Basejumper.com - archive

I think I had 38, or 37 - can't remember now. It's been almost two years since I've been skydiving. I find many people who are at the DZ to be insufferable social butterflies, not my type. I find that BASE folks who hang out at DZs are often scary, untalented, and insecure.

Look at the List; most of the fatalities have come from folks with lots of skydives. If skydiving made for safe BASE jumpers, this would not be the case.

I'd gladly start new students in BASE with zero skydives. In fact, I have. That way, it is not necessary to un-train the bad habits taught at the DZ. With a blank slate, it is possible instead to instill fundamental survival skills from the first jump forward.

Skydiving is a pastime. BASE is life and death. The connection between the two is tenuous and getting more so every year. Skydiving is sport climbing in the gym; BASE is sketchy mixed climbing at altitude. The skills minimally overlap, if at all.

None of my students has died so far. I like that.

D-d0g

>Look at the List; most of the fatalities have come >from folks with lots of skydives. If skydiving made >for safe BASE jumpers, this would not be the case.

>I'd gladly start new students in BASE with zero >skydives. In fact, I have. That way, it is not >necessary to un-train the bad habits taught at the >DZ. With a blank slate, it is possible instead to >instill fundamental survival skills from the first >jump forward.
...........................................................................

Now this is only my opinion.
Backed up by only Common Sence.

>Fatalities involving BASE jumpers that have Skydives is Maybe True. Because that is the Normal thing to have before you BASE jump.
You should -Not- throw yourself off a fixed object without mechanical Hands-On training on how to fly a Parachute. That does not make sence.

But that is just an opinion.

I am not sure that is a safe avenue of student training, for a person wanting to learn to BASE jump.
If I was given a chance on which way I was going to learn how to BASE jump. My first choice would be either a AFF Level one jump, or a Static Line Jump Class.
I would favor the Static Line class 1st, if all I was intending to do is BASE.
My second choice. To at least see and maybe do some basic canopy operation. Would be a Tandem Jump.
>This is only my opinion but.
I think my last choice to learn how to BASE jump would be to jump and hope for the best. With never to have had my hand on the Toggels on a actual flying canopy.

Be Safe

...Ray Losli...

Wow I'm in no position to say you are right or wrong, but you've got to admit that your thinking is pretty much the exact opposite of what most so called experts would say. I do believe that certain gifted athletes with experienced mentors could do what you advocate, but what about Joe-blow off of the street who wants to get into BASE and doesn't know anybody? Can they find a qualified mentor and survive one of the most dangerous things a person would do with little or no canopy training as well as little to no gear knowledge? Radical thinking you've got there ... either that, or you just don't like skydivers (and well you pretty much already said that you didn't like skydivers).

By the way, regardless of whether they like me or not and would even consider helping me (I will be doing a FJC with a reputable instructor), I am exposed to some pretty darn experienced BASE jumpers who I have met and occasionally skydived with at the DZs here in Colorado and I would not consider any of these people to be the "scary, untalented, and insecure people" that you refer to them as. These people I speak of are very experienced, very talented and very much respected (at least I am told so) in the BASE community.

Let's split this off into a separate thread. I'm curious where this discussion will go.

Let me play devils advocate for a minute:

[devils advocate]


True. But it's not so far off what a lot of those so called experts have done. I can think of at least six cases in which a very experienced BASE mentor put a student with less than 10 skydives (in the majority of those cases zero skydives) off an object. Almost invariably the object was a bridge over water.


I don't think we're talking about someone who doesn't have access to a mentor here. In most of the cases where I know this happened a very experienced mentor was involved.


Find a mentor? Perhaps. In truth, the number of unqualified BASE mentors I've seen found at dropzones is staggering. Perhaps it is not such a bad thing to suggest that aspiring BASE jumpers seek their mentors outside of skydiving.

Little or no canopy training? Or gear knowledge?

Why do these things have to be acquired in a skydiving environment? Why not start all of our students out jumping from a nice friendly bridge over deep water? Wouldn't it be just as easy to learn to fly a canopy there as it is to learn to fly one from an airplane? Doesn't there have to be a first opening, a first turn, and a first flare in either case?

In fact, by making the first landing into water, couldn't you actually reduce the incidence of twisted ankles (and similar injuries) experienced by first jump students? If they were landing in water, instead of on hard ground, they'd be able to practice the flare, and screw it up as many times as necessary, without the consequences.

Why not start an aspiring BASE jumper in on BASE gear right away, rather than making them learn (usually dissimilar) skydiving equipment? Wouldn't it be better to teach them the system they are going to use in the long term?

And why not drill into their heads, from jump number one, the importance of heading control, and instant response to openings? Didn't we all have to un-learn some of our (skydiving) responses to openings?

We always say that it's important to make the right type of skydives, by which we mean primarily accuracy and CRW, to practice for BASE. Why not skip the skydives and go straight to the BASE training?

In short, wouldn't we better prepare our students if, instead of saying "make 200 skydives" we said "make 200 jumps off that bridge in the potato state?"

I've heard people argue as to whether those "safe" span jumps are "real" BASE jumps. But aren't they at least better BASE training than airplane jumps?

[/devils advocate]

Thoughts, anyone?

Look at the List; most of the fatalities have come from folks with lots of skydives. If skydiving made for safe BASE jumpers, this would not be the case.
__________________________________________________

I don't believe that - frankly I don't generally consider someone with less then 1000, or at least 700, to have lots of skydives - and, as Ray said back in the old days before BASE went mainstream, most people had quite a few skydives before starting to BASE jump anyways... You'd have to narrow your search down to relatively modern fatalities, say early to mid '90's.

As for Tom's statements about doing 200 jumps off a bridge instead of skydives, I disagree on that too. 200 jumps off the bridge at what, 12 seconds per canopy ride? - sure you can do it, but how much experience to you get flying and playing with a canopy in 10 seconds? - versus jumps from a plane which give you, from 3000' s/l, say 2.5-3 minutes canopy time... Which are you going to learn more about canopy control on?

Sure if you're not using the time to learn the canopy control you are possibly wasting much of that, but you're still probably getting 30 seconds to a minute of valuable experience dealing with the opening, steering and then setting up for landing. If you're seriously trying to learn you would use most of the time. Crw is invaluable for learning heading and canopy control rather than passivity, and you can get literally 10 minutes per jump! Of course if you have less then 50-100 jumps, there are probably not a whole lot of people willing to do serious crw with you.

So it comes down to how long are you willing to wait if all you really want to do is BASE?

Maybe you don't need 200 skydives to do it from a bridge over water, but I'd certainly prefer to have at least in the tens, starting out on student canopies and then working down to seven cell BASE-style canopies.

I question how much canopy control experience a newbie gets on even a relatively safe high span like Idaho, basically the canopy opens, they turn around and land where the canopy takes them, rather than learning to take it where they want to land.

And generally I think, the more parachute experience the better.

Just my opinion

Nothing against skydiving or skydivers. Personally, I find skydivers to be a social group - I'm not really so social. So I often find myself feeling a fish out of water at a DZ. I've had some good times jumping out of a plane, but with limited days in life until I'm dead it is just not at the top of my list very often.

I just think it is funny that it's a not-very-well-kept secret that there's many examples of BASE folks who started with way less than the 150 "suggested" skydives. I also find it funny that, without exception, I trust the instincts and survival skills of most all of those BASE folks better than nearly any BASE person with many thousands of skydives. I don't think this is causative - skydiving doesn't make people scary BASE jumpers.

Rather, I think it's correlation. BASE folks who do lots of skydiving tend - on average - to have less sharp survival skills and be a bit less, um, solid. As I said, on average - I can think of half a dozen BASE folks with lots of skydives who are absolutely top quality jumpers. They are the quite obvious exceptions to my posited rule, though for me the rule itself still stands.

BASE today is changing, and BASE jumpers today are changing. A different type of person is entering the sport than even when I started a few years back.

The thing is, are these two jumps the same sport?

1. Static line on a roundie off the bridge in Idaho, on a sunny summer day, in Idaho;

2. Running exit off an underhung 330 foot cliff where it is mandatory to take a 2.5+ second delay to outrun the underhang, jumped at deep sunset with a bit of winds, dodgy landing area amongst the trees and beside some hard to see power lines.

We call them both "BASE." They have nearly nothing in common, not even the same gear. How we train people to do each safely is an obvious question. In either case, does skydiving in itself help make a safer jumper? No, not in itself - canopy understanding and canopy control are essential for #2, but the skills are unlike what is taught in 99% of skydiving situations.

I hear someone is doing a BASE-specific skydiving certification. Seems like a good idea to me. Just sending people out to the DZ to fall out of an airplane in sunny weather is poor preparation for BASE. This is pretty obvious, really.

The real expertise in BASE lies far outside of the media-hungry jumpers whose names become well-known nowadays. More than a few experienced and battle-tested jumpers are all but invisible to the new generation of BASE Gods gestating at the DZ today.

Time moves on and things change. But BASE is still deadly and people will keep dying from stupid mistakes in our sport. It's sad, but probably little can be done to prevent it in the long run. More jumpers means more mistakes means more fatalities. Maybe the current "BASE boom" will die out when the next season of carnage plays itself out.

D-d0g

Not a question of "belief," really. It's just a fact. How we interpret that fact is the real question.

Also, the majority of the List entries date from the early to mid 90s. So it's not really "narrowing the search" much to discuss the correlation on the list between skydives and fatalities. I'm thinking of 1000+ as, roughly speaking, "lots of skydives."

The obvious point here is that, historically at least, the folks most active in BASE were also most active at the DZ. Ergo, more fatalities with lots of skydives under their belt. Today, I think this correlation has broken down. I know many BASE folks who are extremely active (both in jump numbers and in opening new objects or repeating challenging ones) but who rarely if ever skydive. This is, in my understanding of the data, a fairly new development in BASE. It also makes for difficult comparisons, "now versus then," in terms of the safety correlation between BASE and skydiving.

I'm not arguing causation between the two variables. However, it is worth noting that most (or perhaps "many") people who have died in our sport had lots of skydives. On the flipside, there is no apparent over-representation on the List of entries who had few skydives before learning BASE.

Ergo, it's hard to argue that lots of skydives makes for BASE jumpers who do not die. At least, I'm not sure how that argument would go given the empirical evidence at hand.

I teach people who want to BASE jump how to deal with extreme pressure, first and foremost. If you can't do that, don't take up BASE. Skydiving does NOT teach this skill. Ergo, I don't assume that people who skydive alot are better prepared for BASE than those who don't.

Peace,

D-d0g

As for Tom's statements about doing 200 jumps off a bridge instead of skydives, I disagree on that too. 200 jumps off the bridge at what, 10 seconds per canopy ride? versus jumps from a plane which give you, from 3000' s/l, say 2.5-3 minutes canopy time... Which are you going to learn more about canopy control on?

That is a heads-up Statement.
If you own a Skydive Rig.
Jump it or Free-Pack your BASE rig in a old, Big student container
I routinely go on Hop& Pops to ring-out my BASE canopy. Stalls, Rear Riser turns, Stops and spin around moves.
Flat turns, in half brakes, and on and on.
I can do so many Canopy training drills my arms get tired.
Then I can practice Accuracy on landings

( Here Comes The Important Part )

> You can cram more Canopy skills practice into one Hop&Pop than ten BASE jumps.
>That practice translates over to, Learned Brain and Muscle. Reaction.
( Spontaneous Action ) Not Thinking about doing it.
It just happens. It will Happen with repetitious training.
That's what will save your Life.

>Skydiving is not Evil. It is a good learning tool.
I continually use it to this day.
Use it to your advantage.

Be Safe

...Ray Losli...

I think that reaction times are very important here and of course, using BASE specific equipment.

Although I don't have 'tons' of skydives, I do think that a few skydives to get altitude awareness is important as well as getting used to flying a canopy, learning landing patterns and learning how to sink a canopy and flare.

I've never swooped a canopy, neither have I had an interest to downsize or did downsize. I would say that a bunch of skydives on a 7 cell fury did help me a lot in terms of understanding, getting a feel for and getting some flight experience on what a 7 cell is like.

Jumping a BASE canopy out of a plane I feel is a good idea as one can get a feel for when it stalls, check out where the deep brakes are, how far a canopy drops when you rear riser stall it and of course how it flares when you come in for landing.

This is what I would think would be a good BASE specific course (just a thought that I wanted to share, that's all!):

50 Skydives using either a 7 cell or a BASE specific canopy practicing flying (while doing this, practicing all the drills from say, the Vertigo course which is rear riser stalls, flying with one toggle, landing with rear risers, immediate riser turn upon opening, and so on)

Static line Jumps on a BASE specific canopy

10 jumps from 2000 feet, hop and pops, or a few seconds of freefall then deploy.

Jumps from a bridge over water or soft sand.

