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If you havent already, at some point in your BASE career, youve lost enough friends and had enough experience to start to wonder how you can actually safely continue in the sport, or if you can. These thoughts and discussions have lead me to the question in the subject.

If you take the total number of BASE jumps that have been performed, and consider the total amount that have been done in a wingsuit (a very small percentage, maybe 5% if not much less), wingsuits are involved in a relatively large percentage of fatalities, especially in recent years. Obviously there are a lot of confounding factors like jumping in poor conditions, proximity flying, ect, but I got to thinking, what is the risk involved just in the additional equipment.

The question: Given equal perfect conditions of a typical jump that would be considered of "beginner level" for that equipment, lets say a stowed freefall at the perrine (insert your local large span with massive LZ) vs a wingsuit jump at brento (insert your favorite large rock drop cliff with large LZ), how much more, if at all, dangerous do you feel that the wingsuit base jump is, and why?

Here is something for you to think about

The first wingsuit death was in Norway sept 1 , 2002

That's 14 years ago but wingsuits never really started kicking off and being made the everyday until 2007 and in that 14 years we have had well 13 years because this year just started we have had 110 wingsuit fatalities.

Now since april 11, 1981 when the first recorded death of a base jumper we are at 278 deaths ...

Make a long story short

110 wingsuit deaths -13 years
168 normal base deaths-35 years

we only need another 58 wingsuit deaths to match 50/50..

Means wingsuiting is pretty fucken dangerous...

Sorry to ramble on I am getting old these days..
.

OK.

So of the 110 WS fatalities (39%)
What % of those are related to Proxy Flights?

Just curious.

Maybe 70%? I guess the rest go under exit or deployment issues. Rarely the odd drowning or landing somewhere fucked up.

I don't have the time to go through it all but I am sure a switched on anal retentive base jumper that is starting out in the sport can do the math for myself and your question.

They just need to look on this link


http://www.blincmagazine.com/...atistics?redirect=no

Scroll down the bottom to the wingsuit deaths/names and bfl# then co-inside with this link and find out what they died from

http://www.blincmagazine.com/...i/BASE_Fatality_List

If wingsuits are what's in question we need to exclude fatalities in which wingsuits were not to blame for the fatality (even if the deceased was wearing one). Jumping in bad weather, proximity flying deaths, even failed starts on technical exits...are wingsuits really to blame here?

The question you pose as to whether a flat, stable jump at the Perrine is any more dangerous than a WS jump at Brento is an interesting one. I see no compelling reason why a jump at Brento would be any more dangerous.

Control the data for jumper error and use only incidents in which wingsuits are specifically to blame and let's see how it looks. But this may open a up a whole new debate...would a failed start on a short technical error be blamed on a wingsuit? Isn't that pilot error?

Wingsuits don't kill people, people kill people.

The compelling reason would be wearing a wingsuit?

If you aren't wearing a wingsuit then the BFL says you are way safer.

one must consider social media, meaning youtube channels. Zero to hero go proselfies and the cool factor. Vid makes an awesome diff. Have you ever seen Stane´s (Atair) vids? No, You haven't because doesnt do this is me vids.I very much skip over fb wingsuiting clips because it aint my style though i worked on the designs. I knew that is is a deathtrap rigging wise, judgementwise. Lost friends that wouldn't listen. Every BASE jump is like a BASE jump, wing suit or not.
because of the social eenet, it is cool to kick the treetops and polish fingernails on the wall, maybe if it was turned over where social internet/gopro/fb was the not i the future I have dealt with it.
If you post a winger on my fb account it goes into the same garbage as cat videos.
there is not much originality any more other then sending hospital fotos.
take care,
space

I appreciate the answers and thought so far. I guess is the answer to those that speak out against YouTube/terrain flying ect is that using a wingsuit in and of itself is not inherently dangerous, but the way we use them is?

Wingsuit jump last a lot longer than slider down... so a Brento wingsuit jump equates to 20 Perrine jumps. Now redo the maths ha!

Pretty much... It's the way we use them, lets compare closer relatives. Straight out from Brento wingsuit jump, by a prepared jumper (x base jumps + x WS-Skydives); to the same jump, made by the same jumper, with the same preparedness in a tracking suit. Which is more likely to result in a fatality.

My gut says the tracker...

How long is a piece of string?

Twice half it's length.

