Basejumper.com - archive

This is my current list of things I will get proficient at prior to thinking about starting BASE:

1. Flat turns
2. Flying Backwards
3. On heading openings
4. Accuracy Landings
5. CReW (I am just starting to learn about this)

Is there anything else I can add to the list that would make me a safer BASE jumper?

Make friends with packing
learn it and like it

If you live out west start hiking.

If you live back east climb ladders.

Study up on the basics of First-Aid.

Learn to be a good tracker.

This goes under accuracy landings, but make sure you're not just focusing on landing in the right spot.

The common skydiving thing to do is to either use a few of sashays or make big modifications to your crosswind leg in order to just come in with the brakes all the way up. This can be plenty accurate, but it only works if you have a ton of room in the sky to play with (not always the case in BASE).

Practice a tight pattern where you have your brakes somewhere towards the middle of your control range. From there let up on the toggles if you need to go further to reach the lz and go deeper if you don't want to overshoot.

Also, rear risers.

Also, have fun and do a little bit of everything. Instinctively re-orienting yourself and tracking in the right direction a fraction of a second after a raft dive goes to hell is just as valuable as being able to track your ass off.

http://static.squarespace.com/.../Canopy%20Drills.pdf

http://static.squarespace.com/...ed%20Preparation.pdf

Google is awesome

Not trying to jack this thread but I'm also trying to focus my skydiving efforts for base and had a question about the right canopy to do this with. I am a student just about to get my A License with 33 jumps and got into skydiving with the dream of BASE jumping one day (Not in a rush to get there and want to prepare for this as best as possible). From everything I've been learning its recommended to be flying a 7-cell (preferably a F111) in the skydiving environment to prepare for BASE to be extremely familiar with the flight characteristics of a 7-cell canopy. Was hoping someone could shed a little light on Wing Loading. I've read the recommened WL for a BASE canopy is between 0.6-0.8 so I'm looking at getting a PD Storm 230. My weight with gear is about 182-183lbs which will give me a WL of 0.79. I spoke to a rigger about it and he thinks this WL will be too light. Was hoping for some more recommendations about this. Don't want to rush into purchasing a canopy that isn't going to work for me.
Thanks in advance!

If you're buying a ZP canopy, just get the right skydiving canopy for you.

If you're looking for a BASE-like canopy, look for an old 7 cell F-111 canopy (which can be had for pretty cheap) like a Raven or PD 7 cell.

I don't think I'd shell out the big bucks for a new PD skydiving canopy unless I actually wanted that canopy for skydiving.

The best wing loading for BASE (and BASE practice) is most easily calculated by taking your naked body weight and adding 100. So you want to be jumping either a 260 or 280.

Thanks for the reply! I found a bit of a deal on a used Storm and I don't want to jump the gun buying it. With the F111 canopy, should I be looking at something between a 260-280 for Skydiving then?

You want the 260-280 for BASE practice. For skydiving, the requirements are different.

I've found a Fury 220 and a Raven 2 218 for sale. Will these be more suitable to skydive with?

Thanks again for your replies!

Find a zp canopy- forget about base, focus on skydiving.... fly that canopy like a ninja. Then adapt those skilz to base.


(last student was a 900 jump skydiver- he has stood up every base landing-50 jumps- w/ zero bridge jumps)

Stack the odds in your favor.

This probably the safer and most appropriate direction to get into BASE :) Just got so keen when I saw a second hand storm for sale and I didn't want to miss out! Then after a few comments on here and dropzone.com F111 seemed like a better idea! There's a complete rig for sale with a ZP Spectre 190 in it which would put my WL at 0.96. Would this be a better place to start?

Any 7-cell in that range (220-260) will be fine. If you want to train for BASE, you'll want a canopy as close to a BASE canopy as you can get (which those would fit...not a ZP 190). In regards to the wingloading being too low, I'd just be careful about what winds you fly in (you won't get much penetration so think carefully/plan/ask about pull height/winds aloft/etc). Maybe something else to consider is your flight path versus that of all the other skydivers when on landing approaches. To be honest though, I'd suggest hop-n-pops so that you're the only one landing and letting people know you won't be flying a standard pattern. I did this on an orion 230 when learning canopy skills for BASE (deep brakes accuracy approaches / cross-wind accuracy / down-wind accuracy / etc). Really plan and focus on your pattern and target before you jump. I brought a climbing crash pad out and would plan where I'd start my approach. Start out with wide margins and an approach similar to a regular landing pattern and work your way up from there.

Hopefully your drop zone doesn't freak out that you're doing something different and/or working on BASE skills. They *should* just work with you and just make sure the traffic/plans are safe.

Hmmm I don't want to ask you guys to make up my mind for me but with 1/2 the people I've been speaking to (not just on this forum) saying to get a ZP 7 or 9 Cell and worry about Base style canopies later down the track and the other 1/2 saying the F111 is the way to go if BASE is your goal, I'm a little stuck with what to do.

