NickDG

>>I "could have seen it happen and checked on him as I was walking by

>>taxi ride from Charleston from Fayetteville costs? I've heard about 50 bucks, is that right?

That is something to be worked out ahead of time. Some people simply can't face arrest, because of priors, a sensitive job, or a spouse that hates BASE. Personally, I would never leave anyone behind be they injured, hung-up, or dead. But, I do understand people that will and have no trouble with it as long as I know beforehand. On larger urban loads where there are several jumpers and a ground crew we always work out who stays and who blows if the worst happens. There's no use in everyone going down. Especially since after a death the authorities can go on a jihad, and while you know the cause was something tangible like a funky opening and an object strike, the police, park rangers, etc. can and often do start throwing around manslaughter charges and the like. I know the above sounds cold, and there are always people that will say don't do the crime if you can't do the time, but sometimes the consequences of being caught are so out of touch with the reality of the "crime" it's a necessary precaution. NickD

>>okay I’ll bite, what are Hooker seatbelts?

Boy, I really screwed that one up! It was N141PV. Sorry! NickD

Have we changed things here in the USA? I thought (technically) you needed an AFF rating to follow or dock on a tandem. Maybe it has changed since USPA took over. I always thought the original standard was weird as I've been donked and crashed into by more than one video person with no ratings at all . . . NickD

There are two versions of "Fandango." The shorter version is called, "Proof." NickD

Not a favorite, but one I'll always remember. PV21 or Papa Victor 21 . . . Perris Valley 21, rest in peace bros . . . NickD BASE 194

You can hook a T-10. I've done it, it's a big lazy swoop in slow motion. The phrase "hook turn"and people getting grounded for it, is in use long before squares . . . NickD

I'll stand by my comment that "Joltin Joe" was lucky. Whatever occured after the fact is one thing, but there was one first night when he pulled back the covers and thought, "Yikes!" NickD

Hi Everyone, My hat is in the ring as candidate for the new editor of PARACHUTIST magazine. I'm letting you all know as a courtesy so you can write to USPA and voice your opinion. If you think I'd be a good choice please tell them, if you think it would lead to the end of skydiving as we know it, tell them that too . . . I won't go into a big thing on how I know I can make PARACHUTIST something we could all look forward to reading again. That's for those of you who know me to decide, but in any case, please write them and give USPA a nudge in one direction or the other . . . NickD

I just had an interesting exchange via e-mail with a jumper who read me the riot act. They said "freedom" is the point of skydiving and everything else be damned, and I understand that, but there's this . . . Freedom and Skydiving . . . It's always amazes me (I'm not talking about you) that most who espouse "freedom" in skydiving, whatever the cost, are the ones who are all booty and helmeted up and sporting every battery operated gizmo there is . . . Freedom doesn't really have anything to do with skydiving anymore. It's the reason so many of us went to, okay, we can call it the "dark side" but it really isn't, it’s the free side. It's the freedom to choose when, where, and how without political influences. The good feeling I get making three jumps at the DZ by AFF-ing a couple of levels, making a tandem, and putting someone through water training is just as easily achieved by sleeping in, drinking all day, and busting one off our local tower later that night. Actually, it's much better, if freedom is the entire point. There's no way to regulate if you don't know the full meaning of freedom. Without that, you'll only know one trick. And that trick is all about pushing without knowing when to pull back . . . NickD