Tracking jumps from a plane (for big walls/buildings)

Windtunnel time for body flying practice (I know a lot of people are going to argue here, but I feel this helps a lot, even in a zero speed environment).

Platform diving practice: head up, body flat exit

It is interesting to note that even someone with 3000 skydives could go in on their first jump.

I do understand that the jump numbers are there for the average Joe's safety but I would say that some people are more capable than others.

Finally, I think one has to accept the fact that anything can happen on a BASE jump (no matter how prepared you are) and if one is not prepared to accept that, well then, they better not jump and stick to skydiving (or not jump at all!!!!).

Just my thoughts, this is in no way a recommendation or anything like that. What do I know anyway?

Matthew

How many students have you trained from the beginning?
Out those students, how many had zero skydives?

It stands to reason that experienced skydivers have died, because most BASE jumpers started skydiving to ... you guessed it,Skydive.

With the influx of BASE jumpers this day and age due to it's expounding popularity, that too will increase the chance that death will occur. What DZ's do you hang out at? oh.. that answers the question

Seriously where do you hang out that you find enough BASE jumping skydivers to come up with such a conclusion? It could easily be stated that BASE jumpers are too insecure to go out in the day time unless it's with another BASE jumper. That's just a statement so take as such

I don't disagree entirely. I find a few skydivers that don't dedicate much time to BASE. Casual BASE if you will.

For the past 2years and some months, I've been BASE jumping. In my short in the activity of BASE, I've watched both Inexperienced, and experienced Skydivers show really poor judgement and some serious lack of skill too.

Out of pure curiosity:
How may years do you have in the sport?
How many BASE jumps?
How many skydives and what type of skydives did you do?

Do you feel that all skydivers are social butterflies?
What makes them untalented?

I know several extremely talented skydivers that BASE jump and do it very well. I don't see how all those skydives were detrimental. Take Sabia for instance. Have you seen him skydive? He's a bird. The people that have trouble in BASE are the same ones that don't bother to get good training because "how hard could it be" <== that's not from my head, it's an attitude I've seen in many jumpers. Especially the ones that jump high wingloadings at low jump numbers.

Admittadly I had very little training. In BASE. I did have some skydiving habits to change.

Yeah there are some people with few or no skydives that turn out ok. I have a whole lot of skydives and personaly I think I turned out ok. There is so much to learn and I wasn't so gung ho to try every possible object. I feel that was from my experiences in the skydiving world.

There are plenty of skydivers that fit your social butterfly generalization but look around at a BASE boogie. It's quite the social event. The folks DO tend to be a bit more twisted, and to me that's a good thing. Some of those folks are untalented as well.

As far being social, I'm not sure what that's got to do with BASE. You either are or you aren't.

Do what you will dog, but challenge me to canopy control sometime. I won't challenge you to acrobatics. I'm not much of a gymnast these days but when it counts, is after the parachute opens.

Whickah!!!....What cha gonna do next?

None of my students have died yet either. I like that.

It's way to late to keep writing.. Good luck, stay safe.

Given how important we're always told that canopy control is in BASE I'm staggered that anyone would advocate mentoring someone with zero skydives. Give someone the best possible BASE environment (friendly legal span, daylight, whatever) and it'll still be a poor learning environment for canopy control compared to a skydive if only for one reason - time in the air.
The better you understand your canopy the better you can fly it and in terms of gaining that understanding there's no substitute for actually spending time under the thing - something you'll rarely get much of in BASE.

The 6 jump wonder has spoken .

Gus

Vey interesting concept... With my entire knowledge of 4 BASE jumps, I'm probably not the "ideal" person to respond on this issue, but wanted to voice my feelings anyway.

I had 1500 skydives before at my first BASE jump. I jump a very heavily loaded elliptical canopy anytime I'm not doing tandems. I think most skydivers start out like I did, which is in a hurry to downsize. In retrospect, downsizing has done nothing but harm my, just beginning, BASE habit. I have 4 BASE jumps, and 0 stand up landings. First jump, I busted my ass on the rocks. 2nd jump, I busted my ass on the rocks, and split my pants and underwear wide open, not to mention burising my tailbone. 3rd jump, best landing yet, it was dark, and I got lucky and flared right, just sort of plopped down on all fours. 4th jump, I again busted my ass after barely clipping a tree in a parking lot, and my ass is stole sore. How long before a tailbone heals up?

I guess my point is, that out of all my 1500 skydives, my canopy control on a huge 7 cell sucks. It has nothing remotely related to how I land my heavily loaded elliptical canopy. I don't think that all the canopy control I learned in skydiving has helped me in BASE very much at all. In retrospect, I wish I had made 100 jumps or so on a huge ass 7 cell before getting into BASE. I guess hind site is always 20/20 though...

Ganja "4 jump baby" Rodriguez

I'm not aiming this at czechbase, it's just a general comment.


Honestly, I feel like these things (stall point, riser stall altitude loss, and especially deep brake setting) are far better checked off a nice, friendly span over water. I just have a much better frame of reference to judge what is going on if there is stuff around to look at. When I do these drills out of an airplane (err, aside from the DBS--when I do that out of an airplane, the canopy experiences deployment stall and I don't get to test the DBS at all) all I see is open air. That means I'm guessing at such things as altitude loss during riser stall based on how it "feels" to me.

Judging actual used altitude precisely on a skydive is very difficult.

I do all my "new canopy" drills off objects because I want to know what's happening as precisely as possible.

You can't test DBS out of an airplane. If you put a slider on a BASE canopy with properly set deep brakes, it's going to stall during opening, and you won't know if the brakes are too deep, or just right. DBS must be tested on a slider off opening.

This has become a unique debate as to what skillsets are most important to base jumping and what is the best way to get those skills.
So what skills should you teach and how should you train for those skills?

Damn Ddog, 2.5+ mandatory off a 330ft cliff, with winds, at night, and a sketchy landing area? I'll take video for you, but I wouldn't jump it...

I had about 500 skydives when I got into BASE, and like pullhigh said, all of those were a race to downsize to a sub-100 crossbraced canopy, and swoop from one end of the landing area to the other. They did nothing to help me with my BASE canopy control. When I front riser 360 turn my Crossfire2 119, it is different when I sink in my Blackjack 280 into a small area. In my opinion, the experience of landing several hundred times helped because I was a lot more relaxed landing the 500th than the first couple. That is obvious.

I don't like going to the DZ much either. I feel like I'm at high school, back into the clicks and social groups. I see skygods that thrive on apparent superiority. And I simply don't have $20 for a jump anymore.

Every time that I stop by the DZ to say hi to friends, I realize that skydiving and BASE are so different, that I can find very few things that they have in common. They both use parachutes, but not even made of the same material or shape. I think of the things that I've learned in skydiving, and don't think that a whole lot of it helped me.

I learned some basic canopy malfunction drills, and don't get scared when I have a rig on, with two canopies, next to an open door of an airplane. But the whole point of this is- I think I've learned more bad habits from having 500+ skydives than I've helped.

SKYDIVING IS NOT BASE!!!

I've got some vivid memories of PCAing him off a nasty (90 right = death) underhung exit in a swirling snowstorm. Say what you will, that old dog can definitely walk the walk.

Let's face it if it was not for skydiving none of us would be BASE jumping. DZs are a great learning tool. Would you get off a cliff with a brand new wing suit that you have never tried? Come on!

I can see the rotten atmosphere around some DZ but not all DZs are created equal...

Indeed it has. I'm really interested in people's thoughts on this.


What skills should you teach? I'm not sure any of us can tell you what should be taught. But here are my random musings on what I, personally would teach (in no particular order). I'd love to hear other people's thoughts. Perhaps I'll try to make up an organized list.

Regardless of what you are doing, and the extent (or lack) of your skydiving experience, you must find a qualified BASE mentor to see you through your learning progression.

Skydiving skills that apply to BASE (to a greater or lesser degree)

- 7 Cell Canopy Control
CRW is definitely the best way to train this. The skydivers who are best prepared for the real life and death aspect of BASE (i.e. avoiding object strike) tend to be CRW jumpers.

- 7 Cell Canopy Accuracy
Real accuracy practice, with real accuracy jumpers. Not "let's all try to land over there". But actual targets and measurements. I'd prefer "sport" accuracy to classic accuracy, because landing soft is also an important part of BASE. Unfortunately, "sport" accuracy is usually done on higher performance canopies, so I'd insist on big 7 cells and soft landings.

- Tracking
Get a coach. Make sure they have a much better max track than you and can film you. Do "max track" coaching dives. Learn to dial in your track for maximum glide.

- Low adjustments
In BASE, you have to be able to turn and adjust in much smaller amounts of time than in skydiving. I'd suggest just kind of getting close, then setting up your landing in the last 500 feet or so. Unfortunately, most DZ's probably aren't going to allow this.

- Cross and Down Wind Landings
Again, you may get some resistance from your DZO, but I'd definitely practice landing cross and downwind. This is also something might be easier the first few times if done into water. Don't forget that these need to be accuracy landings, too.

- Riser Flares
Practice flaring on just the risers, with the toggles unstowed. Also try it with one toggle. Having a lake (or other soft surface) under you could make this learning experience more enjoyable.

- Heading correction
Practice checking heading before deployment, then correcting immediately after opening. Again, this is a skill that is difficult to practice on a skydive, because (a) you don't have a frame of reference to know how long it took, and (b) the opening sequence is so much slower that it's very easy, and not really representative of what's going on in a BASE opening.

- Malfunction awareness
The only way I can think to train this (aside from packing yourself an actual malfunction) is to pack with only one brake set. This can give you a wacky "almost malfunction" opening, to help you get used to the idea that you must get the canopy flying away from the object as your first priority. Combined with heading awareness, this could be excellent training. I'm not sure what your DZO is going to think of this, though. I wonder if this might be better done off a span over a lake? That way no matter how bad you screw it up, your odds of actual injury are very low.

BASE specific skills

- Exit stability
I'd use a pendulator to train this, then do a couple round PCA's into water to make sure it had stuck.

- Delay awareness
Do progressively longer delays, and require a student to actually achieve their nominated delay within about a half second. I'd practice this by doing jumps with video, then checking the delay.

- Heading correction
Change heading immediately after opening, on the risers. Learn how much altitude this takes. Work up to the point where you are doing full floaters off a span, and turning your canopy around before it flies under the bridge (which is where you would strike a solid object). Eventually, you might want to try packing yourself a 180 (spinning the canopy in the pack tray) to try for a 180 with your body in a realistic position, and see how it feels to correct that.

- Accuracy and Approach
You can practice it out of the plane, but you'll need to practice it again off an object. Your whole setup and flight pattern need to be already established on opening, and you need to be able to adjust them depending on circumstances. This is rarely something you have to do for real out of a plane. Flying in part brakes will help this a lot.

Hmmm. This is getting long and disorganized. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the critical things to learn are (1) Exits, (2) Object Avoidance (off-heading correction and object clearance--from launch or track) and (3) Landings. These three things are at the root of the majority of BASE accidents. After you've got them ironed out, you move on to (4) fixing malfunctions (correcting an off heading ought to feel routine by then, and not really qualify as a "malfunction") and (5) advanced skills.

Honestly, the only thing I see here that I think is going to be clearly superior (in terms of developing skills, not necessarily in terms of student safety) from an airplane is CRW. The spaces in CRW are much tighter than most people are ever going to be willing to practice in with a solid object. Even tracking is going to get better training (because the frame of reference gives instant feedback) on a big wall.

Ok, that was a mess. I'll try to clean it up and re-post something more coherent later.

I would agree with one inference based on your statement - more and more 'less' qualified people are becoming skydivers all the time. I've seen more and more bad things almost happen every single year I've been in the sport of skydiving. There is definately a need to please for alot of jumpers on the average DZ - almost to the point where they'd put themselves in harm's way to get on a specific load. One better get rid of this feeling of cushion if they ever want to do more than casual base.

<cough> <sputter>

Who, me? Of course not <ahem>, nope, never. I'd never even consider such a thing.

In all seriousness, everyone who's made a BASE jump on a new wingsuit before skydiving it, raise your hand and step forward in shame...

<raises hand and steps forward in shame>

In further seriousness, we've mostly tried to do the first jump off an antenna, with a decent tailwind, rather than a cliff. But you never can tell with the Vikings...

>Honestly, I feel like these things (stall point, riser stall altitude loss, and especially deep brake setting) are far better checked off a nice, friendly span over water. I just have a much better frame of reference to judge what is going on if there is stuff around to look at. When I do these drills out of an airplane (err, aside from the DBS--when I do that out of an airplane, the canopy experiences deployment stall and I don't get to test the DBS at all) all I see is open air. That means I'm guessing at such things as altitude loss during riser stall based on how it "feels" to me.

>Judging actual used altitude precisely on a skydive >is very difficult.