The Fury 220 has only had about 75 jumps on it. It will give me a WL of 0.83 and is a pretty good deal. So I'm leaning towards this option. Any other words of wisdom that can help guide me down the correct path?

My current DZ aren't too open to the idea of working towards BASE which kinda sucks because I can't be too open about my real intentions with skydiving without coming of as a trend follower watching YouTube video's Proximity. There are other DZ's around but I want to get my own gear first before venturing elsewhere (gear hire is cheapest where I currently jump).

After watching this sport evolve over the past 5-6 years I can't sit back just dreaming about flying anymore! It doesn't bother me if it take 5-10 years before even stepping to the edge of cliff in a Wingsuit. Its something I have to do! Safety is always the number one priority so I want to make sure I am doing the most I can within the skydiving realm to translate into good BASE skills.

why do you want to jump such a large canopy?

if you want a 7 cell at least get one the right size for skydiving

I want to use my time under canopy skydiving preparing for Base as much as possible so when the time comes, it should be a simpler transition going from my skydiving canopy to a base canopy. So I've narrowed it down between a Fury 220 and a Spectre 190. Thoughts?

what size canopy are you jumping now?

Again I will say...skydive- be a skydiver.... if you can land a velo 84 you can land a 280 7 cell. build natural reactive canopy skillz. Base will present itself. (but you can train for same end result). Go ask someone at DZ what you should be flying (a skydive canopy)

That's horrible advice. Of course if you can swoop a velo 84 you can LAND a 7-cell 280...but anybody can land one. Spending hundreds of jumps swooping and doing nice big full-flight patterns on small canopies won't prepare you at all for BASE. It's not me saying this. It's what I've heard from everyone else on the subject.

Ibflyin...I don't think it'll make too much of a difference to be honest. Anything over a 220 would be excessive for skydiving probably. When you're jumping it, just tell people you want to work on accuracy (which is the truth). Students jump 220 sized canopies all the time. It's not out of the ordinary large. Making every jump an accuracy jump will help to get your accuracy jumps for your licenses quickly as well. The 190 isn't a bad call either, just slightly smaller and slightly less like a BASE canopy but 30sq ft at that size isn't a massive difference. Follow your heart.

The "point" I was trying to make is if you progress to a swoopy small fully elliptical canopy.... you have long passed the SKILLZ for BASE.

So its better advice to have him train for BASE for the minimum jumps 200ish (which is on the low side)?

Why would you not try to master canopy flight first, then worry about fixed object jumping, one will lead to the other and that is stacking the odds in your favor.

I think its "horrible advice" you would recommend a canopy for him and i suspect you have never seen him land what he is currently on.

Dude, if you want to survive this whole BASE jumping experience, you can greatly increase your odds if you spend a lot of time in the skydiving world. There have been exceptions to this, but another thing the will keep you alive is if you operate under the assumption that you won't magically be the exception so I suggest you get into skydiving for the long term.

You will be far more likely to get into skydiving long term if you do the normal thing and progress to normal skydiving canopies and involve yourself in normal skydiving disciplines for the normal purpose of enjoying what the sport has to offer and making really good friends. Flying a big canopy and doing a bunch of solos will become very boring and you will not develop a sustainable passion for it, and you will probably not put as much effort into continuing to practice the skills necessary to survive base AFTER you have achieved the BARE MINIMUM necessary to engage in BASE jumping.

As people have said before, the skills you learn on any canopy, be it a high performance pocket rocket, a medium sized stiletto or even a paraglider, they will all quickly transfer as you actually get to the point where you are taking tangible steps towards getting into base.

So I think you are overestimating the value of spending all of your skydiving time on a large F111 seven cell.

Taking ~150 jumps to hurry your way through the skydiving progression and get just enough canopy skills to take a first jump course is a good thing in terms of getting you there faster and you will have good canopy skills, but your canopy skills won't be that much better than the guy who has flown ten different canopies and had to learn to adapt his flying style to a larger variety of situations.

However all of this talk about maximizing the relatively marginal canopy skills you can expect to acquire in 200 jumps distracts from the fact that the absolute most important thing you can do to keep yourself safe in BASE jumping is to cultivate a long term involvement in another aerial sport that is far more forgiving than BASE.

Yea, this will help you learn skills and stuff which is pretty obvious, but it will also give you thousands of little opportunities to exercize a particular kind of judgement that is unique to aviation sports in a much less consequential and precarious environment than BASE.

The fact of the matter is that you probably don't know what it's like to make life or death decisions about complex variables. You probably don't know how to cultivate the restraint necessary to make the right decision in the face of the fact that it's so much fun to do it anyway, that there is actually a really good chance that you'll get away with it and build false confidence, and you can never actually know for sure that a correct decision did in fact save you because you rarely get to see what would have happened if you had gone through with it.

This is a sort of judgement that very few people have naturally, and if you're being at all honest with yourself you will know that it will take many years to develop it.