It's not the wingsuits..Its the mentality that has changed the most because of Facebook and YouTube.
It's too easy now. Money changes everything.
Some courses take anyone.
There is some awful fuckwits ya meet now.
I think BASEjumpers With paragliding backgrounds have great understanding of the weather and jump conditions.

This is an awesome thread, because I still lack around 200 BASE jumps before I will be willing to fly my wingsuit from an exit point. And I will choose the highest, most overhanging F***** exit that I can afford.

My logic is that I pretty much suck as a skydiver, suck as a BASE jumper, and I suck as a wingsuit pilot. If I combine all three, I will be f****D.

Seriously, I think this thread is a good question and it requires some serious consideration.

I live in a state where some of the most talented BASE jumpers and wingsuit pilots live. If I were to have "quick feet" and try to dance like them, I would be dead.

I think if you consider exits only, the wingsuit is more dangerous. While this comes down to a pilot error, the wingsuit is the additional factor.

I can't tell you how many times my exit has been less than perfect (dead air, but non-BASE exit) and I realize that wingsuit BASE requires a perfect exit..... A non-wingsuit BASE exit is less dangerous IMHO.

Right now, my primary goal is to stay off the BFL.... with that in mind, I will someday graduate to wingsuit exits. Please don't laugh at me for taking my time and continuing to learn/live.

This is interesting and something I think about. Different risks and so many variables.

Wingsuit Risks – EXIT (If you blow it you are pretty much done), Deployment issues. – All dependant on the type of suit I guess, poor exit and deployment issues are much more recoverable if you fly your phantom like a beast and have a lot of experience in it, but how many people out there like this nowadays? From what I can tell there are lots of people in bigsuits with lower experience, just enough to get by and when it goes tits up, it’s game over.

Tracker Risks – Object strike from poor track and 180 or 180 with twists. Much easier to recover from a poor exit and solve any deployment issues. Bigger tracking suits are helping these risks a bit though. I do think if you can fly one of these 1 piece suits as good as you can fly a phantom then why introduce the extra risk of the WS.

I forget where but I remember reading a comment from a very experienced WS jumper saying that some of the most dangerous jumps you can make are low cliff and building jumps. I would agree for freefall, but a low SL,PCA from a cliff or a building is probably a lot less risky than either of the above jumps. (0 winds and nice big/clear landing area). Obviously there are loads of super sketchy short rock drop WS jumps and track or die jumps as well.

I would disagree. Any even remotely competent tracker given a stable exit and straight flight line can track from Brento far enough to completely remove cliff strike from the equation (as is the case obviously in a wingsuit as well). So the question remains in which one of the two you have higher probablity of experiencing :
1) Unstable (unrecoverable) exit resulting in impact with nothing out / too late deployment
2) Problems at pull (instability, loss of altitude awareness, inability to find the PC) resulting in impact with nothing out / too late deployment

My gut feeling says for both 1&2 that it is way more likely to occurr in a wingsuit than on a tracking suit.

with a 39% fatality rate of WS BASE and tracking is more likely for someone to go in?

you should condiser another diet if your gut is telling you that

Brento is my home DZ since 1995. I do not know of any wingsuit fatals. I am a tracker and will continue this angle. the prob at ITW is at that new jumpers do track dreaming. Going off in a boxman position and transit to a so called track 4secs.
I think that it is Europe's deadliest wall because of the overhang and lack of tracking skills.
480m straight down from exit to impact without track. sucky track will get one an extra 150m. , there were no fatals with experienced jumpers at ITW. from beginner trackers. actually, are the fatals.
this should be a separate thread.
back to the orignal topic, Wingsuiting gives one a device that can be closer to the edge. same like a canopy flight without gopro.
one cm can be decisive between life and death..
take care,
space

Ditto

you got it Dude!

BFL 194 George Allan Staite
BFL 236 Abraham Cubo Lopez

I believe WS is more dangerous due to being less forgiving of bad exit technique (presuming the exit is from a solid object).
That is provided you are also reducing the risk by flying away from the wall, pulling high, and having tons of WS skydiving experience before you got to this point.
Flying close to stuff, pulling low, or generally not having much basic WS experience all increases the risk.