>I do all my "new canopy" drills off objects because I want to know what's happening as precisely as possible.

>?You can't test DBS out of an airplane. If you put a slider on a BASE canopy with properly set deep brakes, it's going to stall during opening, and you won't know if the brakes are too deep, or just right. DBS must be tested on a slider off opening.


Why not do both. I understand that you don't judge the ground that well when your at 2000' and falling backwards while stalling your canopy but at least you'll know what it feels like to fly backwards. 99% of the time your canopy flies foward, it's a very weird feeling or scarry feeling to fly backwards, isn't it.

I have over 5000 skydives most all of them under high performance canopies. I have yet to fly backwards. Give me a BASE canopy and I will have fun scarring myself flying backwards.

A 19yr old kid came to my dz and he had 55 jumps and I asked him what he was doing on his Hop N Pop and he said he was going to fly backwards with his Rear Risers. I asked him why? Because I want to BASE jump later and... he gave me a great explaination.

If you want to BASE jump and you want to live then you will do what it takes to survive. IF you just go do it and don't put any effort into it, then we will read about you later or maybe not because you are the lucky one.

How many people have you seen pull out of some amazing shit? Would you have done the same thing in the same situation? Who knows? You can only react when your in that situation. Someone with 4000 skydives and over 400 BASE jumps had a 180 and he said cool, I'll just push off the object and then turn it around. Well, that didn't work and he couldn't jump for over a year. What does this person tell everyone else to do in this situation? Turn it around as fast as you can and you know the rest of the story.

Canopy control off the B in potato valley. 10-15 sec canopy time. PCA you have 20sec or more, depending on wingloading. Someone with no Skydives and doing their 1st BASE jump, they go off and have a line over and line twists. What is the possibility of this person going in? Sure you can put them over the middle of the water but what if they have been flying and spinning to the right and towards the shore. So they get out of it, maybe by releasing the toggles, they clear the line over, now they are still heading towards the rocks, now they have to land with the rear risers(how many times have you landed with your RR on your BASE canopy and how was the landing?) on the shore, near the rocks. What % do you think is going to get hurt and remember that they just dealt with their first BASE jump, spinning, maybe dizzy from the spins and now they have to deal with landing with RRisers? I be a very high %!

Teaching someone with NO skydives is very, very stupid in my opinion. I have taught AFF for 6 yrs now and the most heads up people can really mess up under canopy. Some people get it and some don't. How would you feel taking someone with no experience, and they had the jump from hell, as I explained above, and they broke their back, femuers, brain damage and so on. How would that make you feel? Sure someone with lots of experience skydiving could have the same experience and do the same thing but you'd feel better because the person probably has dealt with a problem in this type of canopy enviroment, I'm sure everyone that has made at least 20 skydives has experienced some line twists or some type of problem, more than the person with no skydives. At least the person will have some type experience with canopy control and be less likely to freak out and maybe NOT

>I do all my "new canopy" drills off objects because >I want to know what's happening as precisely as >possible.

How many BASE jumps to you have? How many skydives do you have? How much experience does that add up too?

You can do this but someone with no experience at all? Why not get them to jump out of an airplane and do this within 10 IAD/static line skydives. They can practice alot in 10 jumps! That equals out to almost 1 hr of canopy time at 5-6min each jump.

You do 10 jumps in potato valley and that equals out to say maybe 3-4 mins. You can't possible say that they are the same.

Sure you pay more money for the 10 skydives but it's your life, isn't it? How much does a funeral costs these days? Taking that chance, I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that. Some might and well, go for it, it's your life. Most of the time nothing is going to happen but that 1 time, how are you going to feel.

>I had 1500 skydives before at my first BASE jump. >I jump a very heavily loaded elliptical canopy anytime I'm not doing tandems. I think most skydivers start out like I did, which is in a hurry to downsize. In retrospect, downsizing has done nothing but harm my, just beginning, BASE habit. I have 4 BASE jumps, and 0 stand up landings. First jump, I busted my ass on the rocks. 2nd jump, I busted my ass on the rocks, and split my pants and underwear wide open, not to mention burising my tailbone. 3rd jump, best landing yet, it was dark, and I got lucky and flared right, just sort of plopped down on all fours. 4th jump, I again busted my ass after barely clipping a tree in a parking lot, and my ass is stole sore. How long before a tailbone heals up?

>I guess my point is, that out of all my 1500 skydives, my canopy control on a huge 7 cell sucks. It has nothing remotely related to how I land my heavily loaded elliptical canopy. I don't think that all the canopy control I learned in skydiving has helped me in BASE very much at all. In retrospect, I wish I had made 100 jumps or so on a huge ass 7 cell before getting into BASE.

How true that is!! I messed up my ankle my first week I moved to Moab last year. I was flying my BASE canopy like it was my Velocity. I was trying to turn in half brakes to avoid a tree and it wouldn't turn because I was making small correction. Then Vertigo told me it was like flying a Truck instead of a Porche. You have to make big corrections with the bigger canopy. I knew this but in BASE, there is usually not a Great landing area like at a dz. My bad for being a dumbass! I've learned from my mistake(s).

Czechbase said "Jumping a BASE canopy out of a plane I feel is a good idea as one can get a feel for when it stalls, check out where the deep brakes are, how far a canopy drops when you rear riser stall it and of course how it flares when you come in for landing."

You said alot of good things after that also!!

Our BASE specific program that Skydive Moab and Vertigo are setting up will have everything that you mentioned and so much more.

So far, and it could change and probably will, we know that it's going to be that you make 2 tandems, and then you will do 5-8 IAD jumps, then progress into some freefall time, a couple clear and pulls, then some 5 sec delays, some 10 sec delays and work your way to 30-40 sec delays.

At least 5 tracking jumps. Whatever you think you need to do under canopy to get you ready for BASE, YOUR GOING TO DO IT!!

The first 10 jumps or so will be on a student canopy. Then the rest of the jumps will be on Vertigo's Dagger's Start with a big Dagger and work your way down!

This program is going to be the best way to get into BASE jumping. Everything you do is gearing you towards making your first jump at the B in Idaho.
You are still going to do a PCA on your first jump and maybe a few more depending on YOU and then work your way up.

I will post all the details when we are finished with it!

I started my own canopy school 3 yrs ago because I was tired of watching everyone smack the ground so I tried to do something about it. No matter how much canopy time you have you can always get hurt and putting someone in the position of learning to BASE jump with NO canopy time and with the landing areas that BASE jumping usually has, it's spelling possible tragedy. Think about it, it's common sense to have canopy control, and if your willing to learn from someone that is williing to teach you and you have no canopy control, well that's your decision.
Much more than someone with canopy time.

Just like someone coming to Moab with 3 BASE jumps, is that smart, not really but it still happens and it's always going to happen. That is their choice!

I could go on forever and I might later. Canopy control is the most important detail in either skydiving or BASE jumping. Not too many people die in Free fall, it's after the canopy is extracted from the container when shit goes wrong.

This seems to indicate that you don't think skydiving is life and death. IF you really think that way, it's probably a good thing you don't skydive much.

I like what you posted! With our BASE specific program, most of these things you posted are already there, just need to put them in certain jump orientation. I do like the CrW stuff. I didn't really think of that and I have no crew experience at all. I think Jimmy has some. We should go play and somehow add that in to the program.
Thanks Tom,

Flying backwards is a skill I gained while skydiving in the 80’s and it saved my life on my first BASE jump. I used to fly my 7-cell Unit backwards on most skydives just for the fun of it. The way I would do it is pull the toggles all the way down until it fully stalls and then it starts to flutter as you go backwards. You can steer it going backwards by pulling more on one side and you can even spiral it going backwards. Just keep one very important thing in mind. While flying backwards your canopy is in a complete stall. You must allow for enough altitude to recover from the stall. For this reason I would NOT recommend this be your plan A, especially on a low object. I have done most my backwards flying using the toggles. I remember when 9-cells first hit the market and one of the first things I notice was that they do not fly backwards. They just fold up in a bow-tie.

Clint, I am glad you pointed out the danger of the rocks in the Snake River canyon. One day I witnessed an experienced BASE jumper have line-twist and come very close to hitting the cliffs on the south side. Gnarly jagged cliffs are on both sides of that canyon and it is possible for a person to fly into them while struggling with line-twist or a tension knot or a number of little things that can complicate canopy control. In my opinion, making a number of skydives can help the individual get hands on familiarization and experience in dealing with some of those complications. The more experience someone has with dealing with different winds is also beneficial in my opinion. Sometimes even a light wind can get a bit funky in that canyon.

Keep it real,

Nail me on this one, but I think skydiving is less dangerous than driving to the DZ. Well, in fact, I am sure the fatality statistics back this up.

Look, skydiving is fun and people that are good at it have totally stunning skills. I couldn't freefly if my life depended on it! But it's about as dangerous as sport climbing. In fact, part of the whole point of skydiving (and sport climbing) is that it is NOT supposed to be dangerous and we work hard to minimize danger. That's the whole idea. I mean, who really works hard to make skydives really scary? Apart from certain dearly-departed Aussies, I mean.

Not everything we do in life has to be wildly dangerous to be "cool." My primary other sports outside of BASE are pretty much zero fatality zones. I love them just as much as BASE. But BASE is about danger, at least it used to be or it is for some of us or whatever.

Someday maybe BASE technology will be good enough that it's safe like skydiving. Even today, our gear is about a billion times safer than 15 years ago. But, no matter how trick the canopy with today's gear, jumping off something slider-down with a hard object behind you is fucking dangerous. Do it a reasonable amount of times (say, 100) and you'll have a 180 and if you don't respond exactly right you will die or be badly maimed.

Many folks have made interesting comments on this thread, much more interesting than anything I've said. I hope it continues - it is good to sometimes look at those old sacred cows and see if the gods still smile on them anymore.

As to my own BASE experience, everyone knows I made the whole thing up. I've never jumped off anything taller than a kitchen table and when I did that I twisted my ankle really bad. Actually, I pretend to be a BASE jumper in the hopes that I can meet the boyfriend of my dreams and retire rich. I mean, doesn't everyone?

D-d0g

You are wrong with climbing. We had five fatalities in our small (+-100) club during last seven years. Skydiving is much safer than climbing.

DdOg, I'm honestly not trying to be mean, but I read your original post like this:


read: I can't seem to fit in at the dz or no one at the dz wants to hang out with me


read: I am jealous of the BASE folks who are liked by the dz people therefore I will insult them


read: I will snub the unfriendly dz people by illustrating that their sport is trivial as compared to my real sport.


There have been some posters in this forum that have serious "BASEgod" mentality and that keeps me from coming in here very often. This website is dropzone.com for gods sake. You do realize skydivers read this forum too right?

Do you think driving your car is life and death?

 
Yes and no.

Does it sometimes occur to me while I am driving that, "wow, my ass is 18" off the road and I am doing 80mph right next to a truck that could squash the shit out of me of the driver fucks up."

Yes it does.

Do I find it to be highly manageable risk. Yes.

If you think hard enuff, life itself is "life and death".

My point was that I don't care how on top of it you are in the BASE world, complacency will kill the living shit out of you on a skydive. I am not sure DDog is really that complacent, but it sounded like he was.

Tommy Piras and other lesser known but "on it" dead guys would attest to my statement.

Is BASE more dangerous than skydiving? Hell yes! I would never detract from the BASE communities "extreme - MT Dew Drinking - danger people" reputation.

Just be careful in all your aeronautic adventures. MMkay?

It's true, everyone at the DZ hates me and I only wish it wasn't so. I pretend to be a BASE jumper so that I can make friends, but all my friends keep dying in this "sport." Something isn't working so well.

The jealousy I feel towards BASE gurus who hang out at DZs is really hard to quantify. Suffice to say that it's huge beyond words, beyond numbers even. When I grow up, I want to hang out with cool people.

D-d0g

DdOg, Skyblu,

I really like the discussion going on in this thread. Let's keep it friendly.

Thanks.

Edited for personal attacks. Come on people, play the ball, not the players. ~Tom Aiello

In regards to base jumping without any prior skydiving experience let me float this idea out there. I think that when you are comparing the two sports (if you call them a sport) you have to compare apples to apples. There is a big difference between comparing base jumps with 0 – 5 sec delays to skydiving or base jumps with 5 sec + delays to skydiving. The environment of a sub terminal base jump is very different than anything you’ll do out of a plane, but what about balloon jumps or helicopter jumps. Those can be very beneficial to learning about a sub terminal environment and like it or not you must have more than a couple of jumps under your belt before they’ll let you out of a balloon or helicopter.