Joe DiMaggio, one lucky SOB . . . Oh, and he was a baseball player too! NickD

In general I would agree Johnny does have some responsibility, and the court would certainly consider that, but skydiving isn't a "general" thing. We all know jumpers who seem to "get it" right away and also those who make one bad decision after another. There isn't much of a safety net for the latter. If I walked out of the courtroom after being sued by Johnny's family completely vindicated I would still feel like I lost the "real" case because Johnny is dead . . . Start skydiving today and it's a confusing lot of gear, advice, and methods. It's much harder to fathom the signal from the noise than when I started. Couple this with the fact I think of jumpers as being in two categories. There's old Joe who's been jumping for twenty years and there's Johnny who's been at it for two years. If old Joe craters, oh well, he was a great guy, we have a few beers, and move on. If Johnny digs himself a hole, I won't be drinking, or sleeping much that night, because I know deep down that we, the system, or whatever you want to call it, failed him. As someone already mentioned Instructors and S&TAs have been defanged. I remember when any Instructor, even any Jumpmaster, could ground someone for thirty days with no questions asked. If DZO's won't trust their Instructors with that power, how the hell do they trust them with the first jump students? When was the last time you even remember seeing a warning board? Sometimes it dawns on me that our students are more like guests now, and the up jumpers are merely tolerated and used as a draw and to put on a show for the guests. I'm not anti-business, I like money, and I like having lot's of it. However, we are going to have to realize that a DZO's job is to keep the DZ in the black, while Instructors are charged with keeping their charges out of the black. We are going to have to find a new way to differentiate those things. Too many fatalities are accepted and forgotten because there is no piper to pay. We've grown to forget that death "isn't" a necessary part of this sport. There are lot more jumpers walking around who had full careers and retired than ones who've died. The problem is one of balance. Give me the power and in a year I'm pretty sure I could almost snub out all fatalities. Send me your jump plan, your history, tell me about your gear, and then give me a year or so to get back to you as I'm pretty backed up. But, then it wouldn't be skydiving anymore. There's a middle ground in there somewhere. And we have to find it. What scares me the most is, to my eyes, it doesn't seem like anyone is even looking for it . . . NickD

http://www.deadoraliveinfo.com/dead.nsf/knames-nf/Kittinger+Joe I went to check as I hadn't heard he had died. The above site says he's alive and 77 years old. Maybe you're thinking of Nick Piantanida who was trying the same type of jump in the 1960s when, on the way up, his facemask blew out at 57,000 feet . . . The reason you may not hear much about Kittinger's use of a drogue is that while he claims the world's highest freefall, if you use a drogue it's not really a freefall. Some references still call it a freefall, but I notice others have changed that and just call it the world's highest parachute jump. I won't take anything away from what he did as it was a hairball thing to do, but one time he remarked, "BASE jumping is nothing but a stupid stunt," and he struck me as a cranky old guy who's been milking a past glory. I can say that as I'm well on my way to being the same thing . . . I believe the current "real" highest freefall record belongs to a Russian at 83,523.62 feet with a 3000 foot opening. Cheryl Stearns wants to beat that record by going to 100,000 feet and she's been working on the project for a while now. There was also a project back in the 80s called "Ten Miles High" but that never gained enough financial support. I wish Cheryl luck, but watching her unintentionally go ass over teakettle at Bridge Day is a picture I can’t get out of my head . . . NickD

I haven't looked too hard at the numbers, but I'd bet if we removed all the recent canopy deaths we'd be in the midst of the safest period this sport has ever seen. Here's what I think will happen eventually . . . Even though I worry about it sometimes I'm halfway sure the FAA won't do anything. To them the number of skydiving deaths probably seems fairly constant. We replaced hitting the ground in freefall with hitting the ground under canopy and they probably don't see that distinction. No, it won't be the FAA, it's going to be mom and dad or the wife and kiddies. The skydiving community is fractured with some believing swooping is cool and teachable to the masses. There's another part of the sport that believes the whole idea may be viable for some, but not all, and in any case it's certainly not worth the huge cost to life and limb. One day young Johnny Jumper is going to walk into some retail gear outlet, throw down his credit card, and purchase a canopy beyond his abilities. After a few jumps Johnny is getting the hang of it before one day getting himself too deep in the corner and Johnny dies. Waiver be damned Johnny's family sues everybody. They file against the DZ, the retail gear outfit, the pilot, the aircraft, canopy, and rig manufacturers, every instructor Johnny ever had, and the USPA. Now, how hard do you think it would be for a lawyer to find a very experienced skydiver, as a paid expert witness, who could tell the court what's going on in the sport right now, in their expert opinion, is criminal negligence bordering on manslaughter. Don't scoff, this person could very well think they are doing the right and responsible thing. The defense argument that twenty year old Johnny, who had 200 jumps and two years in the sport, was an adult who knew what he was doing is going to go right out the window. It's not going to be hard to show that someone, maybe even everyone, along the line let Johnny down. With large color photos of a smiling Johnny at his sixth birthday party wearing a cute little cowboy hat festooning the courtroom, such an expert witness could send a jury into deliberations thinking not only is someone going to pay big money, a few are probably going to jail. NickD BASE 194

