Frodo

Speaking of signs... (btw, the original pics that y'all can't open - just save them to a folder and add ".JPEG" to the names)

That's cool, and btw Escher's work with the neverending stairs is called "Ascending & descending" (click) - one of my favorite.

Oh come on. yeah it was edited, but only in one way - I cropped it so it could fit into the 60kb limit.

Here's me after 1st jump. Yes I don't have any pics of freefall, but anyway... Does anyone else think of the day of their 1st jump as their new birthday?

Recently I've ordered my goggles from Square1, and this wasn't clear to me: which is better/cooler - goggles w/ clear lens, black, or smoke? I ended up buying the ones with clear lens, cos I thought that wearing black ones on a not-so-sunny day wasn't a good idea. (yes I know that generally you're above the clouds most of the skydive, but still...) So, what kind of goggles do you wear? Or, if you use a full-face helmet, do you wear any goggles "under" it (I heard some people do)?

There'd been a lot of excitement about this photo some time ago... You know, life on Mars, little green men, etc, etc Who knows... maybe these are their messages to us? (if you want to see more pics of that face just go to Google's image search and type in "mars face")

Yup, great story, great language. Thanks!

My home phone did come up, but like you said this doesn't work for cellphones.

I'm planning to visit the Grand Canyon (which is in the north-western Arizona) in the near future (2-5 weeks). If any of you had ever been there, please share your experience, and give any advice you can. I live in Austin, Texas, and it'll take around 17-20 hours to get there. The particular points I'm not very clear on are: - speeding "policy"? Is the principle of "going with the flow" enough to avoid tickets? - where to sleep (halfway between start&end points we have to stop for a sleep. If it's going to be a tent - fine, it just has to be a populated area. So are there any designated areas for this, or do we still have to stay in a motel?) - how much money do I need, apart from cost of gas? - my car's specs say "30 mpg on highway", how close are these numbers to truth, usually? - I'll probably take 1-2 friends with me. How appropriate is it to ask them to share the gas expenses? - any other driving tips regarding the Canyon itself: I'm one of those people (they say it's 2% of total visitors) who want to hike down (to the river?), maybe spend a night there, etc etc. - what is the entrance fee? (it appears that it's free of charge, but I'm not sure) - do they charge additional fees for specific activities? (like taking a ranger-led hike, or attending an evening show) - how much time is it reasonable to spend in the park? Of course I'll be contacting the park service, but it's always useful to have non-official opinions and info. Anyone who has ever been on such a long trip (about 1100 miles to get there), please share any knowledge you;ve got on the subject.

Y'all are often saying that NPS etc. are monitoring the BASE jumping forums. But isn't it possible that the NPS or another agency will implement the well-known scenario: using an insider ("spy"?), who's willing to BASE jump, but only for purposes of collecting info on the objects and then burning them all at once? This would be a disaster to the community, and it can be done, considering this technique is widely used in anti-drug wars or whatever. Especially if tensions between BASErs and government grow higher.

Never heard of it until now, but what's still worse is the info on skydivingfatalities.com is far from current (and it's been this way for a looong time), it's like a year behind, and skydivenet.com/fatalities is apparently down.

Why is everybody mentioning the Sabre all the time? It's kinda strange, because they're making so many canopies - Vengeance, Velocity, Stiletto and whatnot. Is the Sabre/Sabre2 so much better than the other PDs?

I wish I'd been at one of those shows. Look here, the parachutists at the 2002 show were the Navy SEALs! Way cool http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-0505airsea_gallery,0,2931147.photogallery?index=3

Wow, looks like I have to "correct" my dreams a little bit. When I was talking about opening the door of the airliner, I didn't know this was possible... http://www.msnbc.com/news/911372.asp Most or all passengers sucked out because of depressurization! I might have been charged with multiple homicide had I done anything like that... yikes

Well, what if you'd had a good reason to cutaway -- do you still have to pay for it all? And what about container damage? As you describe it, there was no crazy spinning, tumbling or anuthing, so what damage could be done? One more q, about the freebags for the reserve: Are they really worth like $400-500? And if yes, why?

There's a program called "On the edge" - "Cheating gravity" about skydiving, on the Discovery Wings channel tonite. As far as I know, it's only available on the cable channels, DirecTV and stuff, so if you have one of those, it's on at 1am Central time (2am eastern), and again tomorrow in the morning (and maybe later too). For Time Warner Cable it's channel 236. Tell what do you think of it. I still have no idea what in particular it's going to be about. Guess it's just going to be general stuff, with all the explanations - where is main, where is reserve, what equipment is used, etc. Meanwhile, why not write about what y'all have seen on TV related to skydiving/BASE, how much are you satisfied with the coverage of the sport by the general media, and anything else. Personally I'm usually not very satisfied, because they don't give too much of an effort to objectively cover the whole thing - they just need the drama, how dangerous it is, "this time the parachute saved him, but it could have been much worse...", crap like that. But the recent show "Now see this", when they showed about 6 minutes of BASE, was pretty cool.