Wow, i must be getting dementia. I was there a day before Abraham went in. I and another BASE Mentor spoke with George about repairing his canopy but soon realized that it was a lost cause. His concept of the sport was a lost cause i mean. We saw the uselessness of carrying the convo further. We just made sure not to be on his load.
IMHO he didnt do enough research. I am really sorry of his death.
take care, thanks for reminding me.
space

Are you sure?

The wingsuit jump will always be more dangerous due to the additional degrees of freedom it creates. With these degrees of freedom comes a diverse set of new skills required to perform a successful flight plan. Add to this the increased difficulty in recognizing a close-call or even just minor non-consequential mistakes. Making mistakes in a stowed bridge jump are pretty easy to recognize, whereas mistakes in a wingsuit flight can easily go unnoticed when it all ends well. Confirmation bias reinforces this danger as pilots continue to repeat mistakes and get away with them over and over, and then continue their chosen path of progression. As we've regrettably learned this danger applies equally to beginners as it does to veterans. It's something I think about before and after every flight.

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool." - Richard P. Feynman

Anyone who thinks you can jump off cliffs using nylon and string to stop you from slamming into earth at high rates of speed can be done in a safe way is living in a fantasy land. This sport by very definition is dangerous, period. There is nothing wrong with doing dangerous things, but be honest with yourself and others. It is irresponsible to try and sugar coat an activity that kills people. This is not safe, not now, not ever. You can do everything right and still die. With proper training and good judgment you can increase your chances for success. But even then it only helps push the odds in your favor, it guarantees nothing. You can still get a tension knot at any time. Line twists happen even with perfect pack jobs and perfect body positions. I have watched the majority of my friends die. Some were pushing it, others were not. Some were inexperienced, others were the best the sport has ever seen. To answer your question, YES, 100% this sport is fucking dangerous and to say anything else is STUPID and dishonest...

i am running my own list since a few years (pdf attached). i personally don't belive this gives a value to the question how dangerous wingsuits are because we cannot compare total number of wingsuit jumps to total number of other jumps per year.

but the stats show two important things:
- proximity wingsuit flights is where most people die no matter the expierence they have (and i personally believe future proximity tracking jumps will lead into the same)
- second most wingsuit fatalities are caused by instable exits (wich i personally belive is a sign of to fast progression; how much expierence you take on tracking until you start wingsuiting)

That´s the point.

The only 100%-way to not get killed in a WS-Jump is: don´t do one.
To answer your question: it can´t be answered.
If you use a WS, see above.

But this is equal to everything in our sport.
all statistics are useless for that question.
WS-fatalities happened and will happen again.
Like Jeb said, you can do everything right and still die.

My opinion is not worth much but here it is.

A wingsuit is a piece of nylon. It's not dangerous until you put it on and jump off something. It's the person wearing it that is dangerous, to themselves, as I am, as we all are.

BASE jumping is so seductive and fun, but it is technically dangerous, which can be managed to a certain extent, and also mentally dangerous, where our judgement gets clouded, our judgement about ourselves and whats happening around us, and that's the tricky bit. We all have this complicated emotional relationship with it. Wingsuits attract the shit out of some people and drag them into areas where their judgement is sub-optimal.

Cocaine or heroin is fine sitting on the table. Some people ignore it. Some people can't look away. Some people take it and can handle it. Some people ruin their lives with it. It's all in your head. Wingsuits are a bit the same. Just a new more powerful drug. If you can handle it, it's cool. If not, it might kill you. You won't know until you try.

Wingsuits opened up new ways to kill yourself and we are still exploring them. Same as all aviation inventions.

I think its a very answerable question, and ive enjoyed reading the discussion people have created. I think that like jeb and many other have stated very correctly, you can do absolutely everything right and still die, is there more likely to go wrong in a wingsuit. Its interesting to see opinions can vary greatly on this from absolutely its much more dangerous, to maybe tracking is more dangerous, to if used in a perfect setting as in my example, its no more dangerous than a non-wingsuit base jump.

My own personal thoughts come from trying to decide if wingsuit base jumping is almost its own separate identity from base jumping. If I hang up my wingsuit and keep jumping my wonderful local S, am I more likely to survive? If I stick to my favorite wingsuit haunts which are quite safe by current standards, can I keep doing this forever? If we strip wingsuit base jumping back down to its essential components, is it repeatable just the same as jumping the perrine 3000+ times, or will something "eventually just happen"?

How many in the list, did everything right?