Now for terminal base jumps tell me how you’d explain to someone who has never done a skydive how to track, how to keep from backsliding, or the correct body position at pull time? If my memory serves me correctly there was a fatality in Norway because they held a head high attitude for too long and backslid into the wall. Think about all the little things like that, that carry over into terminal base-jumps from skydiving. What about body position at pull time? I would hate to have to try to figure that out on a base jump. It would be a lot better to learned these skills in a skydiving environment where if you make a mistake you won’t slide into the face of a cliff or tumble at pull time 400 ft from impact. Also by getting these skills built into your memory you don’t have to think about how to track or what’s the correct body position to pull from when you are on sensory overload.

Just my .02 cents.

I think you might be thinking of the Susan Oatly fatality in California. But the point is well taken. Terminal jumps require a very different (and much more similar to skydiving) set of skills than sub-terminal (especially slider down) jumps.

OK, quick qualification - I'm not a BASE jumper (although it was one of the reasons I began to skydive and when I feel ready, I probably will) - but I was wondering:

To me, the potential enjoyment from a BASE jump would come from:
- being able to do something few people could
- being in control, kinda like doing something you know you shouldn't, but surviving
- intense feelings

The trade-off is that the act of doing it is in some ways incredibly stressful - the consequences of something going wrong are serious, hence the bigger payback "buzz"

Personally, I'd rather have a certain familiarity with the situation before going through with it. Some nervousness is good, but too much would be bad?

So, the jump itself - they way I see it is that there's 3 important components:
- exit/freefall
- deployment
- landing

How can someone perform a stable exit if they've never been skydiving? If you muck that up... How many times have you had a bad skydive (for whatever reason) then found your canopy control and landing was also less than perfect? Similarly, how would you know what body position to hold? How would you track? In fact, how would you know how to track on heading? Same thing goes for correct deployment surely? And what about dealing with off-heading openings?

Personally, I've already stepped over the edge of a cliff (hang gliding). What is the opinion whether that would make any difference in terms of being more comfortable with the whole BASE idea? (and being better able to focus?)

As for landing, what makes anyone believe that they could land a canopy well in a tight spot with no real experience? Here, I'd like to know what kind of background is considered best? I suppose CReW/Accuracy jumping, but what about someone with serious paragliding experience?

Lastly, how much do you trust your mentor? I've been hang gliding before with a bloke who freaked me out. Dunno how... Anyway, I ended up doing downwind landings; all sorts of things. I was in a situation whereby I was stressed out by someone and lost focus in what was a learning situation for me. OK, a little extreme maybe, but it could be a contributory factor. Personally I wouldn't trust anyone who would chuck me off an object with little/no experience. Besides, I've seen people in all sorts of environments getting way too far out of their depth. Sure, they often survive, but that's not really the point. Most never want to go through the experience again...

I've probably rambled, but I'm curious as to whether "environmental familiarity" is considered as important as the more technical side, whever that may have been developed?

How can someone perform a stable exit if they have been skydiving.

Airplane skydiving gives exactly zero preparation for BASE exits. Balloon jumps or helicopter jumps are pretty much the only way to practice BASE exits on a skydive.

I strongly believe that every BASE first jump student, regardless of skydiving experience, should be exit trained on a pendulator extensively before their first BASE jump. I've never seen a more effective training tool for avoiding perhaps the most common first jump errors. Thanks Ronny!

I think you have a definite advantage for that experience. I wouldn't rate it quite as high as the advantage from skydiving, but combine them both and you're going to do well.


No one is suggesting that. The idea would be that a student could be trained off an object with a huge wide open landing area. In one case that DdOg references, the object is such that it is actually physically impossible not to land in a giant grassy landing area (it's a city park, actually). This contrasts favorably with the skydiving environment. What skydiving instructor doesn't wish there was some way to make a student out landing absolutely impossible?


As with the hanggliding, I think the paragliding will be a big help. While the canopy skills won't transfer particularly well (paragliders are much, much higher performance wings than BASE canopies), the knowledge of winds and turbulence shown by paragliders is fantastic, and this definitely gives them a huge advantage as intermediate and advanced BASE jumpers.


Certainly. I'd say one of the biggest problems students have is freaking out because of the unfamiliar environment. In this regard, the more different (hopefully similar to BASE in some way) environments you have exposed yourself to, the better you'll keep your head in the BASE environment. This is exactly why Dwain used to train aerials by teaching in belts, then moving to trampolines and pools--each time, you had to conquer the same type of environmental shifts that you'd face when you moved to a BASE exit point. In essence, he was teaching his students to face their fear of the exit before they ever got to the exit (the same principle applies to the pendulator, or to BR's bungee training jumps).

I was implicitly including helicoper/balloon jumps, but I take your point. I'm looking forward to doing some of those!

But I'm also curious as to awareness: if you haven't been around long enough, you don't know what questions to ask, how to react etc? Isn't this in part why it is suggested that an aspirant groundcrews first? Views anyone?

Having read Tom's latest post, I believe we're thinking along similar lines...

This morning I got up at 5:00, thru two Rigs, and my hard gear in the truck.
Flew by coffee people and picked up a Canadian immigrant BASE jumper who is trying to scam his way into U.S. Citizenship. Then we hauled ass up north to one of our local, Mountains to bang two jumps out.
While stuffing my gear in my stash bag, to do the climb out of the canyon on the second jump It become so clear to me that I was -Wrong !
>The first jump was a fast tail wind. I pitched early to give me a good extra second or two to do a tight flat turn 180 deg. approach. As I was setting up in very deep brakes, there was a strong left side rotor that pushed me hard, but it was no big deal really and I flared it, Planed out the canopy and ran like hell to a stop. All was good except The Canadian/American who was laughing at me.
>When we shuffled out to do the second jump the wind had done a complete 180 and we had a steady head wind.
The Canadian got the bright idea for a two way. I said what the hell and 1-2-3 lets go. Nice head wind and a on heading opening for both of us. I slammed it into deep brakes to set up on the tight approach, and about 75 feet above the deck, I got a down-push of Air from somwhere in the tight canyon. I instinctively let up on the toggles to let it fly, got the little bit of speed and lift I needed to Plane out and land safely. Nice jumps fun times.

It became so clear to me then after that Jump.
The Minority obviously is right and the Majority is Wrong
The 11 years of Skydiving I did was a total waste of time and energy.
The 1000 Skydives I did before my first BASE jump "97... what a joke.
>The person who has never made a Skydive exiting that object with no flight time in training.
Under Canopy. Has the same chance of a safe landing safely and a easy hike out,
to do Another jump, Another day, as the BASE Jumper who has had a several Skydives.
Canopy experience means nothing in the big picture.
The People who trained me to BASE jump. Why would they Lie to me ?
In my opinion they are Dumb Ass's, they were obviously wrong and no nothing of
what it take to a safe BASE Jump.

I am sorry and I was wrong.
Be Safe
thanks...Ray Losli

Airplane skydiving gives exactly zero preparation for BASE exits. Balloon jumps or helicopter jumps are pretty much the only way to practice BASE exits on a skydive.


How about Mr Bill jumps - probably cheaper than balloon or heli jumps? Of course you probably need a few more than the minimum # of skydives to do them - just like in serious CRW.

 
I don't believe that - frankly I don't generally consider someone with less then 1000, or at least 700, to have lots of skydives - and, as Ray said back in the old days before BASE went mainstream, most people had quite a few skydives before starting to BASE jump anyways... You'd have to narrow your search down to relatively modern fatalities, say early to mid '90's.

------------------------------------------------------------

Not a question of "belief," really. It's just a fact. How we interpret that fact is the real question.

Also, the majority of the List entries date from the early to mid 90s. So it's not really "narrowing the search" much to discuss the correlation on the list between skydives and fatalities. I'm thinking of 1000+ as, roughly speaking, "lots of skydives."

________________________________________________

I'm curious as to where you got your facts? I just looked at the BASE fatality list and the majority of the entries do not list either BASE experience or Skydiving experience (note to self - I meant to contact Nick a couple of years ago that we needed a generic form for incident/fatality reporting that would answer such questions as approx BASE and skydiving experience, years in sport, type of gear, specifically so we would have such information).

Looking at the 77 fatalities, 21 occurred in the '80's (>25% so it narrows it down a bit) but even looking at all the entries I find 9 or 10 I know had more than 1000 and maybe 25 or so who may have had. There's at least 8 who definitely had < 2-300, and 32 I just don't know, although I do remember several from past issues of skydiving magazine or BASEline and several of them would have bettween 300-700 jumps. So unless you have access to more statistics then are on the current List, I don't see how you can support that claim...

Admittedly it is too bad that the list doesn't support that information even the cases of guys like Nick, Skypunk or Rob Tompkins where numbers are available, but I still don't see where you got your numbers?

Oh... Come on, if he can dish it he should be able to take it. Why don't you sensor Dd0g when he makes rude, sweeping generalizations?? And if you are going to do that then you might as well sensor anything that might be offensive to anyone. WTF?? Plus, that was worded in a very eloquent manner and I wasn’t attempting to detract from the discussion, I was just making an observation.

Please feel free to email directly to me any and all personal attacks. I love them - they make me feel important.

edit: Come on guys. The topic is a good one for discussion. Let's move your personal differences to email, PM, or in-person confrontation. ~Tom Aiello

Say "cheese,"

D-d0g

  (no time to proofread, my laptop battery is going fast)

I'm pretty sure no one is saying you can't fly a parachute.

I think the point about canopy control considers the fact that it's obviously needed to land safely in many situations.

That 330 foot jump with mandatory 2 plus delay sounds rather exiting. I'm sure it requires a good amount of skill to perform. I have no doubt that you wouldn't put a newbie off it either. In fact it sounds like it's a jump for only a few. (pick me, pick me... maybe).

I jump a small parachute in the skydiving realm. My first jump on a BASE canopy was ok, but I flew it like a stiletto. The next morning, I didn't, I grabbed the toggles and sunk it in like the large seven cell canopies I've flown before.

Honestly, High performance flying has been detrimental to me a couple times. However that was only in big areas and I was trying to do a hook turns with the slider tied down . When it comes to tight landing, it's a different story. I've over controlled when it counts before. Thanks to body armor it didn't cost me my walking ability. Many changes were made after that. Lowered my toggle settings, (where the toggles are tied on, not the brake settings), converted my toggles to big grabs. I'd have never thought about that with out enough parachute experience. Instead, I would have just tried less toggle input, and been wondering if I could snatch the toggles off the velcro quickly when it counted most. Neither is a good thing when your looking down into a counstruction site with rebar and pipes layed out along much of the landing zone.

So, where does a person learn initial flying, survival skills and instincts? Can he learn it from a bridge in potatoville? Not really. I have to agree that learning to fly in a stall (especially without over reacting) comes from practice. Using a plane to gain altitude is a great way to practice. Object avoidance requires not only luck but reaction time, and a certain amount of skill.

Terminal jumps. Hmmm... if a person ever wants to fly terminal, it's tough to learn that from an object. Planes seem to be the way to go. After taking many students on their very first freefall and subsequent dives, I have a hard time believing that the body will know what to do if he's never experienced freefall of more than a couple seconds.

Tom, I like what you said about the brake settings and modifying them with the slider off. That's something I never thought of.

What is a pendulator?

I believe that is the point. A generalization is a generalization, even if it's a generalized attack on a group of people (have you read the talkback threads lately?). A pointed attack on one person is a personal attack.

A personal attack is two things. Personal and an attack. Make generalizations about groups of people all you want. Make your comments specific to a person and I'll edit them.

A pendulator is a BASE training device, intended primarily for first jump students. It was invented (I believe) by Ronny Risvik (sp?) of the Stavanger BASE Klubb. Basically, it's a bunch of ropes that allow you to launch from 30 feet up a tree without cratering. That way you can practice repeated dead air launches without the consequences of screwing one up for real. It's virtually eliminated bad student exits at the popular big wall in Southern Norway.

You can see a clip of the pendulator in use on the Team Crank video "Dead Air Dummies".

Although i dont base jump and no longer skydive (where i was a very new student) i tend to disagree with this
as by my belief the first ever parachute design in theory was designed for jumping from tall buildings as planes were non existent

this being leonardo's parachute design
so say planes some reason wernt around today but the world still had todays technologie i think by now some1 would have tried to fullfill leonardo's idea and jump off a tall structure of sorts

M@

as for the d00d asking how long a sore tail bone takes to heal

well ive had some sore tail bones before and not anything suvere
and it was still sore for about 18 months
its a strange bone
id hate to ever break it

Thanks...I'll find the video of the device. It sounds simple but brilliant.

 
>>I'm not a BASE jumper, but I work ground crew for some of the locals, and I've seen the difference between someone a 1000+ skydives and someone with 20 (ie., a clean launch w/ excellent object separation vs going head-down on a 2 sec dly). While I agree that some skills could be practiced under guidance with PCA jumps from everyone's favorite legal S, I'd hate for some prospective BASEr's lurking in this forum to get the idea it's okay to BASE without any skydives, or very few. Just my thoughts, i'm no expert.

