to wit: USPA D license, hard helmet, square main parachute.

Not a word about wilderness etiquette and basic camping rules in an association whose membership was dominated not by people who knew their way around the woods but by city geeks who'd never been out of sight of pavement.

Fourth, the NPS manpower required to adminster this program for 20 park visitors a day was greater than it took to manage all the hundreds of other backcountry users each day, because it wasn't, like every other backcountry user, walk-up-to-the-window-get-your-permit-and-go, it was Ranger Rick checking your logbook and license and USPA membership and your gear - just like at a USPA skydiving event!

So the "program" was psychotic on its face unless looked at from the perspective of being designed to fail miserably, which it did, aided and abetted not just by USPA honchos but by a small subset of city geeks who did in fact paint rocks, poop on trails, strew trash around and in general behave more like drunken ---holes at a skydiving boogie than guests in what John Muir called God's grandest cathedral.

Yes, it would have been great for people to just jump El Capitan and keep it low-key, but neither the NPS nor USPA allowed that to happen, so again, talking about site preservation is important and worthwhile, but what happened at El Capitan had little to do with personal misconduct by parachutists and very much to do with malfeasance by a corrupt federal government agency.

44

Jeb's fans speak up:

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

This is the future generation of BASE jumpers inspired by Jeb, the "we are 99%" movement.

You can run... you can hide... but they're coming... to the object near you!

those youtube videos... the world is full of retards, that's all I can say.

Jeb is awesome.