I come to one, who pulled high, but pilotchute made a knot, and,,,,,,

I had the same pilotchute as him, and I had seen it in skydiving more than once, making a knot, so we knew it could happend.

I know one who had twists, and the canopy turned back to the building. That is the closest one I know of, was a shit happens incident. There are some few more, but they are really really rare.

I also agree 100% with what Jeb sais. And I think so will everybody else who is in the sport for more than 10 years and jumps regulary. I acutally think that people are not aware of this is one of the biggest killer in our "sport". Everytime someone goes in, the main discussions are why the guy did that stupid error and went in (this could never happen to me...). But I'm sure that the jumpers who went in thought the same everytime someone else went in. Instead of thinking that the jumper went in because he did a silly mistake, we should think, fuck, this could easaly happend to me as well.
Jumpers need to know that it is very, very easy to fuck up and in base, if you fuck up chances are big that you die. And with the additional complexity of a wingsuit, chances to fuck up are for sure bigger than without a wingsuit.

why not, you can jump your local "S" until you die ...
(joke)


as Jeb said: you´ll never know ..

Now seriously..
first, the question "did they do everything right? (as for the cause for fatalities)" is hard to answer..
did they? well, probably not, otherwise it would not be that high numbers of deaths. but (I guess) all who went in in WS fatalities thought they did. the same as most of non-WS fatalities ...

But back to the main question, is WS more dangerous if I compare it to other jumps with the identical circumstances without a WS?
I think yes because you add a couple of possible problems you don´t have without the nylonsuit.
At a terminal wall, however, a poor tracker endangers himself more than a badass WS-flyer .. and vice versa.
it depends on the parameters you give as standard...
What should be the outcome?
For me it´s a little like:
Is a racecar more dangerous than a family-van if we, let´s say, let them drive on the same day, by the same driver on a sunny and dry road straight from A to B?

If the thoughts go more to:
is WS more dangerous in general? then I ´m convinced that you can answer that with "yes" because of the different usage and suitstyles nowadays, combined with all the technical, physical, meteorological, and so on issues.

Any thoughts about this video?

https://jointheteem.com/...southern-california/

I think it's next level shit. He's an animal and he's sciencing the fuck out of it. If you didn't see the NatGeo spot with him, you should.

Using Science to Map a Wingsuit BASE Jump

Skijumping is scinence, where you have every factor measured, but still jumpers perform very different from jump to jump. Imagine

which is why he took flysite data from many many jumps found out his start arc average and does not jump anything that is not below his lowest start arcs
science

Base is more a suicidal sport, than a dangerous one.

Living to the fullest, bla bla bla, or life is not worth anything without being extreme, pushing limits, etc.

Enough said.

Yup I know both Chris and rich well. They're taking things to a whole new level for sure, and approaching it in the safest way possible. My thought on these jumps is that I've had bad starts, not many, not even probably more than 3-4 in 800 wingsuit jumps, but I've had them, which excludes me from being able to do these jumps where there is basically no margin for error. Self confidence and ability have a lot to do with being able to do these jumps, and bad luck and freak circumstances have a lot to do with bad things happening, but to me, at least these days, I like to keep a cushion.

Using science for base jumping it sounds familiar like Geo a few years back in sth Africa..



That did not end well

I have met Rich and he is a very intelligent all round jumper (unlike myself ) but still there is very little reward for this much risk..

what was it a 15 sec wingsuit flight?


I guess everyone has there own measure of risk/reward and my own thoughts are this is waaay too much..

But all the best for there future jumping ..

maybe around there but he has also opened up an almost 1 min flight in the slc area

The problem is your gonna get people who don't have the dedication or skill wanting to do this jump in the future.

Whats the name of the exit ? anyone I did not really watch the whole thing , as soon as I heard top gun I cringed and watched on and off ..

The exit, flight and pull are more complex in a wingsuit.

If you have a bad wingsuit exit, like in this video, the suit could potentially fly you in the wall. Over rotating slick, not such a big deal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-Ee_VMPwXc

The chance of getting line twists in a wingsuit are higher (burble, AOA,..)
Dealing with the mal is more difficult as you have less freedom of movement and it could potentially take longer to deal with it due to unzipping the arm wings or RAD.

did some wuffo steal your password and make this post?

You have to admit you have to commit when you do such jumps. You have to be willing to roll the dice, put the bullit in the chamber, and pull off.