I'm not a basejumper even a skydiver. But some of my friend are and I spend a lot of time with them.

About training devices, never thought about bungy jumping ? Some commercial jumps are pretty high (220m), and this way you can learn to exit as clean as possible at zero speed environnement. As well for body positionning, it seems to me an easy way to learn to stay flat. With zero risk.

Only my point of view, as a bungy jumper.

I've done 6 bungy jumps, don't think they would be too much help learning exits - if anything they might be bad since you might get used to compensating for the weight of the rope on a bungy jump launch.

Why do some manufacturers use bungy jumps as training? Is that just to help people get over the initial sensory overload of stepping off the edge? Or are they of some help in teaching a head-high exit? (given the weight of the rope as I mentioned above).

Will

Yes this has been an interesting thread to read and to get different people's view points. Obviously to a certain person, they likely think that I'm already a dead man seeing as I made 'X' number of skydives before I ever made a BASE jump (which hasn't even happened yet). But what can I do? I can't reverse the past. I do recognize that the two are NOT the same and that my freeflying and swooping experience does not translate into BASE skills. But here's my read on some of what has been said and on how I think I may approach BASE:

1) I will listen to the people I have met at my DZ who are experienced BASE jumpers as they know way more about it than I do. And I feel that I may be in the right environment as contrary to a certain person's views, the people in my neck of the woods who both BASE and skydive are NOT the flakey individuals that a certain person feels they are.

2) There is a certain DZO who is working towards setting up a BASE canopy control training program (with the help of the people I will be doing my FJC with) and I definitely will be spending some time at this DZ working on my BASE canopy control skills once this program is in effect. I also have access to some talented CReW dogs here in CO and will be bugging them once they are ready to take to the air again this spring. Heck I've already talked to one of the CReW dogs about the merits of doing some CReW jumps with some BASE canopies and their only concern was gathering the approriate gear at the appropriate wing loadings.

3) My first 'X' number of BASE jumps will be done out at the Perrine with what I believe to be a very reputable and respected pair of BASE instructors. Plus I see no harm in continuing to work with the DZO (from point #2) even after my FJC.

4) I have already been practicing my packing techniques thanks to a friend who has graciously lent me one of their older rigs (and there's no way in hell I will be jumping this rig for numerous reasons). My packing is definitely getting better. But there is still room for improvement and I look forward to being able to watch some of the other pack jobs from the other jumpers who often frequent my home DZ. And then once I take delievery of my own rig, I will obviously do many practice pack jobs on that unit.

5) A while back, I found a new found love of tracking dives and while I don't think the initial exit from the airplane will help my BASE tracking needs, the overall experience of doing more and more skydiving tracking dives can only help me if/when I do some big-wall jumps and this is not something that the non-skydiver gets to experience.

6) I will be looking to do some balloon and helicopter jumps this year. And while in the past I may have been looking for the visuals of the exit, now I find myself only wanting to practice my exits and getting into a good track.

7) I will be looking to ground crew (if they'll have me) with some of the experienced and not flakey jumpers who I have met at my home DZ. It can only help to suck any info out of their brains before I jump the same objects as well as to watch and learn.

8) I may choose to try and spend sometime at a local swimming pool practicing some exits, but I should only do this after my FJC as I wouldn't want to develop any bad habits.

9) While I feel that I grew up fast in the skydiving world, I am nothing more that a fetus right now in the BASE jumping world and I need to start all over from scratch.

Jeez I'm not sure what else to say? I look forward to the opportunity to jump, but as I've told myself all along. I am in no rush. I have the rest of my life to gain the appropriate amount of experience and I am old enough and hopefully mature enough to know that I am NOT invicible. BASE seems to be much more about attitude than anything else?

I still don't understand the thinking that skydivers make for bad and dangerous BASE jumpers. But what do I know about BASE? I do know that I will continue to be a skydiver as it's brought me a certain happiness to my life that didn't seem to exist during my whuffo days.

Oh final note. I have often heard people say that BASE jumping finds you, not you finding BASE. And in my case this seems to be what's happening as I was not thinking about becoming a BASE jumper when I first started into skydiving. But what about those people who made some skydives only because they wanted to BASE? It seems that they are the ones seeking out BASE. Of course these are only words and may not mean anything.

Perhaps BASE found us when we had never made a skydive?

Basic Research used to include bungee jumps as part of their FJC, as launch training.

I think the pendulator is far better, because the time between jumps is reduced by an order of magnitude or so. That means you can keep practicing, and do as many (hundreds, if need be) practice launches as you want. It's also a lot cheaper than bungee.

As I said, those are only words and maybe I was only talking out of my rear end?

here's what I think has most helped me from skydiving to base

CRW
-7 cell experience
-Teaches you about what your canopy can and can't do
-Teaches you to deal with unexpected circumstances

Tandem (instructor)
-Outstanding way to practice accuracy and soft landings.
-Forces you to make braked turns and corrections below 300 ft (unusual for most skydivers today)
-Forces you to deal with less than ideal circumstances (this idiot is trying to kill me)

High performance canopy flight
-Makes you think 5 steps ahead
-Quickly provides you feedback on when you've done wrong

Tracking dives
-Allows you to enjoy the next tall object
-Forces you to adjust your body to match fall rates and allows you to tweek that to maximize horizontal track or slow vertical fall

Freeflying
-Makes you work outside your normal comfort zone ie. I'm upside down and don't know where my friend is
-Makes you recognize and react to things quicker

10,000ft canopy rides
-Rarely used by most jumpers, but I've found it to be very benificial
-Allows you to tie your canopy into a knot and figure out how its going to react
-Teaches you what happens when you touch any combination of risers, brakes, harness turns, brakeline wraps, stalls, riser flares, etc, etc

Just my thoughts for today.
TJ

You've got to play pretty fast and loose with statistics to reach that conclusion.

First and foremost, good statistics about BASE are somewhere between difficult and impossible to calculate.

Second, most base jumpers had lots of skydives first, so it's not surprising that most dead base jumpers also had lots of skydives.

Doug: Your introduction to base is fairly unique. You had a significant amount of experience in climbing, and while it's not skydiving, it is another sport that relies heavily on equipment, knowledge, and an ability to stay calm in highly stressfull, dangerous situations.
You also had the good fortune to be mentored by one of the best BASE jumpers in the world.
In light of those facts, it's inappropriate to point to your rather unique experiences as evidence that skydiving experience is somehow not advantageous to an aspiring base jumper.


Nonsense.

I'd agree that some people don't thoroughly appreciate the dangers and approach skydiving as a casual pastime, but make no mistake, it is very much a high risk activity. No where near as dangerous as BASE, but dangerous none the less.
How many climbers died in a climbing gym last year?

Personally, I'm a big believer in the "skydiving teens" concept.
That's the idea that after some modest amount of time in sport and experience, one tends to get cocky and overconfident. It's generally considered to be a particularly dangerous phase of anyones skydiving career.
I suspect that if someone starts BASE jumping during their skydiving teens it can be especially dangerous. A little less, *or* a little more skydiving experience prior to starting base might be optimum.

Are lot's of skydives mandatory to become a good base jumper?
Of course not.
Are lot's of skydives likely to enhance ones chances of becoming a good base jumper?
Probably.

A much bigger factor is one's attitude and motivation for getting into the sport in the first place.
Unfortunatley, there's no easy way to assess these factors.
-Josh

My point exactly. It's neither surprising nor, at least prima faciae, causative. Just like, to take a random example, it isn't surprising that most all BASE fatalities are male. That doesn't automatically mean that being male causes jumpers to die. It's just a correlation, and really without additional data it's not possible to say there's a causative relationship there.

However, I brought up this statistical point (and, yes, I agree that the stats are murky at best) for this reason: if one makes the argument that lots of skydives makes for safer BASE jumpers then one must also recognize the fact that the stats don't, on the surface, support this argument without further explanation.

I'm not making the argument, specifically, that skydives don't help BASE but rather looking for someone to make a convincing argument that skydives do make for safer BASE jumpers. The statistics alone aren't going to make that argument.

The "canopy control" argument is somewhat shaky now that skydiving canopies (even for students) are moving further and further away from BASE canopies.

The tracking skills argument is vaguely interesting, but not many BASE folks are doing alot of jumps early in their career where tracking expertise is "do or die." Frankly, not many BASE jumpers are doing that sort of jump even further along in their career.

The "mental skills" argument holds basically no weight with me personally. Skydiving is a well-regulated, well-managed, safe, fun, enjoyable pastime. But the very structure and rules and proven gear and training techniques that make skydiving safe are exactly what is opposite from BASE. We don't have any of this exogenous structure in our sport, we have a herd of the proverbial cats and as many opinions on fundamental gear and technique questions as we have BASE jumpers alive today.

Hanging out at a sunny DZ with happy people in stylish clothes is a great way to spend a summer day, but it's far removed from (most all) BASE jumps, mentally at least. I don't know what is optimal mental preparation for the sharper edge of BASE, but I can't see any cogent argument that skydiving fits the bill particularly well.

Regards,

D-d0g

This is the best encapsulation I've heard for an idea I've been grappling to express for some time. I usually express it as a "danger zone" or some such nonsense. "Skydiving teens" is far easier to grasp. Thanks!

I don't necessarily agree. Skydiving is very removed from most all of your BASE jumps. And from most of mine. But that doesn't make it so far removed from all BASE jumps.

There are as many different ways of BASE jumping as there are BASE jumpers. I know jumpers who only jump legal walls in daylight, under good conditions. Skydiving can be excellent prepararation for many aspects of this (the riding in aircraft, for example ).

Whether or not that is your kind of BASE, or mine, I think we need to recognize that it is a popular, and growing (again, whether that's good or bad is a matter of personal opinion) segment of the population of people who like to flop off solid objects with parachutes.

It's kind of like climbing. Climbing gyms are great preparation for afternoon sport climbing outings. But they don't prepare you for a nasty six day alpine epic. Some people will stay safely on clip-ups, though, and won't need to be prepared for that nasty mixed nightmare at 12,000 feet.

So, what kind of BASE jumper are you? And is it sufficient to prepare for only those jumps? Perhaps the most important thing is to recognize what are "your type" of jumps, and stay away from the ones you aren't prepared for.

Personally, I stay away from things that require tracking skills.

Personally, I'm a big believer in the "skydiving teens" concept.
That's the idea that after some modest amount of time in sport and experience, one tends to get cocky and overconfident. It's generally considered to be a particularly dangerous phase of anyones skydiving career.
--------------------------------------------------------
Good point. Think about this too...

The skydiving "teens" used to be at about 400 jumps. Now I'd have to say that the new number is FAR lower. I'd be unable to state where it actually is today as I no longer hang out at any DZ but I'd guess it's around 100 jumps that your newby gets pretty darn bold. They are buying inappropriately sized gear, blowing by break-off altitude, relying on their Cypres', hooking themselves in, etc.

The teen nowadays no longer has the advantage of many weekends at the DZ collecting or absorbing the corporate knowledge and experience and wisdom (taken with a grain of salt) that they could. Skydiving is not the sport it once was requiring the time dedication to be safe. It has become a recreational activity and is being taken pretty casually.

Remember that the "teens" is not a number but an attitude. It usually goes away with a few helpings of humble pie or a good scare.

The skydiver past the teens is more likely to be responsive to admonitions of caution and awareness. The pre-teen is less likely to take these advices to heart unless made in a plane of reference with which he has some reality. If you were to rate base jump sites by the climbers system with the difficulty and risks spelled out to the teen who came from climbing it would sink in. Without reality, just the thought of black death or making reference to bad juju the teen can easily disregard. I'm bullet proof and fearless without reallly knowing how bad it can really get.

Didn't get much of anywhere with this but it's worth considering that anybody with the teaching and communication skills working with a student with a shared reality set could probably BASE jump with no skydives. Ask some of the big wall heavies in YO. They have done it with the right mentor.

jon

Back in the day, "skydiving teens" was 200-500 jumps. I was voted to most likely to die before I got to 300 jumps but I'm still here and I know why I was that person. I was stupid and 18yrs old. I only hurt myself when I had 2500 jumps, and then again at 4000 jumps.

I agree with Jon and that it has dropped to about 100-300 where they think that they are invinsible.

Back in the day, "skydiving teens" was 200-500 jumps. I was voted to most likely to die before I got to 300 jumps but I'm still here and I know why I was that person. I was stupid and 18yrs old. I only hurt myself when I had 2500 jumps, and then again at 4000 jumps.

I agree with Jon and that it has dropped to about 100-300 where they think that they are invinsible.
__________________________________________________

I'd say it can start around 50 and go up almost to infinity now, certainly easily to 1500 jumps - it just depends on the individual. We have jumpers who don't even know how to pack or how to spot a load - they can get by without it now - how are they supposed to realize there are some things they really NEED to learn?

