Basejumper.com - archive

So i thought that was pretty cool reading the recent post on Father/Son BASE jumpers.........

I am most interested in seeing if there are any Siamese twin BASE jumpers out there. If so, i would love to know more. What happens if one isn't feeling the jump but the other is, who pitches, who is responsible for steering/landing the canopy, what kind of a rig they have, etc.
What would they do if they have a cliff strike and one of them goes in but the other does not?

I think "conjoined twin" is the preferred nomenclature.

would love to see this!

It's called a TWOP. It stands for "Two With One Parachute."

Basically it works like this.

Let's make up names for our guys. We'll call them "Rick" and "Randy" just because.

Both Rick and Randy wear normal BASE harnesses.

They stand side by side facing forward, with Rick on the (jumpers) left and Randy on the (jumpers) right, and zip tie the harnesses together, somewhere like the hip junctions and main lift webs.

They attach the right riser of the canopy to the Randy's left three ring.

They attach the left riser of the canopy to Rick's right three ring.

The canopy gets packed into Rick's pack tray.

Randy holds the PC in his right (outside) hand (but remember that the bridle is closing Rick's container, where the canopy is).

They very carefully launch at exactly the same moment, with exactly the same push.

They take whatever delay they want (say, three seconds from the bridge).

Randy throws the PC.

The canopy extracts from Rick's pack tray and inflates.

They each have one riser to control. If Rick pulls with his right hand, the canopy will turn to the left. If Randy pulls with his left hand, the canopy will turn to the right.

To flare, they have to both give exactly the same flare input at exactly the same time. But it's much easier to just land in the later and let a boat fish them out.

I'm sure that no one would be crazy enough to do this...but the next time you're in Twin Falls I can try to dig out the video, if you want to see it.

Hey Tom, surprised you have such a good memory of how Randy and I did the TWOP there at Perrine. Only thing you forgot was after we opened under that 23' round tri con reserve, Randy also had a front mount terserary canopy that Carl Boenish gave us back in 83 at CDC. Randy threw it out after we opened our main, a 23' round tri con reserve dtd. 1971 and we landed in the water under both rounds. That was my 4th TWOP, 3rd with Randy. To complicate things, the first time we did it was at a 270' bridge over a river in Kentucky in 1982 on our way to the first real jumping Bridge Day. Phil Smith was with us and he wanted Randy and I to try his idea of a side by side jump on one canopy which I later named a TWOP, BUT we did it backwards. We put a 26 Navy Conical into Randy's old harness and container which had R2 capewells instead of a 3 ring. The canopy had 3 rings on the risers so first we had to use a locking caribeaner to attach one riser to Randy's harness and the other 3 ring to my harness. We put the rigs on our bellies so we were facing Smitty when we exited backwards using a 30' static line. We opened the round canopy and hit the water about 30 mph. Smitty had us each holding a pack of double mint gum for the camera since we were twins. Next TWOP at the Ky. bridge was with a friend named Jerry Fee from Iowa and we used his cruislite 7 cell. I'll never do it with a ram air again. When we opened, we had such a strong forward surge with 350 pounds under it and had a 180 and flew totally out of control back between the bridge columns. Rounds are best for these jumps. Great old times.

Great memories....

WOW!!

Mad respect. Im sure it would take you weeks to dig through all that footage but if found that would call for a screening and some brews.