That is the game some base jumpers do all the time, and that is the game most do once and awile. Some very few do it only once, and shocking to most, the last time.

It is a brutal sport, but I still say it can be done safe.

This is what I keep coming back to as the real question, and ive heard this said before by a lot of friends who are dead now. When I first started jumping, I brushed off what experienced jumpers told me when I was pushing the limits, and now others do when I try to do the exact same thing. I think its the nature of the sport and the nature of the people in it that we will always have that desire to push the envelope, and no matter what people try to tell you, experience is the best teacher.

Not Many experienced guys around anymore.

It could depend on how you define dangerous.

Wingsuit jumps clearly result in more fatalities per jump

But perhaps traditional jumps result in a lot more survivable serious injuries per jump than wingsuit jumps do.
(Broken bones etc)

I'm not saying the above is true, I don't know the statistics.
But dangerous does not always have to just mean fatally so.

BASE in recent years just following the trend we can see in skydiving . 30 or 40 years ago skydiving was almost like cult and to become a skydiver one had to be almost superman , Rambo if not Chuck Norris... training was long and boring process, progression was slow and under way more expertise control .
Now any one can get in to Otter and within 3 days start jumping solo.. to whom to blame? Marketing, industry, trend...
In BASE we are facing the same trend.....
BASE schools are growing up every where . Those who getting in to BASE coming with believe that BASE is safe and simple, just like skydiving is.
General level of knowledge in BASE and skydiving is lower than it was 30 or 20 years ago while progression program ( from student to expert ) is squeezed in to 40-50 jumps.
People rushing to become ''good'' in wingsuiting ( which many actually achieve as well, proving that WS flying is actually quite easy)
Very easy is to blame the You Tube or FB but that is quite shallow view.
Today wuffo who want to BASE jump need 5 min to find instructor who is WILLING to take him.
Before that was the first and very solid barrier for wannabe BASE jumpers , which worked as filter to prevention fatalities as well.
That is gone now.
After all, more jumpers = more fatalities
A lot more fatalities = mass population will put less attention to it
Less attention = quicker acceptance of the general population and media
quicker acceptance of the population and media = less restrictions

Quite twisted but in general works for BASE society...

Refering to that robi bird :)

I kinda laugh now because every few weeks someone else is opening up a tracking school and there full of paying people with low Base experience and Low skydiving experience.

If you want to be a better tracker go back to skydiving do 100 jumps on your tracking suit come back to the base arena and let me know how you go...

Everyone wants to be awesome straight away...

I am waiting for an Athlete Tracking page to come out next....



See ya this year robi i will be running around southern Europe in Tracking/wingsuit gear ... Away from the crowds

"good judgement comes from experience, experience comes from bad judgement .."

you have to make your own experiences, because it is hard to transfer your experiences to another person ...(primary/secondary experiences ..)
but that´s a different story.

again what is said before:
of course you can (try) to do it safe.
jump only WS you are familiar with and had proper training.
jump only huge overhung walls and fly straight away into the great white open.
pull high enough and pull in a proper way.
keep your gear and your body well maintained.
don´t drink and fly, jump only with perfect weather conditions, and so on..
and again, that is no guarantee to not fuck up for any reason.
maybe the reaper decides to put a knot in your pc on a "perfect" flight just because he has to do his job, you´re screwed...

Pattto
You may travel south all the way to Syria but I will do all possible to avoid such low skill jumper as you are.

Good tracker does not come from 100 skydives doing tracking. It comes once the variometer has been grown up in jumper ass after certain amount of jumps of all kind..

... but what the hell i know anyway

dying for the progress - it is so cool phrase for 2016. year of BASE

I like germans - they are so positive and open minded ready for improvisation :P

I completely agree that the majority of students wanting
to learn BASE jumping these days have less experience.

The cheapest/safest way to get good in your track suit
is to practice tracking out of a cessna from low altitude
then take suit to a tall antenna, and finally a big wall.

Leading cause of death in SKY jumping: Swooping
Leading cause of death in BASE jumping: Wingsuits

I love statistics and could run some numbers... but
this is where we would all argue over the details.

Lastly, I had to look up: Variometer
see attached jpeg for definition.

this is why we put all information in manuals and guidelines ..
to be ready for improvisation ...

