NickDG

Bush visits the floor of the stock exchange for the first time and a few weeks later POOF! The guy's a Jonah . . . NickD

I see no reason being a rigger would make any difference. Just make sure and take the canopy out of the bag . . . (You really didn't think you'd get way with it, did you)? NickD

I think when "safety day" first started the idea was more along the lines of like when the military had a "safety stand down." The point being "safety" was more important than anything else they were doing. Holding your safety day in the "off" season is more a way to get together and have a few beers. Holding it while the sun shines would better make the point. NickD

Jumpers of yore used to land on each other's cars for new paint jobs hence the "3rd" party thing, so anyone remotely connected to the sport were classed 1st or 2nd party. Except for demos, I've never felt this day in day out type of insurance is all that necessary anyway. It could be we just don’t hear about these cases, but even if a jumper goes through a barn roof off the DZ why do we all pay for it? Let 'em flap in the breeze by themselves. Okay, maybe that's too cold. But how about such insurance just covering students and cases of uncontrollable malfunctions for experienced jumpers? Or why not the "we have no insurance" protection which is a proven lawsuit defense in gear manufacturing. Does your average gone through the barn roof skydiver have enough loot for a lawyer to bother with anyway? Now if USPA would just cover my butt after sailing through a $20,000 plate glass window on a BASE jump I'd be more willing to pony up . . . NickD

I haven't looked at the budget lately, but advertising fee intake is usually a big part of USPA income. PARACHUTIST is a skydiving advertiser's dream as it's targeted right at the people who are most interested in their products. The downside is USPA is sometimes too reluctant to come right out and call a product a POS. They have tried, in the past, to attract more mainstream advertisers like auto and timepiece companies, and occasionally they bag one, but it never seems to last too long. Just not enough of us I suppose. PARACHUTIST would be an excellent candidate for online distribution, more so than say SKYDIVING would be. SKYDIVING tells it like it is blemishes and all while PARACHUTIST is more about lipstick on the pig. But don’t hold your breath about seeing it online. They'd be too afraid of the inevitable call for it also going interactive and instant membership feedback would defeat the whole purpose of why they hide out in a cold WX region where there aren’t many jumpers . . . NickD

It was probably too scary that way . . . NickD

I've never had much faith in the Pro Rating. Demo jumping is a test of skill AND judgment. So you can stand up in the peas of your home DZ, big whoop. The real test is having the guts to call a demo off. Then it's being able to overcome your knocking knees as you pass below your last "out." On a tight demo, it's the closest we skydivers come to shooting traps on an aircraft carrier, except we do it without an ejection seat, a meatball, or a prayer of going around . . . NickD

You guys should go back to a practice you used during WW II. Needing to train large numbers of Paratroopers and not being able to wait on the WX, the Brits anchored balloons inside huge blimp hangars and did static line jumps 24/7 . . . NickD

>>*IF* a governing organization is spending money wisely - every dollar spent is well spent.

I've always thought "targets" set out for demos is a bad idea. If you land smoothly 30-feet way, it gives cause to say, "you missed." The point should be landing safely and making it look easy. Even mild swoop landings, when appropriate, are better than bad accuracy approaches. Accuracy approaches, when done incorrectly (like many seem to be) shows a lot of toggle flailing and when doing that it looks, well, it looks like flailing . . . NickD

>>The point I'm trying to make is I think the education process would be a lot harder without online information such as dz and basewiki (or heaven forbid the fatality list).

I apologized to Andy. He didn’t deserve that from me. My very first posts to an internet BASE forum were in 1987 when it was me, Mike Allen, Rick Payne and guys like that on a GEnie board which I started. Since that time many people have come and gone, and some I miss and some I don't. I hung in through those formative years, through Mick's BASE board, and here I still am at this place. If that sounds crazy to you, maybe it is. But I've seen these boards operate at their full potential and I've also seen them wallow in the gutter. I realized that (again) when, although it was a good line of writing, I later thought through my, "stake through the heart," comment concerning Felix. I took the low road as I don't (anymore) always have the energy to back up my every single reference by re-telling the story or lesson it represents. If Moe Viletto was standing next to me right now he'd be giving me the business, "I told you so, I told you twenty years ago not to get involved in that internet." He was right, but not for the right reasons. While things haven't changed all that much internally, they have changed by a magnitude externally. The BASE Zone is the Youtube of words, and in both cases the cosmic audience is now too large to get away with it. I've brought up our collectively bailing out of here a few times before, and for the same reasons of security, but not enough people agreed. And either we all go, or it won't make a difference. But the stakes are higher now as besides basic security concerns it's unconscionable we dangle BASE jumping so freely in front of a larger than it used to be crowd of the young and impressionable. If you don’t agree with that then it follows you either believe BASE is an everyman's sport, or worse, you just don’t give a shit when someone is injured, maimed, or killed. I don't believe the latter is true of most. You can see that in the posts that follow the announcement of a BASE fatality here. I've never heard, "He was a bastard, and I'm glad he's dead," like I have in that other parachute related sport so we are, no matter if you believe it or not, as Carl Boenish said, "A small band of brothers." One poster here recently said, "I think it's kinda neat pissing people off on these boards." And I don’t get that. That may be viable in an anonymous chat room or Usenet board but here it's like walking into a Holiday Inn room full of BASE jumpers the night before Bridge Day and pissing on someone's packed rig. And if that's the only act you've got, then your act needs work . . . NickD

And Andy, Yes, because of child like pot churners like you. Please take your 74 jumps, your A license, and your one year in the sport, and go back to the bonfire . . . NickD

>>when were the BASE forums NOT shit?