As far as I understand, there are about 800-900 jumpers with BASE numbers, but that number is obviously far from the total number of people who made a BASE jump at least once. So, who can give a fairly good estimate? How many - in the U.S. and the whole world? And what countries are most active in BASE? (I hear a lot about the Australian Association, for example)

So at terminal W = A*Cd*V^3.At low speeds, air resistance is almost proportional to speed; as you go to higher speeds, the propportionality becomes square (Resistance ~ V^2); this is what I'd read in a good book on physics ; maybe at even higher speeds the resistance becomes proportional to V^3, as you're saying. I'm not sure. I just know that there is no single formula for air resistance, so you have to use approximations at some point.

Though many people will disagree, I have to say this: it's going to be more brainwashing, and politics, and, you know, issues, where they shouldn't be. People go to a dz to skydive, that is, to experience something that's very important to them - for some it's recreation, for others - best sport in the world, and for almost everyone - a good way of socializing. You can say everything is in harmony there, pretty much, but by bringing religion where it shouldn't be, you bring controversy, you ruin many people's weekends. Have you ever seen a DZ with a big TV tuned into CNN, or someone watching the DOW Jones rate, or whatever? No. People want to get this kind of stuff elsewhere. It's the same with what you're proposing - don't become a pain in the ass.

So let's say you want to jump all 4 typess of objects to get a BASE number. You have to find appropriate sites. Let's talk about accessibility and level of "protection" of the sites. A bridge seems the easiest - both in terms of safety and police issues. You can just walk onto the bridge and wait till nobody is around. A cliff - also relatively easy to avoid authorities if you're smart enough - they can't put a guard near each vertical cliff in the country, after all. Same goes to antennas - many of them are simply in the middle of nowhere. But what about buildings? All the tall ones are built for business or other important purposes, and should be guarded all the time. Including the roof I believe. So how do you overcome this obstacle? I'm not asking for step-by-step instructions, I'd appreciate any ideas or principles, and also all types of stories -- funny, scary, how you were/were almost busted, etc.

Sorry man, don't remember, but if you have a fast connection, I'll gladly send'em to you. (via Kazaa, an FTP program or whatever)

I did a big long search, with Kazaa, Google, and then the one that helped me most is alltheweb.com. Now I have about 260 megs of skydiving and 80 megs of BASE videos (that's after filtering out some crappy ones).

I was meaning getting used to the fact that people might take risks way beyond my understanding. I guess everyone just has his own border between calculated risk-taking and having max fun, and - insanity, foolishness and certain death. There's no way I can convince my relatives that "making a skydive is less dangerous than driving to the dz" Every day I'm more and more sure in that. Yeah, by the time you said that I've read it about 3 times, and the articles too... BASE is definitely a borderline sport -- no matter how skillful and cool-minded you are, from time to time you run quite a chance of dying. I easily believe this. Maybe I can't yet accept it - must get into the situation to find out. I hope I didnt' offend any jumpers here by talking of what I really don't know... I'm just trying to understand the whole thing.

Same principle as why you have two rather than one, and at the same time two, rather than 3 or 4, canopies in the rig ( I mean skydiving). One -- too risky. 3+ too complicated and expensive for the elusive small reduction of the already reduced risk. Why a second pc would help? Because if one hesitates, the other, independent from the first, will most likely still inflate in time. You can't afford pc hesitation jumping off a 200ft object can you? BTW a question about delays. I just don't want to create a new topic for it. How do you decide when to pull? By sight (or "when you get scared"), or do you count seconds in freefall, or do you have something audible on your helmet? And a question aabout tracking, or better say, out-tracking the cliffs. I'm watching this video called "Arch - marc" maybe you guys know it (the file name is "archv.ram"), and it looks like the guy out-tracks the ledge (or maybe it's called talus, sorry for my english) by mere feet. So how do you decide whether to go for it or not? During the fall? If yes... damn, I should probably just get used to it... I mean, skydiving is ok with me in terms of risks, BASE looks ok too, but doing this kind of stuff - just "go for it" not knowing if there ever was a theoretical possibility of success... thats too much for me yet.

I live in Austin, Texas. I'm planning to go to WV to watch the event. Do I need to register? or just come early? And where all the spectators usually are? on the bridge or on the hills, on the ground, etc.? I want to get a good view on what's happening, so how close can I get to the action if im not on the bridge itself? nevermind, Jason already answered it.