Basejumper.com - archive

I am not meaning to separate. I just want an unclouded forum where Wingers dont have to sift .
Take care,
TracySpace.

Can we get a trackers sub-forum as well then?

Tired of sifting through these "wingers" ;p


Honestly though, there just isn't enough traffic through here. Probably will blow up in the future with the increase in popularity...

If trackers dying because of repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Then yes. You have a valid point.
Take care and know that another has fallen.
space

What a pretentious thread.

I guess I have to help you kill yourself. Oktoberfest?
Take care,
space

Trackers don't die


The last 24 fatalities 22 have been wingsuit and the other 2 were slick.. hahah

Don't hold that against me if I go in

An alternative could be to have thread starters tag their threads with a specific /a couple of specific pre-defined tags and allowing users to set up filters for those tags.

Kinda like mail filters, if Subject begins with [Foo], move to directory Bar. I think that format would lend itself to this type of information channel better than subforums do.

It would also lend itself well to ignore-lists and message priorities as well.

Of course, what exists today works too.

I saw it last year and I am sure it is no different now: "I suck at tracking so I am wingsuit proxy flying instead." Tracking seems to be a lost art for a lot of new jumpers. I don't know why because tracking is awesome but if the only goal is wingsuit BASE then tracking is a convenient step to skip and leave to more experienced jumpers.

You are right about tracking becoming a lost art, but as much as I admire the skill and beauty of wingsuit flying, it will never be the same feeling as tracking on a normal BASE jump. On wingsuits, if your exit is successful, after 4 seconds you are now a glider and away from the object unless of course you choose to fly back that direction. If you misread the route and get hurt or killed, it's not really a BASE jump accident. I've been jumping a long time and every time a new aspect of the sport comes in, there is always the same growing pains. When style and accuracy had to give way to relative work. When big formations and speed stars had to give way to sequential dives. That gave way to freeflying. Along the way, BASE started out of the remnants of mostly experienced relative workers that wanted more. Now we have a new problem with wingsuits. They are great and beautiful in the hands of experienced and savvy jumpers, but death to newcomers or the less trained especially on cliffs obviously. Folks trying to get to the top of the mountain before they really learn how to climb. The last 20 years, most skydivers have died under fully inflated zero P canopies, not malfunctions. Most did not have enough air time to handle the canopy correctly. But, the USPA won't set minimums, the manufactures want to sell to anyone with money. BASE is no different. We started with skydiving rigs, modified them then BASE rigs came into being by 83. Every new step has problems, but we as a community better get hold of this wingsuit fatality count or we'll see this ever increasing conservative world banning wingsuits and maybe even BASE. Technology is outrunning some of the jumpers ability to handle it so the manufactures need to take a bit of ownership of this and set some minimum qualifications. I hate regs too, but we're bouncing too many people lately.
Rick H
USBA Director
38

More or less 22 of the last 25 fatalities have been wingsuit fatalities with proximity flying. Most of those 22 pilots can be categorized as experienced or very experienced pilots…

Which only shows that experience does not matter when you cut the margins for error too tight. Even experienced jumpers have not so perfect days, and when the mistake eventually comes, even the experience will not get you away from the situation. I do not think these accidents are caused because these people were not good wingsuit flyers by their flying skills. I think that the ecperience fools people think: if I made this short exit, or this close line yesterday, I will be able to do it also today, or even closer... Which may be false if the performance of the flyer changes just a bit, or the forces of nature (wind/turbulence) is not the same again on this time or something unexpected happens...

V

?
Space, good idea, +1
it's long overdue to recognise that there is BASE and there is Wingsuit BASE.
My wonderful friend Mario Richard died just one week ago, and since then two more jumpers have died?
I am still shocked and in disbelief over Mario's death, but I recognise it only happened because of the lure of Wingsuit Proximity flying, and this is something that appeals to me also, but since I suck as a Wingsuiter I keep a safe margin between myself and anything solid.
Stay safe, stay alive, Regards,B.

Good thinking, Space, but a separate forum is not necessary because all of these people are dying for a reason people have died since the beginning of freefall time: Playing too close to the ground to live if there is even a small miscalculation or deviation from the plan.

The exact same thing happened at The Gulch in Arizona in the mid-1970s. IIRC, 12 people bounced in slightly less or more than a year.

The primary reason?

Playing too hard too close to the ground. Period.

The Gulch is where sequential skydiving was born and it was at the time the absolute ultimate cutting edge expression of freefall flying art.

Sound familiar?

Everyone jumping there was intensely passionate about what they were doing (there were a bunch of guys who drove 12 hours each way to get there in time for the weekend).

Sound familiar?

To a person, they were also among the most skilled and experienced relative work skydivers on the planet.

Sound familiar?

The film that emerged from their efforts went viral before anyone applied the word outside of a medical condition. The accomplishments chronicled on that film was literally the talk of the skydiving world all over the planet.

Sound familiar?

And nobody pulled higher than a grand. In fact, the standard "pack opening altitude" was about 500 feet. Granted, they were jumping B-4 containers with 28-foot rounds but if they made even the slightest miscalculation or took an extra moment to deploy, they were dead.

Sound familiar?

One of those cutting edge guys was Stan Brown, and he once told me: "I knew which rock I was going to hit if it didn't open perfectly."

Sound familiar?

And then there was Willard "Skratch" Garrison, a physicist at JPL who was among the founding fathers of sequential. He was there for pretty much every crater during that period and he made the following observation of the scene:

"Pulling low is a rush, but it's just not practical."

And that is where we are today -- in the days of future past. The terrain-flying wingsuiters (TFWs) are just repeating the same exact process and procedures that killed so many of their ancestors in such a short period of time. And Skratch's observation still applies, with one slight change:

"Flying low is a rush, but it's just not practical."


The Gulch bounces resulted in the US Parachute Association creating a 2,500-foot minimum pack opening altitude for its A and B license holders, and 2,000 feet for its C and D license holders.

Shortly thereafter, the low-pull fatality curve started bending down and now, 35 years after, the remaining low pull deaths are due almost exclusively to complacency and/or confused computers, not deliberately daring the absolute edge of the envelope.

One of these days, the surviving TFWs will figure this out. Until then, there's really no point in creating additional work for the site moderators because the bottom line on the current scene is simply stated and just as simply solved:

Flying low is a rush but it's just not practical.


44

Ah yes, Casa Grande and the invent of "sport death". home of the famous photo of the paraboot upside down in the peas. Who would have thought that wingsuit flying would give BASE a bad rep? Robin's right, if you want to keep flying and not add to the stats, keep a little more distance between you and the rock, ground or whatever is your pleasure. The old saying is true for the most part, "there are old BASE jumpers and bold BASE jumpers, but damn few old bold BASE jumpers". Same goes for wingsuits.

I like this one better.


44

new forum on an almost dead site with 5 posts on a good day?? lol