I'd suggest that you not jump in the deep end and try to develop this sort of maturity while learning to engage in one of the most dangerous activities mankind had devised, and give yourself a chance to learn it in the relative safety of something like skydiving.

Changing your mindset from being so base obsessed and choosing to get a normal canopy is a positive step in that direction, IMHO.

TL;DR - obsessive BASE canopy practice for your first 200 jumps will help, but it won't really be that much better than just enjoying yourself and it's actually really bad because there is a good chance that that approach will keep you from gleaning the most important benefits from skydiving which are not so much canopy skills as they are good judgement and a forgiving environment to learn in.

Find a Raven III, it's 249 sq/ft.

Herein lies a problem.... people 'pass by' the skills needed for BASE and learn the skills needed for swooping instead, then try to bring swooping skills to BASE which can be problematic. Flying a small elliptical requires a different skill set than flying a BASE canopy. I've seen numerous people with many, many jumps on swooping canopies get themselves into bad situations because they flew their BASE canopies like their swopping canopies.

Backing up a little, I think a lot of people see skydiving only as a means to an end...to get into BASE. They want to prepare only for BASE and think that skydiving will fade away once BASE proficiency is achieved. Maybe this is a case in point.

Reality is, most people can't BASE jump that frequently. A lot of pieces have to fall into place to make a safe BASE jump (weather, groundcrew, and object access to name a few). I jump only once or twice a month in a location where weather is always good and access to objects is relatively easy.

If you live in LB or Moab, cool. Straight BASE all the way. But for most of us skydiving is our main sport because BASE takes so much effort/time/money to do consistently, and safely.

So to the OP, be a skydiver. Buy gear for skydiving. I think even after you become a BASE ninja your sky gear will be an important part of your toolkit. At minimum, you'll want it to remain current and test new gear (e.g. wingsuits). But more likely you'll actually be happy at the dropzone and spend most of your airtime there.

That's a very important point. As soon as I got into BASE, I quit skydiving; however, I was BASE jumping at least 2 times a week (in Alabama not Moab or LB) for quite a long time. I still jump about once a week, but that's likely to change soon. If I'm jumping less than once per 1-1.5 weeks then that reaches that point for me where I don't feel as solid or current. I'll be picking back up skydiving at that point to supplement the canopy practice.

Thanks every one for all your replies!

@Dadsy - Jumping a ZP 230 9-Cell for my last 33 jumps and I'm feeling pretty comfortable under it. My Accuracy when landing is getting much better but I still have a lot to learn about landing in higher winds :)

@Huck - I understand what your saying but wouldn't it be better to "become one" with a canopy that is closer to what I will end up using rather then switching from a ZP 7 Cell? It will be closer to 300 jumps before I do a FJC (Australia is pretty far away from the rest of the world sadly...and this means more $ to get anywhere so more time saving)

@Zebu - My heart is being town between the two, so I might just get both, start with the spectre and fly the fury down the track...on every jump I make I try and aim for the lovely circle they mow into the grass at my DZ.

@Shveddy - Mate this is exactly what I'm going to do!!! I want to join the skydiving industry and there is a course next year in February that goes for 4 months. At the end of the course you'll have a D skydiving licence, Star Crest, Packer B licence, 70+ Video and Photo jumps and they help you find work in the industry once your done! But as I said above this is my end goal so I'm not in a rush to go do a FJC as soon as I have 200 jumps. But skydiving in a Wingsuit after 200-250 jumps. Thats something I'm looking forward to doing as soon as I can :)

@bluhdow - I get what you mean. And its comments like this which lean me back towards getting the spectre and jumping this for 150 or so jumps as well as getting the fury, pulling it out of the closet at that point and start jumping it to prepare for BASE. But then I go back and think that 200+ Jumps on a F111 would be much better then 50-100, wouldn't it? Ultimately in the long run I want to put myself in a position where I can BASE as much as possible so I can eventually progress to Wingsuit BASE (But again, not in a rush to get there! This has become my life goal and I have the rest of my life to do it)

After reading and re-reading everyone's comments as well as my replies I think the best thing for me to do would be to start with the spectre, fly the crap out of it, then move to the f111 after I've become extremely accurate and proficient with the spectre and adapt these skills to the Fury. (Because for $320 shipped to OZ with only 75 jumps me thinks this is quite the deal to be had. Please correct me if I am wrong on this one and I will put this money towards the spectre!)

That course will take you 8 months to complete with a wing loading of 0.6

Sounds like you're in it for the long haul so I would take the advice of getting into skydiving canopies. When you get closer to your FJC then find an old base canopy or F111 skydiving canopy and start practicing.

Skydiving canopies also have the added benefit of being fun as shit to fly

Thanks. Will do.

I thought this was one skill I had down solid but after a recent group dive... not so much.

I'll try this. Ty.

Thank you Huck... and Google.

Seriously. This is very helpful.

 

Probably better to PM to avoid site naming.