I'm curious as to where you got your facts? I just looked at the BASE fatality list and the majority of the entries do not list either BASE experience or Skydiving experience (note to self - I meant to contact Nick a couple of years ago that we needed a generic form for incident/fatality reporting that would answer such questions as approx BASE and skydiving experience, years in sport, type of gear, specifically so we would have such information).

Looking at the 77 fatalities, 21 occurred in the '80's (>25% so it narrows it down a bit) but even looking at all the entries I find 9 or 10 I know had more than 1000 and maybe 25 or so who may have had. There's at least 8 who definitely had < 2-300, and 32 I just don't know, although I do remember several from past issues of skydiving magazine or BASEline and think several of them would have between 300-700 jumps. So unless you have access to more statistics then are on the current List, I don't see how you can support that claim...

what do you smoke dude?,some of us dont really belive things like that

Personaly i think that it requires a minimum of skydives,to learn things as tracking,getting out of smaller mal´s as line twists,not inflatede cells and so on.I also do belive that the time you get in the air makes you learning how the winds should feel on our body in freefall,meaning feeling the ballance between stabel,less stabel,unstabel..

In BASE, the available stats are barely reliable enough to reach sound conclusions about gear configurations. You won't find too much argument about the value of a tailgate, for example, but for the most part it goes rapidly downhill from there.

The variables involved in mental preparation and training are far more complex than gear related ones are. Anyone that attempts use statistics to back up their opinion on BASE prep is going to fail.

IMO, a big problem is the exposure that base has gotten recently. It's in movies, tv commercials, and lots of skydiving videos feature it, too.
When everything goes well, BASE looks deceptively easy and safe. Consequently, people approach it without an appropriate level of fear and healthy anxiety. To counter that trend, I'd like to see wider distribution of carnage videos, but I'm sure that's gonna be a hot topic of its own.

Approached with the right attitude, skydiving can be a very useful tool for BASE prep. Approached with the wrong attitude, and it can give one a false sense of confidence.

The trouble is that attitude is hard to measure.
Having said that, I'll weigh in with my .02 on the skills you mention and then consider this dead horse thoroughly beaten.


With the right attitude it still has tremendous value. Especially if one makes a point of jumping large 7 cell canopies, which admittedly, not too many do.
Even if you only earn your A license, you still learned a bit about stearing, flaring, kicking out of line twists, what openings fell and look like, and so on.


If you're jumping in the PDX area, tracking doesn't matter at all.
However, if you plan to go to Norway, it can come in really handy.
Further, even at somewhere around 3 seconds, you've got enough airspeed to start flying your body.
Freefall skills can save your ass in all sorts of situations, not just tracking.



Spoken like someone that didn't pursue skydiving long enough to experience the appropriate challenges.
Dealing with radical malfunctions, learning how to do high performance landings, aggressive freeflying or competive RW are but a few of the things that can refine one's mental skills.
Of course, rock climbing, firefighting, chasing bad guys, and all sorts of other things can provide the same benefits.
It's largely what you make of it. If you approach it with the right attitude it can make a huge difference in your mental skills.

Lastly, there is the issue that I think is overlooked by all too many of us that actually agree that skydiving is a reasonable prerequisite for BASE.

Time in sport.
One can satisfy all of the skydiving requirements established by every major BASE course out there, and still be lacking this.

I happen to think that seeing a few broken friends carted off or flown out is a very valuable reality check for anyone considering taking even higher risks. After skydiving for over a decade, I've seen a lot of carnage. Some of the victims lived, some did not. Some made stupid, easily avoidable mistakes, some did everything right, but the ground didn't care.
YMMV
-Josh

Ask JJ about that... That was a nasty battle on the bb. I'm sure you can still find the thread, if you're interested. But I agree the carnage video makes you think twice and shows you the reality of the sport.

We're getting away from the topic...

Just a thought, but I think that we are arguing about the rare exception in base students. I really don't think that there is a large amount of people that want to get into base that have no skydiving expirence.

Seriously, how many non-skydiving base wannabe's are there?

I completely disagree. I wanted to get into BASE when I had no skydiving experience.

I've met dozens of other people (mostly climbers) who want to get into BASE but have never made a skydive. I know of at least ten of them who have then gone out and done so, with varying (from zero to around 300) numbers of skydives before starting BASE.

Increasingly, the idea that you can just start BASE without skydives is gaining credence in various other (non-skydiving) places. This attitude has always had some following in the climbing world, but I've now seen it exploding in the skiing and snowboarding worlds as well.

You guys know way more than I do, and I no doubt suffer from my own perspective as a skydiver, but I am so glad to have had the opportunity to jump my BASE canopy several times over a large, flat grassy area (the DZ) before trying to stand up a landing in a small, sloped, rocky clearing between tall trees, or at all at night, for that matter.

For non-skydivers around here (a long way from legal spans), a few SL jumps (maybe with that newly acquired BASE canopy in the container) might at least give a little flavor of how a canopy generally works first.

Not saying you "should", just can't see the disavantage.

$.02

Without getting into the argument over the wisdom of learning BASE with 0 or few skydives, I would add just one thing...

I personally think that prior skydiving experience adds to the overall BASE experience. I mean, whuffos will only get the "man we're high" sensation. I know when I stood at the edge of The Bridge (tm) and looked over the side all I could think was "Man that's low. There's no way. There's no [expletive]-ing way."

Part of the fun is the change in perspective that you get from shifting between sports.

It like the old joke....

A whuffo looks over The Bridge (tm) and thinks "Man we're high."

A skydiver looks over and goes "Man we're low."

(My addition) And an experienced BASE jumper looks over and goes "Man we're high."

 

From a non-believer I give you an Amen!

man I don't know where to even start, so I guess I'll just ramble. I suppose I really need to weigh-in as perhaps my experience can shed some light on this, dunno.

I was part of a five person grand experiment by Earl Redfern. He was called the 'wild one' by his skydiving/BASE peers at the time for basically "training" five whuffos to BASE jump. I put quotation marks around "training" because I would have to say that the training aspects differed for each of us in terms of amount of knowledge disseminated/imparted and/or absorbed. I must also state that there was never an absence of available information: one could basically soak up whatever amount of knowledge one wanted with respect to many things, BASE technique included, so in my mind the willingness of a student to learn and understand was the driving factor - not the lack of available mentoring/training/discussion. That said, three of the five of us managed to get our BASE numbers and two of us subsequently managed to rack up quite a list of objects that experienced jumpers would swoon to get these days. All with no prior skydives. Of the five, I'm the only one still jumping; the others gave it up when we went our separate ways, and I myself took a seven year break before coming back to it.

I think it is/was probably one of the stupidest things I've ever done, but at the same time I'm thankful to have had the opportunity; I think a lot about how rare my opportunity was, and how grateful I am to have crossed paths with Earl. With the benefit of hindsight and some experience, I look back and think that it's a wonder any of us survived or at a minimum that none of us was seriously injured (speaking solely of the students). One of us almost drowned (ahem); I've seen miraculous saves (bellywart), and damn-near-death openings/saves. I really do at times feel the urge to lend some credence to the saying, "god takes care of fools and drunks." He must, because most of us should probably be dead. But I'm not the same kinda fool anymore, so I'm now exposed to the same sort of elements as anyone else. No...really, I'm not fooling myself - nor do I believe that god particularly pays any more attention to the safety of fools and drunks than he does to the safety of anyone; I'ze bein' sarcastic.

So what's to be learned here? I don't really know; perhaps nothing. Perhaps there should be an analysis of us who were involved - or perhaps more broadly an analysis of all who have gone the non-traditional route.

I can really only speak for myself, but I believe my experience up to that point had better prepared me for what I did than your average everyday garden variety whuffo. I mean I don't really believe that I was a total whuffo in the ultimate whuffo sense. I had a vast experience in model aviation (16 years at the time I began the grand BASE experiment - with literally thousands of hours of design and construction of scratch-built craft), had probably a total of 60 hours in full scale craft (not as PIC, but still doing unassisted t/o's and ldgs in the local pattern), a fair amount of mixed trad/sport climbing, 10 years of sailing experience, etc. I even came to the table already knowing how to sew fairly well. Anyway, I guess my point is that I wasn't your average whuffo: I understood how things fly, had done some amount of flying either remotely or first-hand, and I had some technical experience in design and construction of lots of things, a fair amount of trust in nylon, and I am nearly handicapped by my own attention to detail (that's another way of saying I never get anything done in a short amount of time 'cause it's gotta be perfect).

Knowing what I know now would I do it again? Probably, but that's just me. I don't think you can really apply much from my experience to anyone or anything else - and certainly not with regard to the possible success or failure of others who would take this route.

And it's not like I hadn't dreamed about BASE before I met Earl. I had already decided at age 12 that I would someday BASE jump when I saw Boenish et al doing their jumps on National Geo.(PBS mind), so it's not like the idea was novel at age 21; the notion had been bouncing around in the back of my head for 9 years.

If someone asked me if it is possible to BASE without prior skydives, I'd say yes. Do I think it's probable that someone could do it that way and live? Probably. Do I think it's the most effective route to train someone to BASE jump? (effective in terms of turning out a quality BASE jumper) No. Is the learning curve about as steep as learning curves get? Yes. Do you stand a much greater risk of injuring yourself or dying going this route? Certainly.

I've been approached by many, many people who wanted me to take them BASE jumping: both experienced (and inexperienced) skydivers AND total whuffos. Every time I'm asked, it makes my stomach churn to consider the possible consequences of taking these people to do these things. At least the experienced skydivers know - to some extent - what they're getting themselves into. Most whuffos have not a fucking clue. Hell most skydivers haven't a clue about what real BASE jumping really is. It's just not possible to explain how fucking miserable it is to have to climb a 500' ladder at night in windy freezing temps with the ladder bending/bowing back and forth with every step, or to slog up a miserable muddy slope up the backside of some mountain, or to wade through a mile of blackberry bushes to get to the base of an object - only to be miserable climbing for the next hour. All for a few fleeting wisps of pure ecstacy - only to find that you're hooked and ready for more.

Sure, it is possible to BASE jump with no prior skydives. It's probably even very doable considering some of the places available to train someone these days. But consider this training scenario: let's say - hypothetically - that a skydiver first learns how to fly his body in a wind tunnel, so by the time they were doing their first real jumps at alti, they already know how to turn points, do big ways, etc. That tunnel time is probably money well spent. No, it doesn't train them how to save their own ass in freefall, but it does probably make for a safer student and, probably, for a more pleasant experience in skydiving later on. Now let's consider the norm: skydivers learn how to fly roughly a minute at a time, with big breaks in between each of those minutes. We already know this concept. Now consider that with respect to canopy control and BASE. Far better it is to learn canopy control over some bigass 1000 acre airport with a reserve canopy and 5-20 min. of working time than it is to try to put it all together with what? 5 secs, 10 secs.? okay maybe even a minute or two at a time in some BASE circumstances. True, it would be possible to do hop n pops from a tall tower (and one could even get about as much time as on a low plane hop n pop), but there aren't many tower locals out there who _really_ want you opening high on their towers. One could even tailor a program that might include paragliding a low-efficiency wing at first. But I don't think there's any question that prior skydiving exerience with focus on canopy control is of huge value in the BASE environ.

So I suppose I've rambled enough for now. Doable? yes. Wise? absolutely not.

Sheeeeit... now that I think about it - I think I'll open me up a BASE School.

bsbd,
Gardner
dba Bubba's School of Redneck BASE
Proud member of SERNBJA
(Southeastern Redneck BASE Jumping Association)

So did you skydive subsequently?

Yikes! Does this mean my pool of eager proto-BASE jumping students is suddenly going to dry up because I am no longer a "qualified" instructor? That sucks, as I am charging people big $$ to teach them BASE. Wait. . . I'm not. It was our dear, dopey friend JJ who pulled that idiotic scam last year.

I'm one of these strange people who puts lots of weight in this thing called "logic." The argument that "everyone should skydive lots before BASE because, um, everyone knows that's the only way to do it and it's best and besides I did it that way so it must be right". . . that argument, it just doesn't cut it with me.

A few folks have put forth substantive points in favor of pre-BASE skydiving. Many other folks have simply echoed the mantra of the herd animal: it's right because everyone else says it's right.

It's funny to see BASE jumpers, who often style themselves as free-thinking and self-reliant, falling back on the herd mentality when the questions get tough.

Ciao,

D-d0g

Dude whats the tough question? If its asking what people think about BASE w/o skydives then thats an easy question. I'm going to echo what everyone else is saying is right, ummm, because it IS right. That BASEing w/o prior parachuting experience is much higher of a risk than with parachuting experience. Wow, that was amazingly simple. Does YOUR logic not tell you that?

I've refrained from posting here because you're right, it IS the same stuff over and over... but damn you're a nut and I just had to tell you that.

