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which is cheaper square or round.

im not sure if this is a stupid idea or not but wouldn't it be better to do static line BASE jumps with a round instead of a square. so when the cop take your equipment its not something really valuble like your normal rig.

Just a thought

rounds are cheeper cos no one wants them (ok generalisation, but basically right)

don't know about BASEing rounds - ask in the BASE forum... might be issues I don't know about.

Other than that, big problems are that you cannot control the flight of a round as well as a square. You just jumped off a building/cliff etc and your now being pushed back into it.... bad juju.

Also, BASE jumps are very often performed over a lot of hazzards (base of cliffs, rivers, roads etc) you are gonna land pretty much on whatever the wind decides under a round... you have far more control with a square and can hit that tight landing spot.

If you can land safe, you can run from the cops... if you broke your ankle your gear, however cheap, is gone.

Basic Research sell a round called the H20 for water jumps. It's not listed on their price list so I don't know what it costs although I would imagine that it's significantly cheaper than a new square.

Would the benefit of having the cops 'only' confiscate a round outweigh the inability to steer the canopy? I don't know, but maybe you could just buy a 2nd hand rig with a square canopy that you keep for high bust factor jumps.

Gus

Personally, I would just train at running faster.

From Consolidated Rigging'swebsite

 

A few general thoughts about rounds:

1) Rounds are cheap.
2) Rounds dry fast.
3) Rounds have minimal forward speed.
4) Rounds land really, really hard (think, broken leg).
5) Rounds open slower than slider up squares.
6) During opening, a round will not slow you nearly as much as a square. Hitting water with a snivelling slider up square is reasonable. Hitting water with a snivelling round once put me in the hospital for two months.
7) Rounds are something of a lost art. Be sure to find someone who knows what they are doing to help.
8) The best BASE packing video I've seen is Rich Stein's round packing video.


Rounds, by far. I have a whole set of rounds that I use for intentional water jumps. I payed about $100 a piece for them. They are mostly old skydiving reserves (circa 1980 or so) that were taken out of skydiving rigs. The most popular of these is the Phantom Reserve (make sure you get one with the Kevlar reinforcing).


The use of a static line or freefall deployment method doesn't really bear on the decision to use a square or round.

I highly recommend you read the responses that an inexperienced round jumper named Tom Aiello got when he posted a similar question to BLiNC a few years ago.

Mandatory reading if you are considering using a round for BASE includes these posts:

Snivelling Rounds

Rounds and Rounds

Info on Rounds

Round Canopy Water Jump

While it's generally not recommended to use rounds without proper training, it is interesting to note that RS made several hundred round BASE jumps (back then you had to have a hundred jumps to get your hands on a square, and he wanted to BASE jump before he had 100 skydives) in the wayback. I believe that included lots (like, over 100) of building jumps.

And you ought to hear RS's stories:

"Two rounds in a racer. Exit, count to two, pitch the PC, keep counting. When you get to six, fire the reserve."

Anybody talk to RS lately?

He made that round packing video for a trip we went on together in 1995 and it might be the only one out there of its kind? A valuable video, to say the least...

umm, im not a jumper, im planing too, so im just reading and dreaming about it for now. so yeah. but my plans are to join the army as a rigger, get losts of round and square jumps.

What's necessary altitude (over clear water)? Is 50m enough?

No.
I once static lined an old friend from a 100' bridge. He barely got line stretch and impacted the water pretty fast. Fortunately, he entered the water feet first and was only bruised up.
I've seen RS freefall a cliff in the 180' range only to have partial inflation and a hard impact with the water. I wouldn't do anything under 250' with a round. Your altitude may vary...

i read the links posted and they were saying something about jumping a round with a rubber band around the top of the chute so it opened faster. with a mod like this could you jump the lower heights?

No. The altitudes given by 428 are for a round with the rubber band on the apex, which is the standard BASE configuration.

The basic problem is the unpredictable nature of the "snivel, snivel, snap" opening sequence of round canopies.
Since there is very little spreading force at the skirt of a round canopy, it is very difficult to predict how long a round canopy will snivel. "Squidding" is the engineering term.
Since round canopies inflate from the top down, yes, a rubber band around the apex will speed inflation.

However, a large pilotchute is still a good idea,for quick linestretch and to keep tension (neatness) on the canopy while it is sorting itself out (less of an issue at low airspeeds).

Given this unpredictable opening characteristic, I would only trust a round canopy with some form of Webb chute (a soft pilotchute suspended at skirt level) to improve skirt spreading force. Webb chutes were first introduced on the AIM ejection seat canopy patented by Irvin Industries of Canada. The British Army uses a similar Webb chute on the their current static-line round canopy.
For BASE jumps I would probably avoid the complexity of the BAT Sombrero slider marketed by Butler.