"Invasion of the Tandem Masters" NickD

I am Italian, but "Matzo ball" is just funnier than meat ball . . . NickD

Back when all the average home had were VHS video players we BASE jumpers already knew the power contained in those little black quarter inch video cassettes. At parties and gatherings, even jumper parties, skydive videos were pushed aside in favor of BASE stuff. Face it, to skydivers and wuffos alike, skydiving videos are boring unless you are in them. With the advent of computers, internet video, and BASE jumpers willing to feed the machine, you now see the next step in the chain. Links to BASE videos on internet web sites that have nothing at all to do with jumping. From climbing to cooking to knitting forums you'll see, "Hey guys, off topic, but you got to see this! . . . It's a glory hound's wet dream . . . You can see a good example of this over at Supertropo, a climbing forum where the owner, Chris, is a BASE jumper. He posts his wing suit videos there and pretty much has all these climbers gushing over them. And its worth noting that it wasn't too long ago climbers were fairly anti-BASE as a group. Now there's a lot of, "Boy, I'm going to do that," and, "I just started to skydive so I can do that," type posts. I've posted links to the BASE fatality page there, trying to give them a Yang to Chris's Ying, but they aren't able to comprehend all that yet. Of course, if you are type that thinks BASE is an "everyman's" sport than the above won’t make sense. If you are type who doesn't realize your glory houndness will cost lives and create access problems it won’t make sense. And if you are type that just doesn't care it won’t make sense. I can write as good a BASE story as anyone. But my best stuff won't connect with a non-jumper, or skydiver, the way even a poorly made BASE video will. BASE gear manufacturer Adam Filipino once famously said, "A BASE rig is a loaded gun," and he meant we needed to be careful about who had access to them. Well, if that was true, then BASE video on the internet is the atomic bomb . . . NickD

Thanks, Dan, I kind of figured you did it by accident . . . NickD

Oh, kill me now . . . NickD BASE 194

In a BASE global warming sense it can now be said the whole world is hot. And it will only get hotter . . . The damage done by Felix, et al., and the glory hounds of the Youtube generation that followed his lead will eventually overwhelm any semblance of "control" this sport may have had. But what I find somewhat more worrisome is that some of you guys only speak up when it affects "your" sites." When I wrote, in another thread, about this happening in the U.S., with few exceptions, I was accused of overreacting and I could have used some backup from you guys. But you left me hanging out there like a big matzo ball . . . While we envy your legal sites aboard we also first (privately) wondered how long it would last. I saw it as a deal with the devil in order to gain something that should have been your right in the first place. If you had fought over the last fifteen years for the right to jump, instead of making deals, you might have achieved it, and kept it forever. Now you’re just a pen stroke away from being out of business. Sometimes I think we are too stupid to deserve BASE jumping. Personally, my biggest mistake was about fifteen years ago the day Felix walked into Basic Research. Just another Euro-dog tramping the States I thought, but I should have realized the monster that lurked inside the clean cut young man and drove a fucking stake through his heart . . . NickD

Hey Dan, Other's want the same opportunity you had, and if you're the same Dan I'm thinking of, we helped you out when you visited. There's a lot of people who jump in that town, so chill out on the names thing please . . . And Sinister, your location is in your profile, so you're not doing us any favors either . . . Come on, guys, can't you use your heads just a little bit! NickD

I predicted all this years ago . . . http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=564962;search_string=coppers;#564962 NickD

When I was a young boy in New York City a good pair of running shoes were called felony flyers. Sadly, I guess "felony flyers" will have a whole new meaning now . . . I wonder who'll get life in prison as the first "third strike" BASE jumper? NickD

>>Is a night jump possible for that particular object?

I've owned all of these . . . Strato Flyer! Para-Flite marketed this canopy as a better version of the tried and true Strato Star, but it landed so badly they changed its name to "Safety Flyer" and, in 1979, sold it as the very first square reserve. People creaming in on these canopies were often heard yelling, "Flyer for sale!!!" Glidepath Clipper! Pull down a front riser and it collapses . . . Glidepath Nova! This canopy had serious issues and was grounded in the early 90s, but not before it killed more than a few jumpers. One of these collapsed and paralyzed a former student of mine. Burning your Nova in the fire pit was a popular pastime and somebody should have gone to prison over this canopy . . . http://www.afn.org/skydive/equip/announce/nova-recall.html NickD