Basejumper.com - archive

Hone your skills and broaden your awareness in preparation for attending a BASE course. It is best to jump larger skydiving canopies to prepare for BASE jumping. A 7 cell, F-111 canopy will work best. The following drills also work with ZP 9-cell canopies but use caution, especially if your wingload is higher than 1.2 to 1.3. In all cases, be sure to stop maneuvers well above 1500 feet and lookout for other traffic at all times:

1. Pull sequence, opening and heading correction:

a) Before you deploy note your heading and square your hips and shoulders.

b) After the canopy opens, return to your original heading using the rear risers while the breaks are still stowed:

i) 90° or less - correct by counter steering

ii) more than 90° - correct by continuing the rotation

!!! Don´t be too agressive! You can stall the canopy and end up in line-twists !!!

2.) Flying the canopy: (Do this up high! no maneuvers below 1500 feet!!!)

a) Fly your canopy in all ranges:

i) half breaked (toggles at chest hight) with slow turns 90° and 180°

ii) deep breaks: shortly before the stall point using reverse turns (letting one toggle up to make a turn 90° and 180°)

b) Slowly approach a stall by pulling both toggles into deep breaks: Watch your canopy! If you get into a stall: Slowly let the toggles up symetrically. Other wise you may end up surging the canopy forward and/or end up in line twists.

3.) Landing aproach:

a) choose the Landing pattern approach and shoot for accuracy (a marked point on the ground that you choose to land on before you board the airplane!)

b) S-turn approach (Speak to the Dz manager to see if you are allowed to do this in the student Landing area)

c) Deep break approach (Is dangerous if using highly loaded canopies! Talk to someone on the Dz to see if you can do this)

Alwas shoot for accuracy, but don´t break your legs!

4.) Tracking:

While Tracking is not required in the BASE course due to short delays of 2 seconds or less it is a woth while skill to learn as it will be necessary for preogression in your BASE jumping activities.

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What about front risers?

they are never used in BASE, EVER! :)

 

na just dont stow your breaks and do a rollover thats what i did

Here's a set of drills from Consolidated Rigging that I send out to my students.

What about front risers?

Yes,
Use of the front risers on BASE canopies can be a very effective means to increase your flare power.
The reason I didn´t include it in the drills is, that you are flying a skydiving canopy and it is a different airfoil reacting differently. In the course, I do have students use a BASE canopy and perform drills with front riser input to accelerate the parachute and let go to see the increase in lift before transitioning to a flare.

I use this method myself on almost every jump where landing areas permit.

very cool, Thanks Tom!

"more than 90° - correct by continuing the rotation"


I can think of several scenarios in BASE where this is not a good idea. What about "backing up" the canopy with rears then allowing one side up to SLOWLY turn away?

That's unnecessary at best on canopies that aren't worn out and potentially dangerous. Worn out canopies should be replaced (because the same wear which increased the porosity decreased strength and unlike in skydiving you have neither a reserve nor altitude to use one) instead of worked around. Exceptions may exist in high alpine environments (not Colorado or Utah at 4000-5000 feet where summer density altitude should break 8000 feet).

Decent piloting technique produces soft landings from BASE canopies starting the flare from 2/3 to 3/4 brakes. I've found this to work great at wing loadings from .65 to .85 pounds/square foot which somewhat exceeds the sweet spot for classic accuracy of .7 +/ .05 pounds/square foot.

Anything which adds energy prior to landing increases your risks of injury on a botched landing. While not relevant for a wide-open soft grassy field, it's a big deal with interesting small landing areas surrounded by and/or littered with hard objects like boulders and trees.

Anything which changes your glide ratio increases your chances of landing short or long. While not relevant for a wide-open soft grassy field, it's a big deal with interesting small landing areas that start with a drop-off or water and end with trees or cliff.

Many of us aren't content with wide-open soft grassy landing areas and progress to more challenging situations. With that potential in their future new BASE jumpers should spend their early forgiving jumps getting used to classic accuracy approaches (apart from skipping the final drop onto target which would not be comfortable on hard ground) so that happens automatically without thinking when it matters.

Approaching at a 1:1 glide ratio around 2/3 brakes in no-wind conditions right up to the flare is arguably ideal for BASE jumping, allowing plenty of range to speed up to counter a head wind or sink steeper and still have a decent flare.

This doesn't really work on modern skydiving canopies which see their glide flatten with a little brakes and maintain a relatively constant glide ratio until just short of stalling, although with skydiving and BASE being different sports with different equipment that's not relevant.

I'm with Drew on this one.

I think BASE approaches are best flown in part brakes until final (and then let up for stronger flare) in most cases. Sometimes, you have to hold the brakes all the way in for a steep approach (between trees, for example) and flare from part brakes.

The only time I'm really interested in the front risers is when I need to pick up speed to penetrate a headwind, or when I am trying to get out of the sky quickly (on a high visibility jump that is a bit less than legal, for example).