That sounds like something Dwayne would have said :-)

You know tracking is not that easy. And that is why they put on their wingsuits :-)

Yes, and he got it on tape!

I think most have made up their mind before they started to jump.

1. You will have friends who die
2. You might die yourselves, or getting badly hurt.
3. You can make up your mind, get the best information, the best mentor, and do your job before you start to be the best of yourselves.
4. Always use the right tool for the job, and know your tools.
5. ? It is up to you

''You have to be willing to roll the dice, put the bullet in the chamber, and pull off.''

Exaggerated a lot!
BASE is the safest sport activity - if we need to ensure legal excess to the site . This is what we say to authorities ;)
BASE is the most rad, epic dangerous sport on earth and milky way - this is what we say in the Horner bar after few round of beer.
Get the point....

I can understand that reaction Patto,
but I think anyone that writes off a 15sec wingsuit flight as very little reward is just not appreciating the aesthetics of it. These flights combine a highly technical and visual exit, with a strong dive attacking the terrain, to a nice fat flare and pitch to a tight, sloping, technical LZ. Nothing was straight forward and it demanded a high level of training, focus, and execution. I would usually prefer to climb El Cap, but for some reason I still spend time struggling on silly 15ft boulders, why is that? The actual times ranged from 18 to 30sec depending on the line flown, but I found these just as rewarding as the 75-85sec flights in the bigger Californian mountains.
I mean really, if nothing less than 15sec of flight before pitching is worth it, then all non-wingsuit jumps are a waste of time ;-)

There are many concerns raised here on the risk of bad exits, as there should be. Recovering and flying out a bad exit is a critical skill to be trained, one of many skills to be practiced as a wingsuit pilot. Imagine if the hang/paragliding community was complacent in 50hour novices just running around flying all the expert launches and flying XC giving themselves little/no margin, or with an experienced pilot deciding they are going to start trying aerobatic flying without the proper training. (Adjust this analogy as appropriate, I'm only a wannabe PG'er). Things would probably not look very different from the wingsuit discipline. I know most would reject any regulation or structure around proper pilot training, and that no amount of training can eliminate all fatalities, but I hope this becomes an option for new birds in the future.

hjumper,
as you know there are plenty of sketchy exits and flights in our favorite wingsuit haunt too, but we all need to decide for ourselves why we're flying, the risk/reward, and on any given exit if we've mitigated to the best of our ability the risks and hazards. I know you'll make the right decision for yourself.

One only has to make a trip to the valley to see the progression from tracking to wingsuit. Get a tracking suit, not making the power lines and next minute the wingsuit is on. Patience seems to be a thing of the past. How many trackers have died at High Ultimate? I also don't hear of may trackers cooking their exit and going in. It seems to me that trackers have more of a tendency to respect their limits.

Yes, i am sure.
take care,
space.

Robi is on the right track here (again). I remember many times in LB people would come to Rami and myself asking "how do you learn to track like that?" expecting that there would be some kind of magic trick we could tell them which would change their tracking over night. Unfortunately there isn´t. We always told people that "jump 500 tracking base jumps from easy exits and you will learn". Most of these people were disappointed because doing 500 jumps would take them many seasons and they don´t have the time to do many seasons from beginner spots, they want to kick ass right now and right here! But I think this is the only way and that´s what I like about tracking. LIke Robi said, wingsuit flying is actually quite easy and to be a somehow ok wingsuit flyer, it is much easier than to be somehow ok tracker. Tracking is way more difficult to master and therefore lot of people don´t have the patience to do the required practise and after one season they just change in to wingsuiting. The only way to become a good base tracker is to do a LOT of tracking base jumps. Tracking in BASE environment has so much to do with subterminal skills, exits and good starts and those you cannot practise from airplane.

I guess everyone would agree that Rami knew quite well how to track but not all people fully understand the commitment he made to get there. Out of his 2000+ base jumps vast majority were tracking jumps, on his most active seasons he spent shitloads of time in LB just to practise and build up the experience. So take your time, be patient and don´t only be focused on the goal you might have but also enjoy journey to get there!

+1 For what you have said markus..

when I said go do 100 skydives I was meaning take the time to do some training and you will get better..

You have summed it up nicely.

A lot of people don't realise the work he put in.

