Basejumper.com - archive

Hello,

I've pretty recently become a member of the forum, and I've been jumping for a few years, skydiving for almost ten now.

I have an old sky rig that I'm thinking about converting into a 2-pin BASE rig. It was my first skydiving container and it housed about a 210-sized canopy. I'm thinking I can plan it to be the same size as my 260 container. The pack tray is almost exactly the same size with the reserve flaps removed. I already have a very good idea of how exactly I want to do it, and have been just troubleshooting the design before I get started. I'm thinking I'll use it as a slider-up only rig until I'm certain I'm happy with the design/performance of it.

Some would say: Is it the cost of gear that drives you to do this? No. I know it'll still cost a good bit to make the conversion. No, it's really more that I just want to do it for the experience. It'll still have BASE-specific risers, toggles, PC, bridle, and canopy.

I make this post because, I want to see if anyone who has converted their rigs (Vectors, Racers, etc. I have seen a few.) has any suggestions or "watch out for's" or "make sure you's" that I should be aware of. I'm certainly open to any and all suggestions. I've been told Moe V and Mark K have done a bunch of conversions of the years if they poke around the forums...

Also, anyone who has converted a rig, can you post or pm some photos of your designs/completed rigs?

 

In terms of cost it's really not going to cost you any money at all. Assuming you don't have any thing lieing around and had to buy it all from paragear buy the yard with there full on retale priceing the cost would still be trivial. Most of the cost of production is in man hours, and you will invest a lot in that figuring this out. And if it's the experiance that you're looking for I'd say why convert? Start from scratch, in some ways it's actually easier. It's a bitch to sew around an exesting harnes. Well, actually I'd say it's a toss up. You're really just going to have to sew the tray onto the bach pad and you can deal with that awkwardness for that short duration. Basicly it's screwing up you're order of construction. But still the only way I can see going through the trouble is if you want to build your own base rig and don't have access to a harness machine.

Historicly this was done but fairly quickly people started to build there own harnesses. There were problems. Most of them did not relate to the fact that it was a conversion. They lay in the design of the tray. Keep in mind this was early on. There are stories of people standing at the exit point, shrugging there shoulders and dumping the whole pack job out on to the ground when there velcro split. Yah, yah, you're going to use pins. That's not a fix. It's still about the tray design you just see slightly diffrent problems. If You're tray... I'm not sure I can explane all of it on here but it's about ergonomics. When you tighten the harness down around your body, perticuarly when you bend and move if the tray is not right you can wind up really increasing the tension on the loops. Pins are actually less forgiving in many ways, construction, design, packing. In some ways velcro is actually more forgiving. It may not be "cool" right now but in some ways it's supearior.

I don't want to shoot you down on this. If you figure it out and don't kill your self it will be a great learning expeareance for you. Hell, I built my first base rig, a lot of us did. But lets just say the testing enviroment is unforgiving. But if you want to do this do some serious eyeballing of other containers. Pay close attention to the geomitry of the flaps. Look at them closely both on the table and tightend down on some one. There's actually a lot of suttle little things in the drawing of a pattern set. Have fun with it and don't die.

Or you could just buy a second hand rig, but where's the fun in that?

Lee