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So I’m looking for an outside opinion, I want to get into base but only have a dozen skydives, I know what you’re all thinking... “get more Skydive’s in” but I wanna give a little more background, I’m a senior rigger in seat, back, chest and lap. I have well over 1000 speedflights and have a P4 Paragliding certification. So I’ve got plenty of canopy experience as well as packing. Do I have enough experience to skip the “200” Skydive’s and take an FJC?

You've got enough experience to keep doing what you already know:

Pack parachutes and not jump them. It can be the coolest joirney of your life so why shortcut it?!

Seat, back, and chest I can believe. Lap rating with just 12 skydives, not so much.

You’re relatively new to the forum, but there is a common theme to a lot of “I want to start BASE jumping”.

Post goes as follows:

Hey I have (insert xyz special skill/talent/ability/experience) so I feel like I should be able to be able to more quickly/skip steps in the process of (BASE jump/aerial/wingsuit).

You’ll see a few people that will respond “go for it, i was a special flower too and it all worked out”, but most people will say “everyone thinks they’re special, you aren’t”. The reason you won’t see More people saying “yah just go for it, you’ll be fine” is that a lot of the time it doesn’t go that way, and a lot of those people either die or get hurt and quit. Skydiving is the most specific preparation you can do, and you seem to have done the hardest part already (unless you have 12 tandems). Spending 6 extra months jumping is cheap insurance against a double femur later.

In your specific situation, you have some canopy skills for sure, and you have experience in a sport that often kills/severely injures people. I’m sure as a speedflier, you’ve seen people that say “I have a few skydives, so I can fly a speedwing”, and then go destroy themselves. You have a good head start, but 12 Skydives really is basically nothing. Do 100 at least. Learn to track, learn to fly a super low performance wing. The money spend up front is cheap insurance against lost wages from a double femur. You’ll have plenty of time to sew then.

And a couple of hours with windtunnel could not hurt either while you do your skydives!

Yes, you can.

The opening, and the 5 seconds after it, are statistically the most dangerous part of BASE.

How many openings have you had? If you can get on an opening simulator and run a couple hundred slow speed openings, it will help you _a lot_ when you start BASE.

If you're more of a video guy, here's one that one of my friends made:

https://www.youtube.com/...JImyWmghiSk&t=1s

I believe his answer was something like "sure you can do it, but you're gonna suck at it, and it's gonna hurt."

Flying a paraglider (or a skydiving canopy, honestly) is very different from flying a BASE canopy. You can actually build a lot of very bad habits at the DZ (and even more so flying paraglider and speed wings).

Do you have any time under a BASE canopy (or a BASE-like canopy--a large 7 cell F-111 parachute)?

What kind of BASE are you interested in? If you want to jump big walls and fly wing suits, the skydives are going to be even more critical, and shortcutting now will just lead you to frustration later on, when you have to go back to the DZ and learn terminal freewill skills.



For slider down, 200 skydives is an arbitrary number that someone, somewhere, basically just made up (based on the idea that you should be an "expert" skydiver, at a time when the "expert" skydiving license--the D license--required 200 skydives).

It's not about how many skydives you've made. It's about what skills you have developed during that time.

Don't fixate on a number. Work through a skills progression.

I've had students with 70 skydives who were well prepared, and students with 1000 skydives who weren't prepared at all.

I’ve attached two .pdf files. The first has recommendations for preparation, and the second is a set of canopy drills (to work through at the DZ). Use them as a guide to prepare, and also to evaluate your readiness for BASE (and for the fundamentals course).

Tom thanks for the feedback, I’m based out of the western United States and have a few friends who are all into slider down stuff, and have taken an FJC so that's the direction I’ve been wanting to go. I knew by posting on here nobody would just say go for it and jump! But I do want to have a long base career so I figured that asking openly to the community rather than my buddies would give me a better idea. I also know that just by saying that I’ve done xyz doesn’t mean I’m ready. I’ll read through those attachments. Again thanks.

I actually have a simulator where I work, I’m a HALO rigger for the military, so I’ve been on that hundreds of times going over malfunctions and what not. Definitely is different in real life though.

Dude, skydiving can be so much fun! It will make you a way better base jumper and then guess what happens: you’ll have even more fun base jumping! Skydives are way cheaper than american hospital bills too

I enjoyed the very end of that video very much.

Stick to skydiving till u learn to hate all the rules regulations bullshit and skygod wankers etc ...then base will seem so much better lol....but seriously I ve seen ppl do BASE jumps with only cliff diving experience and ground launching experience on base style canopies they would be better at landing and dealing with low shit under canopy then most ppl at 200 Skydive’s ...but in saying that they really only are suitable for slider down jumps and as much as I hate to say it if your doing slider up shit u will need Skydive’s as u can’t track in a tunnel....

this right here what tom said . I had over a 1-k skydives when made my 1st BASE jump and it was a lot for my brain to take-in for 1st time .
A lot of people don't get it that want to start BASE but do have some skydives . Skydive - BASE . They share a lot of the same familiar mechanics, but at same time, they are totally different the moment you step off the exit .
.

On my 128th skydive I fucked up my landing and earned myself 11 pieces of titanium and 3 weird vertebrae. That humbled me and made me focus much more on risk management and my attitude.