When we woke up in morning he would eat that finnish cheese on dry cracker bread and I always would tell him I know his secret to being so light and tracking like a fucken animal. It was his secret finnish cheese :)

If you want to fly like a bird, you have to eat like a bird!

your right that you must practice tracking a lot but you don't need make 500 base tracking jumps to be a great base tracker. Roberta Mancino become awesome base tracker before she had 50 base jumps -- because she had 7,000 skydives when she start base!

tracking practice is important, and airplanes are the best 'easy exits' cause you can do a lot of jumps fast and they are longer so you have more time to feel and adjust your track for max effect, then you can 'kick ass' on base.

well since you have 4000 skydives and 65 basejumps, are you an awesome tracker?
maybe for reference, how far do you track at brento?

Yes, I am a pretty good tracker.

Have not been to Brento... I do not like tourist places much.

And you?

I´ve never jumped with Roberta but given that she is a world class freeflyer, I´m sure she tracks pretty good. Pretty similar what happened when Jeff Nebelkopf started WS BASE, he was flying circles around more "experienced" people when he had just handful of BASE jumps. So you are correct, you can cut down the required BASE experience to become awesome by becoming a world class skydiving athlete first. I´m sure we all agree on this that if you know how to kick ass from airplane it does give you quite good possibilities to kick ass way much faster from the cliff as well.


This I don´t agree. You can practise terminal tracking up to a certain degree from the plane but tracking in BASE requires other essential skills as well (like subterminal tracking and launch and these cannot be learnt from an airplane). It of course depends on the exit how important which part is, generally the higher the exit, the longer you are in terminal and less skills in subterminal environment are required. Then if you go to LB (or other similar places), subterminal is where the magic happens. If you only know how to track on terminal speeds you will never even reach terminal phase in your track from some exits in the valley as you need to pull before. So I rephrase my previous comment a bit by stating that to become a good tracker in BASE environment the only way is to track a lot in BASE environment (but shitloads of skydiving experience obviously helps a lot and can cut down the required amount of BASE as you most likely learn faster).

Take whatever Markus says with a grain of salt. Someone told me he and Rami were some of the best trackers in the world, but that was like 10 years ago, so he probably sucks by now ;)

agree completely with all you say here and thanks for the 'rephrase.'

i jumped brento only twice, but i suppose i did pretty well.
i only asked, as i wonder what you meant by 'good tracker'.
i have merely a fourth of your skydives, but have almost ten times as many basejumps.

I have more than 10 times the amount of jumps and still a mediocre tracker. It's still all fun tracking, smaller jumps, wing suits.
Not everything is a contest but it does open up more jumps.
Let's jump let's jump safe.

my penis is longer than both of you hahahaha.
take care, space

The lower + slower an aircraft is flying the more
beneficial it is for helping one learn some of the
skills needed for BASE tracking, I'm thinking:
hot air balloons, helicopters, ultralights, and
even a small Cessna with a really good cut.

I definitely enjoy big way track dives from full
altitude but they do not translate that much to
BASE cause the airspeed of a turbine is so fast
you leave the plane with much more air to fly.

Before I went to ITW and LB I bought a used
PF track suit and practiced with it, first from
14,000 twice, then 25 to 30 times from a 182.

I'd exit last, with as much cut as possible,
track full out for a 10 second count and pull.
No looking at the altitude, no wave off. This
helped me a lot, only did 5 at each place but
got long flights and always made the LZ.

So you would recommend hop n pops over altitude jumps?

So far almost all of my tracking suit jumps in skydiving and base ( not many) have been on a Pressurized Tube2.
Before taking the suit out in base I spent half of my skydive jumps (after just tracking) doing things like barrel rolls, somersaults, freeflying, diving and recovering.

I've got a Phoenixfly now and I need to get as good as I can on it.

Do you think I should mix it up on this new suit and do 50/50 hopnpops and altitude to get the best learning i can before taking it Base?

STDs , Sharks and Spiders are dangerous. Wingsuits are not. Should try building your own and jump it off a cliff just to see if it works.

How dangerous is the pilot flying it?

In my opinion, @ brento you are safer in a WS ( if you properly know how to fly one) than going slick for example. Simply because if you just fly straight out, you are opening in totally clean and open air, not near a wall or terrain. So incase of a problem or mal, you have clean air to work with.

So yes, in my opinion, if used properly, wingsuits are safer than people think. Statistics just prove how unsafe/dangerous ws pilots can be.

-Cheers