Basejumper.com - archive

Four days ago I had a pretty "interesting" incident while BASE Jumping in Zakynthos, I decided to share in order to maybe therewith prevent someone else from doing the same "mistake" and not being as lucky as I was to get away with it!

The story is this ...

I lost my hook knife (which is of course pretty irrelevant jumping slider down in Zakynthos (around 210m cliff)) and I just "trash talked" to another jumper (the saftey coordinator) at the exit point that I hope I won't need it. So he asked me if I want to have his hook knife. Purely on a whim I said "Yeah, for the psychological factor" (so I feel "complete") ... attached the hook knife and jumped. After landing I realized the hook knife (as it's a longer hook knife than the original one) actually cut around 1cm into my integrated harness front riser on opening!
Luckily in a rather steep angle and (therewith?) not completely through it.
Either I pushed the hook knife already behind the front riser when attaching it (I personally don't think that as I moved it in smoothly and straight up) or the frontriser somehow managed to get stuck in the hook knife and bascially pushed up against the blade on opening. I can't really completely trace back how it exactly happend and if maybe some twisting moment or something else (body position? > I pulled flat and stable though in maybe a slightly head low position and with a slight off heading opening from what I remember) was involved but I think it doesn't really matter anyway for the lesson that should be learned out of this > Don't take hook knifes from strangers :D ... and especially not if they are not the same as the one your harness comes with. I am personally considering to place my hook knife somewhere else as a consequence. The hook knife was actually totally wedged in my right shoulder harness but didn't go all the way down into the padding (as shown on the attached picture) but I cut the padding even a little further down when trying to remove the hook knife. Also the strucural damage to the right of the cut was done by myself trying to assess the total structual damage to the fabric of the riser.
I am jumping a Helium Harness made for my measurements by the way!

I actually took a day off jumping to give myself some time to think about the question if I made a fatal mistake here or if most of you reading this might have made the same "mistake" (= not thought of something like this in that moment to possibley happen) - Feel free to let me know what you think in this regard.
I am personally pretty upset that I didn't anticipate this possibility upfront as I had seen a similar damage caused by a hook knife a few years ago when we got it for inspection and could have come up with this scenario takng that into account. There it didn't happen on opening though on a single jump but must have cut the riser step by step over time (pretty much half through).

One ball definitly went from the luck bowl into the experience bowl (Dwain Weston talked about) that day!

that looks bigger than 1cm??? Thats half the webbing.

maybe you missed this part...


hangdiver

I'm aware of one other case of this happening, also as a result of a hook knife switch.

I think maybe we need to be more careful about hook knives--to the point of considering a hook knife part of the rig that shouldn't be changed out without great care.

be careful of knives, like any safety measure they can often backfire,.. if i'd had a hook knife on a Tandem double Mal years ago I would have killed myself with it,.. I hate them!!!

quick question, does the knife go into a sheath or is it directly under the mudflap ?

glad you are here to share this event

Directly under the mudflap

Thanks for the info. Maybe the sheath could have helped. Despite the 5grams loss

Slghtly unrelated, but another example of a hook knife mal nontheless...

I was skydiving back at an awesome little cessna DZ somewhere in Texas, maybe 10 years ago (hi Gary if you are still out there). We had a jumper who landed and was like, why the hell did i have line breakage on opening? He had 2-3 lines that were cleanly severed somewhere mid-way.

Fortunately he had some camera footage, it was pixely 2000's era technology. None of this fancy go pro HD shit everybody hangs from their balls these days to feel like they have a pair.

But regardless you could clearly see a hook knife fly up in front of his face, between his lines, and off into the wild blue yonder, leaving cut lines in its wake. He was able to control the main and landed it fine. But the knife just as easily could have cut a control line.

I know some people have saved their ass by having a hook knife, but I don't usually jump with one. And if I did I would probably be paranoid about it.

 Because of you, I'll never use my GoPro Camera again. It makes me feel ashamed.

If you had actually balls instead of a GoPro hanging from your dick, you wouldn't be ashamed of the GoPro that you had in place of balls. Man up and own your GoPro balls, stupid!

If you are jumping a rig with integrity risers, you will have to have some means to get rid of your canopy.

I had a tree landing last year and barely succeed to cut the softlinks with a normal polycarbonate hook knife. The last soft link only gave way after I sawed through it with the help of the paramedic.

I switched to a Jack the Ripper Hook knife after that, only to realize after the first pack job that in the Helium container there is no sheath for the hooknife and the knife can easily grab the riser in the opening. Luckily I had no damage.

The hook knife under the mudflap seems to be a good idea at first, especially with the new kind of wingsuits. But a separate secure pocket on the wingsuit is the better choice.

+1 for knife in pocket on ws or chest strap..

Don't be ashamed. You could always invest in these!

I was hoping that link was to truck nuts, but it got a lot more rewarding than that when I clicked. AMAZE-A-BALLS.

Uh, Gee Malcolm, that made a lot of sense ... ??