I had roughly 275 skydives when I made my first BASE jump, in a structured first jump course.

When I got home from the BASE course and reflected on it, my risk assessment conclusion was: I still don't have the canopy skills to do this safely.

I made another +/- 150 skydives before I went back to BASE.

I made my first base jumps with 105 skydives at bridge day. I realized I was not at all ready and stuck to skydiving. 500 skydives later I took an actual FJC and have been happily jumping since. I still skydive all the time. Its worth spending the money and putting the time in...

can you skip walking and get into marathon ?

Any Idiot can jump off an object, its what you do under canopy and within the first 5 seconds of opening that will make you "Competent Base Jumper". Just because you have the ability to pack, and use a wing that doesnt have anything to do with Base Jumping, doesnt mean you will be alright. On the contrary, it also probably wont matter. Just dont wingsuit, take a proper course, and limit yourself to 5 hits of acid prior to jumps and youll most likely be fineish.

i know a few people with less experience than you and all keep surviving, the experts keep dying......

it's better to be lucky than good.

enjoy.

controversy

It's better to be both, actually.


Seriously, though, BASE is all about working the odds. We're professional gamblers, we're just not gambling with money.

The best jumpers are the guys who stack the odds in their favor on every jump. They don't hit the jackpot on every hand--they just keep winning small and medium size hands year after year, perhaps with occasional jackpots. Their secret is that _every_ time they have a chance to stack the deck, or load the dice, they take it. The work every angle and every advantage to stack the odds in their favor.

At the end of the day we're all rolling the dice--it's the guy who's done the best job of loading the dice in his favor who comes out ahead in the long run.

The best way I've ever heard BASE described, love it!

The question you posted on the title is false or at least the answer to that question is super easy. If you really ask whether you CAN skip skydiving and get into BASE the answer is simple, of course you can. The question you should ask however is (and especially ask it from yourself) whether you WANT to do it. There is a general recommendation of having at least 200 skydives and it probably exists for a reason. Also any experienced and credible FJC will require you to have around 200´ish skydives, probably for a reason as well. If you think you´re better than that and you can ignore the general guidelines as they don´t apply to you, you´re free to buy yourself a rig and start hucking. No one will stop you there. People will probably advise you that it´s a bad idea but ultimately if you choose to ignore all the info that´s given to you, you CAN do it. It´s you and you alone that has to choose whether you WANT to do it. And that´s one of the beauties of BASE.

Why did he keep going to the front risers?
Ouch!

i learnt speedflying/paragliding the fly or die method (dumb) but yeh it was when i became experienced a long time after is when i fucked up badly and nearly died...think maybe the more experienced u get the less scared an more complacent u become...then it bites u and u realise yeh fuck this could easily kill me even on the lamest of flights or jumps,,,.. or u forget a chest strap or do something dumb just not thinking

I only had 12 skydives when I started BASE. To answer your question, skydiving a BASE canopy on solo hop and pops to learn specific BASE skills, low turns, flat turns, accuracy, drills, etc are way much more beneficial that getting 200 skydive oriented skydives. We can carry this over to PMs if you want to. I currrenlty have somewhere around 300-400 BASE jumps and less than 100 skydives and have opened most of the objects I jump, and I’ve never taken a FJC.

To add: all of my jumps are slider off and sub 300ft. If I were to go to Norway or Swissland I would get current on tracking skills out of a plane, tall antennas and balloon jumps first. So completely quiting skydiving isn’t really feasible. I would consider a trip to the DZ as a “cross training” trip.

Front risers are AWESOME! Just ask the cool swooper kids at the DZ. Only lame old guys use something like rear risers or toggles.

Buy your rig and come jumping with your fucking friends.

So, you want an opinion?
I see a lot of opinions offered.
I think your canopy flying skills are excellent.
But, I continually see my friends, and students, who are dying in the BASE environment succumb to bad reactions after exit, before they have a canopy to take control of.
BASE is not Skydiving, BASE is not Speedflying, BASE is not Paragliding,
BASE is a unique sport unto itself, it incorporates aspects of many other aerial sports and if you have experience in these sports it will be to your advantage, but you have to learn the peculiarities of the sport of BASE it is unique, all the best, B .

best thing is to not do it.....its stupid (it really is) and no matter how good u are its still a numbers game... experience isnt enough to make death or injury not likely to happen.... but id rather roll the dice base jumping etc then be a drug/meth addict like all the people i know......so whats your poison lol

Much rationality here Gauley, good post.
OP, 200 jumps is a mostly arbitrary number that is only a metric.
Any ethical FJC should use other decision point areas before accepting a student (not just $$)

I think you are well suited to begin slider down jumping IF you buy a BASE or other docile 7 cell canopy and make several dozen hop-n-pop skydives on it as you prepare for a FJC.

I also think that you are woefully unprepared for anything other than very short delays that are highly dependent upon an acrobatically stable exit. You can learn that easily in a FJC

windtunnels may substitute for FF skills required for longer delays, but I've never been in one so I can't say.

If you start jumping, share your packing skills with the community, many could benefit.............

have fun!

Craig

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