Hank taught me what an "elbow" is . . . My nose still hurts occasionally, and damn, that was twenty five years ago . . . NickD

>>It also Doesn't really sound like your feeling to guilty about it..........

Self teaching is something worth talking about as it's a foundation of BASE. It's the part of BASE jumping that makes it BASE jumping. Look, we didn't really know what we were doing back in the day, and it's hard to reconcile (with the signal to noise) that things are any better now. The difference is, because of the internet, there's a standing "how to" book to be read and understood by anyone discriminating and smart enough to know bullshit from the other stuff. What I mean is you're better off being self taught in the 00s than you'd be in the 80s. The day I meet someone who is self taught and doing alright, and I start disparaging them, is the day I take up bowling and seriously start working on my hook . . . NickD

There's a vid around from when Will Oxx did Baffin back when Red Bull was still 15 years away . . . I suppose that's how long it takes piss takes to ferment . . . and be swallowable . . . NickD

This afternoon I was about to head out and get some ribs for lunch when a visiting jumper called me on the phone. This person was in town for JFTC and had a flight out of San Diego this afternoon. I told this person we could certainly have a lunch and a look at a very jumpable building for later on that night. However, it turned out the flight out was well before then and as we stood on the corner looking at a perfectly overhung 40-story building this person said, "Why not right now?" I can't name the person as they are on the BASE list with an *. Now, I'm certainly not a fan of day blazing and I said so, but this person remarked it's only day blazing if you are caught. The next thing I know I'm standing by the rental car as this person walked right through the construction gate, passed a bunch of people that should have been paying attention, but weren't, and up they went. I've been in San Diego for thirty years and I've never seen, or done, a BASE jump here during the day. Well, I can't say that anymore as after a good launch and a good opening I drove around and picked up this person after a perfect landing in a very small LZ. It's about 2-hours later now and nobody seems the wiser. Here's what I learned from all this. Jump right after lunch as everyone is too full of food to look up . . . NickD

>>The only thing we learn is that we never learn...

>>One guy with over 100 jumps didn't know how to assemble his 3 rings.

Tom is right, however . . . We can take the safe road and say all prospective BASE jumpers should go a certain route, and I think that's what we are doing as a community, but I grew up in a day when people with four BASE jumps "did" teach others to BASE jump and it worked most of the time. I know it's hard to imagine now, but there is a time when someone with twenty jumps is considered a god. In those days, when no one yet had more than a hundred BASE jumps, it was the only way to go about it. From the beginning BASE jumping has been for the most curious, the most self reliant, and the most "out there" among us. The real dilemma is there are as many new pitfalls stemming from spoon feeding BASE to people as there is in any other way of learning it. NickD

It's funny how many times I post after Tom to say, "Tom is right, however . . ." Don't too quickly discount the older BASE jumpers found limping around on most drop zones. New guys know new stuff, old guys know everything. Sure, you want to be mentored by the most current and up-to-date people, but you also want to make the connection with the entire BASE community and sooner or later that means the guys Tom is telling you to avoid . . . I remember one day in Perris when BASE was still a bit of a secret and connecting with BASE jumpers is much harder than today. I was walking to the plane with an AFF student and there was this guy standing in the loading area wearing a tee-shirt that said, "I Want To BASE, for God Sakes, Someone Please Help Me." You can bet after I landed I went and found that guy and I'm happy to say that person went on to make a lot more BASE jumps than I'll ever accomplish . . . NickD