 

But assuming that someone else packed for you, you could jump a round from a span over water as your first ever parachute jump, and you'd probably be okay. The risk would be minimal. The analogy of "extreme bouldering" therefore doesn't hold, because the situation isn't as black and white as your example suggests.

If you read BASE 311's post, he seems to be saying that it can be done (BASE without skydives), since he's walking talking example.

I applaud D-dog for challenging conventional wisdoms. Ultimately however, each person will make their own decision as to how to prepare for the sport: either by skydiving or not. The discussion is therefore somewhat moot...

I disagree. The discussion is far from moot.


True. But the majority of those persons will seek advice, or do some kind of research, before making their own decision. What we say here may effect one, or more, of them.

Further, those persons will possibly receive instruction from a more experienced BASE jumper. What that more experienced jumper thinks, and does, may be effected by our discussion here.

Well of course it can be done, we all know that. Is it the wisest, safest route? Come on now, I think we all know better than that... ignorance is beyond me in this situation.

In my life, I've noticed that most of the time that "everybody knows" something, it turns out not to be the case.

In all seriousness. I don't think that massively greater canopy flight time is going to make as much difference as everyone automatically assumes.

For example, I have learned more, per jump, about wingsuit flight, on BASE jumps than on skydives. I think this is because the frame of reference is better for seeing what is going on in terms of absolute flight (as opposed to relative flight).

For the record, I believe that someone who makes 50 directed "BASE training" skydives (like say, DdOg, who had the advantage of coaching toward BASE from the beginning) is 85% of the time going to be better prepared than someone who just runs out and makes any 200 skydives (like me) to prepare for BASE.

I think that Clint's BASE oriented skydiving training program is a major step forward for BASE education. I wonder if there oughtn't be a skydiving "training" segment to every FJC?

 

 

True. I was making the point that the example of learning climbing by "bouldering" at 1000 feet doesn't really apply, since you can BASE jump with much less risk than that.

 
>>I'm surprised as well. What about delay's? I'd hate to over delay and blow a colon

>Well of course it can be done, we all know that. Is it the wisest, safest route? Come on now, I think we all know better than that... ignorance is beyond me in this situation
Here are my toughts about the argument "BASE training without skydives".
Yes, it can be done "safely" but with the following "if's" ALL fullfilled.
1) If you have a very experienced BASE instructor/mentor very, very capable of teaching
2) If you do a lot of training on a "fixed" harness (it is not so natural to go for your toggles and flying the canopy)
3) If a lot of theoretical classes are held with lots of videos watched and commented
4) If all the BASE pack jobs in the training process are done by mentor with student carefully looking
5) If a lot (=hundereds and hundreds) of dead air exits are performed, in a pool, onto a mattress, but much better with other suitable means (=pendulator or very similar tool)
6) If you have easily available (NOT to travel hours each time) an EASY and HIGH (from BASE point of view) object, I mean, a single span BRIDGE so that you cannot hit anything while flying, with at least a very large meadows underneath where to land on, from which object with PCA jumps the student can fly 30"-45"-60" and learn how to fly a BASE canopy "safely"; it is obvious that in this process the student must wear helmet, knee pads, elbow pads/whatever else protection is possible
7) If the above point 6) has got also a river/lake underneath as possible getaway/alternate landing area (better than only the meadow); in which case (=presence of water) a boat must be available at any time
8) If the instructor/mentor AND student has got lot of spare time to teach and to be taught
9) If you can do all the training from the above EASY single span BRIDGE for at least 40-50-60 jumps (first 10-20-30 of which are done by PCA)
So, if ALL the previous points are fulfilled, yes, I think that "BASE training without skydives" can be carried out "safely".
But, for sure, the above "BASE training without skydives" would be very, very time consuming, in terms of BASE pack jobs, time spent by both people involved, journeys to and from the BRIDGE.
Finally, if the above easy OBJECT (=single span BRIDGE) is not available within less one hour drive, the "BASE training without skydives" remains only theoretical and NOT feasible, mainly because of the enormous quantity of time needed to carry on the whole program.
Forget any "BASE training without skydives" if you haven't got ANY easy (see above) object available... : in this case, let's stick to the 150-200-250 skydives first and then BASE training
Just my 0.02€
P.S.: the above holds true only for training in BASE jumping where no long freefall (BASE jumps with slider up where terminal walls are jumped) is involved. If in case this "BASE training without skydives" has success, I think there is no other way other than skydiving to gain a good stability in freefall in box position, plus gaining good ability in tracking... , skills that are obviously MANDATORY for jumping terminal walls/objects

Not a direct reply to Treejumps, but thought it was worth throwing in here...

Again, I'm just a baby, maybe even still a fetus in BASE, but It surprises me that no one has even mentioned the fact that unless your jumping a 2 parachute system, that all that emergency training from skydiving, it goes right out the window with BASE. I'd hate to think that one day all my gut reatcion from skydiving would cause me to look up at a lineover and cut away rather than just popping my WLO toggles and landing with my rear risers...

There is a whole new set of emergency procedure within the world of BASE jumping, that has nothing to do with skydiving, and vice versa.

I'm neutral on the idea of "Do you have to skydive first". I don't have enough experience to make that call yet, but I thought this was worth some discussion.

Ganja

Remember that in this hypothetical example, we are talking about PCA's. Overdelaying a PCA will be very challenging for even the most gifted primate.

But, what exactly does skydiving teach you about delay timing? On a skydive, you look at an altimeter. This has nothing to do with delay or pull altitude determination in the BASE environment. Everyone, regardless of their skydiving experience (absent some old school skydivers who really did pull at BASE like altitudes back in the day) is going to have to learn BASE delays from the same starting point (i.e. no relevant experience at all). The only people I can think of who _might_ have an advantage are hard core bungee jumeprs, who have experience judging things like sandbag releases.

Mostly, I started this discussion because of an email that I've seen passed around the internet. In it, a relatively low experienced BASE jumper, who learned without ever making a skydive, declares his intention to start a "BASE School" for non-skydivers (specifically, college students). I've inquired about whether this is a joke (surely, I thought, it must be), but received no response at all to my repeated inquries. That makes me think that we're going to see this kind of thing sooner, rather than later. It also makes me think we're going to see it from "instructors" with no skydives, and relatively little BASE experience.

So, I'm interested in this discussion for two reasons:

1) To get as many people as possible to provide illustrations of why they think this is a bad idea (so that hopefully some prospective students will read and think about at least some of these arguments), and;

2) To talk about what the safest way to conduct such a course would be, so that any potential "instructors" will at least try to do so in the safest possible manner (for example, PCAing a round over water, rather than putting their students off for a hand held 2 second delay).

So, another question for you: If you saw someone actually giving a first jump course like that described above, what would you do?

Sure. But that had happened on dozens of skydives before that. And on the skydives I had no idea what was happening, and couldn't tell what worked and what didn't, so I couldn't work on it. On the BASE jump. I could see, and correct, and get instant feedback to my changes in body position.

 

I'm definitely not advocating learning to fly a wingsuit off a cliff. It's a freefall dependent skill that _really_ needs to be learned out of a plane.

I made my first BASE wingsuit flight after about 150 wingsuit skydives.

The thing is, I _suck_ at wingsuit flight. Out of an airplane, it was really hard to tell how bad I sucked, or what was going on. And unfortunately, I was making those jumps at a DZ where every other wingsuit flyer was working all day, so I'd get maybe one jump with other people for every ten solo jumps. Without a frame of reference, I had no idea what was happening on the skydives. But on a BASE jump, I had an instant frame of reference, and that made a lot of difference.

This is one of the big reasons that CRW, for example is far more valuable canopy training than just doing solo canopy drill dives. The other canopies around you give you a frame of reference. Still, since they are moving, you will probably learn more with a stationary referent.

yes I did, though not much and now not actively. It's fun, but it ain't BASE.
gardner

oh my god all sorts of things....

Gardner

>For example, I have learned more, per jump, about wingsuit flight, on BASE jumps than on skydives. I think this is because the frame of reference is better for seeing what is going on in terms of absolute flight (as opposed to relative flight).

Question is: Did you do your first Birdman flight on a BASE jump or from an airplane? I would NEVER jump a Birdman for the first time in Norway. Would anyone else like to this? IF so, you got some balls!
And I do agree that you get a better frame of refrence.

>I'm definitely not advocating learning to fly a wingsuit off a cliff. It's a freefall dependent skill that _really_ needs to be learned out of a plane.
>I made my first BASE wingsuit flight after about 150 wingsuit skydives.

You can still do this off a cliff for the first time with no birdman experience. YOu don't HAVE TO jump out of the plane. It's just tracking! RIght?

IT is EXACTLY THE SAME THING. YOU CAN TAKE YOUR CHANCES BUT............. SAME THING, IT'S STUPID!!

If someone wants to start BASE jumping with No skydives, that is his desicion, Plain and simple.
Good luck! It's your life!! There is a much easier way and there is a stupid way. As people said before and like 311, it can be done but why would you take that risk? Go do 1 tandem or 1 aff or 1 static line.

Then you will be much better equiped to start BASE jumping. At least you will know what the feeling is like to be under canopy.

Doing your first BASE jump is wicked powerful and overwhelming and then you have to fly a canopy for the first time and land in maybe that open field or land on the beach and flare at the right height.
All that on your first jump! That is alot for people with a 1000 skydives.

I think that we are all taking it for granted, for us experienced jumpers. Remember when you made your first skydive, how scared you were, most people anyway! Remember how scared you were on your first BASE jump! Try combining them together.

Anyway, If Ddog want to take people out on their 1st BASE jump with NO skydiving experience, that is his and his students CHOICE/LIFE. He has to live with himself for the rest of his life and if something goes wrong.....
WOW, I couldn't do that and most people couldn't do that. THat is why no one is doing that. 98% wouldn't want that responsibility.

Like Tree said THAT IS WRONG!!!


I hope nothing happens to your students!

I don't think it would work that way. As someone earlier in this thread mentioned, doing your first BASE jump is often so dramatic _because_ you have the perspective of skydiving. Without that perspective (both in terms of altitude and in terms of culture) I tend to think that a first BASE jump would actually be a bit less scary, depending on the individual.

Answer is: a few posts above this.

But I do know some folks who did that. I think they're nuts. But they probably think I'm nuts, too.

MAYBE and Maybe not. I agree with you though about the perspective.

I didn't make it that post I had to write a reply then.
But still it's the same things. It's nuts.
But it can be done.

I have his phone number if you want it.

Thank you for expanding on what I was trying to say. Lol, just didn't have the time to write it all out in format as you did. Again all I was emphasizing was yes, it CAN be done, and in a relatively safe manner... however seemingly impractical and once again, still IMO not the wisEST choice.

And Tom, thanks for clarifying. You're right, I didn't mean to assume that everyone should know something. Thats why this discussion is here. I was assuming however, that experienced base jumpers should know smart decisions from rather dumb ones when it comes to first timers.

 
>>Glad to see you're doing this to raise awareness; no more jokes from me. When doing hop 'n pops to shoot accuracy, I was taught not to look at the alti and just count instead, starting off with 2 sec's and taking progressively longer delay's up to 5's, to get a "feel" for what each delay feels like. On terminal jumps, I agree there is no advantage gained.

Interesting debate. Should people have previous skydiving experience or not. I think they should, I've seen too many skydiving students get hurt due to poor canopy control than due to anything else and they had radios and all day classes and everything under the sun to help them. Some people are good canopy pilots and take to it easily while others never seem to get the grasp of it. Like driving a car, some drivers are good and some suck. A large open grassy landing area is the place to find out if someone can handle a canopy or not. A river bank loaded with rocks or trees isn't the place. Some people you can throw into the river and they'll learn to swim, others will simply drown. I am not capable of accurately judging someone's mental capacities to handle high stress situations to the degree necessary to feel comfortable to toss them off a object with just a idea in their head of how to fly a canopy. Of course there are people that can do it, nothing is impossible, only inprobable. We all know people at the DZ that we think that they shouldn't be skydiving. Based on watching them jump and watching their canopy skills, we can make a decision to help them get into this sport or to stay away from them. We have the advantage of having them being observed in a somewhat controlled enviroment. To teach them without this prior foundation of skills and knowdledge, is to simply trust to our own worth as a teacher and their ability to understand and apply the information. This is a HUGE risk IMHO. It can be done, but offers no real advantage over the older more accepted style of learning the sport. The Skydiving/BASE structured course is the best way by far. Not learning RW,or freeflying, but simple tracking and stabilty skills combined with canopy skill dives on large 7 cells(no racing to downsize to small zp canopies) will produce someone ready for the challenges of BASE. At the same time, they wil be experiencing and learning to skydive. It alone is worth the money. Base can also be learmed without mentors. Me and a friend did it. We had previous skydiving experience though, combined with the manufactors packing video. Is is better to have a mentor? Yes if they are wise and excellent teachers. Not all of us make good teachers even though we may be well versed in the subject. It also stands then, that a excellent teacher may not be smart in their field. Would they be accceptable as mentors? Or can a individual gleam enough knowledge from out of the air to proceed and be successful? It has and can be done but that doesn't make it the "best method" The fact that someone who learned to BASE without skydives, says it is a inferior way should be takin to heart by all. The voice of experience has more weight than the voice of "Theory"

just my 2cents
Mike

http://dropzone.com/columns/GettingIntoBASE.shtml

I don't know how to do the "clicky" thing.

I just went to "Getting into BASE" and I found this interesting.


This article was written entirely by Tom Aiello, BASE 579. Tom has made over 500 BASE jumps in the past 30 months, from more than 100 objects. He is not an authority or expert of any kind on BASE jumping or any other type of parachuting, so all his advice should be taken with a grain of salt.

As I understand Tom wrote this:

Make the Skydives

First, make at least 200 skydives. You need to make these skydives in order to practice accuracy, tracking and canopy control skills. You also need to establish a general comfort level with parachutes, free fall, and split second decisions. The skydivers who are best prepared for BASE generally jump large, 7 cell, F-111 canopies, have had a number of malfunctions and responded correctly, and are comfortable with multiple skydiving disciplines. If your only focus is BASE jumping, don't succumb to the temptation to become canopy swooping freeflyer. Instead, focus on CRW and Accuracy as your skydiving disciplines.

To practice tracking make entire skydives in max track. Don't count on the limited tracking on break off, or on the balanced tracking of a tracking jump. Make the whole dive tracking as hard as you can, with camera and coaching if possible, and work on getting the most lift, and the most drive out of your track.

For accuracy practice, it's best to use the canopy that you intend to BASE jump with. Try to set up low (under 500 feet), to simulate the BASE environment. Don't forget to make approaches cross- and down-wind as well, since you will often have to do this while BASE jumping.

For canopy practice, you should make some CRW jumps (on a CRW canopy) and then do some canopy drills on your intended BASE canopy. CRW is a great way to learn canopy flight characteristics in tight spaces before you get into the BASE environment (and CRW with your BASE canopy is an excellent drill-after you've learned some CRW skills).

Be sure you've made several night jumps during your skydiving career. In many places, BASE jumps are made almost exclusively at night (to avoid arrest, incarceration, and gear confiscation), and comfort with flying and landing your canopy at night is essential to survive these jumps.

Make some jumps on your BASE canopy to learn its performance envelope. Pay particular attention to riser input, practicing riser turns and riser flares. Make sure you practice your riser turns before popping your toggles-that's the way you'll have to do it to avoid smacking the side of a cliff one day. Obviously, you'll want to practice them after grabbing the toggles, as well.

I believe that all the info that he wrote down is correct. I think if everyone did this to get into BASE, they would have the knowledge to stay safe.

Long story short. He says, "First, make at least 200 skydives.

That pretty much says it all.

I hope you don't mind Tom that I quoted you but it makes sense.

I disagree to an extent:
Skydiving doesn't necessarily involve much in the way of very short delays, but they are there to be had and experienced. Particularly if one goes through the old school static line training.

Hop and pops. Clear and pulls. Go and throws.
Whatever.
You have a ritualized exit count, whether it's "ready, set, go" or "3,2,1, C-ya", and a very brief delay, i.e: "arch one thousand, look one thousand, pull." or something similar.
Quality skydiving intruction includes emphasis on trusting your eyes, your inner time clock, and NOT relying on an altimeter.

A clear and pull from 2000' is still different from a go and throw from 250', but the mental rehearsal is similar.

Maybe AFF grads miss out on that?
-Josh

Spoken like someone who comes from a turbine dz... Here in Canada there are still an awful lot of dz's where people progress through IAD/SL to hop'n'pops, 5sec delays (counted) to 10 sec Delays (counted)... Not everyone is progressing through tandem and aff...

Doesn't a Protrac give you some sort of a frame of reference, ie rate of descent and time in freefall? Maybe a GPS to give horizontal movement?

I believe climbers could easily transition to BASE without skydiving because they are" pre-conditioned "so to speak to an irrational potentially hostile enviroment. In my opinion, skydiving before BASE is ideal because of this conditioning. My first skydive in 1985 was significantly more horrific than my first basejump, and it set the stage for being comfortable(relatively) for BASE when that day came...28 jumps later. It's all in the mindset and that is highly individual.
BASE386
Hey Jimmy in Cincy, call me... Weather's gettin better, hibernation is about over. Come on down for some "greener" pastures and ice cold ones.
base386@dropzone.com

D-Dog, good to meet you out at Dwain's mem in L.A.. You're fuckin crazy, but that's relative, and admirable in my world. I think you've got a valid point, but only a rare clientele are eligible.

I don't know. I did static line.

I still don't feel like the static line course gave much in the way of delay training. No one ever looked at the delay, or watched the video to see if I was doing the correct delays. I had a look at it last year, and noticed that all of my delays seemed wrong. On the early delays, they were way too short (my 5 second delay was more like 2 seconds) and on the later ones, way too long. My point is that the delay itself was never really part of the feedback my instructors gave. I wouldn't doubt that my instruction was sub-standard, but it's the only experience I have to work from.

I skydive with a Protrac, whenever I skydive. I often use a GPS skydiving (with a wingsuit) as well.

I'd imagine a Protrac would be a fairly valuable tool to practice delay, if you used it to clock very short delays. Does anyone have experience using one for that?

I think Protracs don't clock the first several seconds of freefall (7-15 or something)... it's in the manual. I figured this out when I noticed that my average speed, distance traveled, and time spent in freefall didn't compute for my jumps.

I was meaning doesn't the Protrac give you an idea of the effectiveness of your wingsuit jumps, not your short delays... If you know what a good wingsuit jumper does, you can gauge your rates of descent and forward drive based on what your protrac is telling you...

I'm chuckling at this as, in my mind, I go down the list of famous BASE folks who have throw non-skydivers off objects in the past 10 years. It's a pretty long list; I'm just a footnote.

Personally, the most positive thing I've seen recently come into BASE training (other than the prevalence of the FJC nowadays) is the proposed BASE-specific skydiving course you are putting together, Clint. This makes enormous sense and is long overdue. Some folks (like me) were fortunate in that we found skydiving coaches who tailored our DZ jumps from day one to BASE, but that was not easy to accomplish at most DZs.

When I think of all of the absolutely, stunningly, shockingly stupid things that I've seen or heard firsthand done with low-time/newbie BASE folks by "instructors" over the years, this whole "how many skydives" discussion really comes into proper focus. The funny thing is that few folks discuss these reckless student moments; they are the unspoken secret of BASE, and for better or for worse most folks fairly new to the sport have never heard these stories. Fact is, many of these stories have gone to the grave with Dwain and Nik and Lukas and others in recent years.

BASE isn't black and white, and it is good for the newer generations of jumpers (including me) to hear the real-deal stories from the past to understand the real boundaries of safety and what happens when these boundaries are pushed. Teaching folks to jump is a massive committment and I doubt that anyone who has not done so personally is really qualified to comment on it, at least from a moral/ethical standpoint.

Tree, I appreciate your metaphor regarding bouldering but I think you and I are just seeing this whole issue from different perspectives.

Regards,

D-d0g

Having 386 call me "fucking crazy" has not only made my day, it has made my entire fucking year! We're working on a project to jump a really big cliff in a really big mountain range, that's the latest crazy plan and I think it just might work. "It's got good idea written all over it."

Hope you are well down there. I'm looking forward to hanging out again soon, hopefully under less "complicated" circumstances. Remember the Pact from Starbucks, however; it is still in effect.

Peace,

D-d0g

Quite a long list, eh?

As a "wannabe" - yes, I know (but I've already embarked on a route that may take a couple of years or more) - this is how I see it:

BASE requires a lot of thought and commitment before embarking on a route to doing it. Everyone is different.

I think the "anti-skydiving" sentiment comes from skydivers' sentiments/approach - consider their starting point! The advantage anyone with skydiving experience has is a certain familiarity to jumping that you can't get elsewhere. Sure, someone who has 150 and lots of CReW jumps is going to be better prepared than someone who has 700 skydives of which the majority have been head-down and piloting a heavily loaded swooping canopy. I agree that your average DZ swooper/showoff who sees BASE and thinks it's cool is not going to go too far... So the jumper should consider very carefully why he/she wants to do this.

My starting point was hang gliding and climbing, and I'm building up the necessary experience (OK, I'll clarify that - what I consider "necessary") in order to feel comfortable with going out and doing a BASE jump.

Maybe if a BASE aspirant had gone through the list on my "reply to" post (which almost defeats the point of not skydiving - but that may have been the intention ) then they would be fairly well equipped without being "corrupted" by the skydiving world (which I don't believe - people corrupt themselves.)

Personally, I believe that skydiving should come first - BASE looks like a big commitment to me and shouldn't be taken lightly - skydiving gives someone the opportunity to really decide that BASE is what they want to do.

So, doesn't this argument just boil down to doing it for the right reasons? How you get there is less important, surely?

Just my thoughts (but I know nothing...)

Sure jumping out of an airplane at 13 thousand feet isn't dangerous at all. Very funny to compare skydiving being a pastime?
It's a lifestyle.
People die in skydiving for different reasons than in Base Jumping. I don't think one is safer than the other, except for the fact that skydivers have time to use their reserves. Other than that, skydiving is every bit as dangerous as BASE. It is like comparing apples and oranges!

I would gauge this by the margin of error available to the participant. BASE has a much smaller margin for error than skydiving. The risks involved are clearly higher in BASE. Yes people die skydiving and yes it’s a dangerous sport. But in comparison the risks and margin for error obviously differ. Firstly look at the environment, in BASE you are freefalling at altitudes very close to the ground and or close to a solid object of rock, metal, glass, wires, etc etc - hesitations and miscalculations of time in small amounts can result in serious injury or death, a miscalculation of 1 second is nothing in skydiving, it could be life or death in BASE – Kit requirements differ for each jump, yes this is true in skydiving but not to the fine detail it is in BASE where opening time / distance may be crucial…. An extra 60ft opening in BASE could be deadly in skydiving this does not matter. People always retort with “what about swooping? The margin for error is small” – this is true, but in itself it a specialised area of skydiving that takes time to master and build up skills to practice safely. This is a more dangerous facet of skydiving - but there are also other more dangerous facets of BASE.

This is a simplised view on a few of the many many differences as I see them – I can’t be arsed to write anymore! But for a skydiver to say skydiving is just as dangerous as BASE is ignorant.

As Hookitt suggested – you wait until you are stood alone at night with your toes over the edge of a low solid object – then you come back and tell us that you think skydiving is just as risky.

I basically agree with Scott Jaco.

BASE is pasttime as it may be life, as any other things... (Motorcycle, Mountaineering, Playing Golf, ...)

What does make things dangerous for us??

I try explain what is my point of view:

1. Risk-management:
By doing something, you agree to a certain risk. The risk is the interaction between what you are doing (activity) and how you are doing it (yourself).

2. Natural instincts
Since we are born, we get a certain Self-Protecting instinct. The Self-protecting instinct we have gets smaller by rules and other artificially protected things in our lifes.

3. Destiny, bad luck, etc... (No need to elaborate).


To put alltogether:
In Skydiving, the Natural instinct is less required, since the rules are supposed to ensure security, to take care of that. The how we do it part of risk-management is just following that rules. In less organized activities (Clibing, Mountaineering, Skiing, and BASE) we need this instinct to do this in safety.

So for me it all depends on how you make the things. I know of people who in BASE take less risks than a lot take in Skydive. I know of some skiers, which take more risks than the most people I know in BASE. I could state more examples and I think I am not the only one...

"So it all depends"

I see what you are saying. Dying is dying. That is the danger in either sport.
What's the difference between dying skydiving and BASE jumping?
Well, probably only the number of witnesses you had.
Think binomial distribution. There are two outcomes. Life or death. Injury? Well, that would fall in the LIFE category. Paralysis? Still alive, so in the LIFE category again.
It's like a logic gate. It's either a 1 or a 0.

Either I have a beer (1) or I don't (0). And right now, it is 0.
So I am off to get another. Yes, at 4:36am CST.



Thomas

I believe there is a certain component of "unavoidable" risk in any activity. A rock climber cannot always avoid rockfall, a skydiver cannot always avoid airplane crashes, a BASE jumper cannot always avoid 180's. Some things are simply inherent dangers of the sport, which all participants, even the most cautious, will inevitably face.

In my opinion, the "unavoidable" risks of BASE (i.e. the risks you must take to participate in BASE jumping) are significantly greater than the "unavoidable" risks of skydiving.