NickDG

We had a DZ in an orange grove up in Ramona and we'd hook T-10s into it . . . Sometimes with the risers but mostly making the turn toggolish somwheres before the corner. Going faster always means landing better. The first time I landed a Cruislite off the top of stack I wished canopies landed like that all the time. And yes, I think it was "86 or so for Dale. . . NickD

Yes, Dale . . . I suppose it was the late 80s when Debbie Blackmon is running Elsinore. NickD

Sometimes I see an errant word, a wrongly placed thought, or even a comma in the wrong place days later in something I've posted. Why can't I edit forever? There's probably a good technical reason, but for those of us it matters to, and if we accept the things we write here could be available forever, it's kind of important . . . NickD

Yes, suddenly becoming deaf would be a biggie, but your entire body is capable of discerning the vibrations of sound. It's your brain that hears music, not your ears. Placing yourself in proximity to a really good Rock Band would still have you grooving . . . NickD

Think Beethoven, deaf as a stick . . . NickD

Oh please . . . and what do you call what we were doing hooking our Piglets in . . . LOL . . . The first dedicated swooper, who thought it was something new, was that R.I. freestyle fascist chick at Lake Elsinore, I'm actually glad I can't remember her name. She jumped with Ray Cottingham a lot. She was the first person I ever head yell at a weekend jumper to get out of her way . . . NickD

David raises the better question. Since a dead person can do a tandem jump as a passenger I've never gotten the "oldest" thing at all. Oldest only has purchase if its static line or AFF . . . NickD

Dying young. But, now that I'm fifty, not so much anymore . . . When PV21 went in at Perris the song on the memorial video was, "Forever Young" and we all cried. Yet, I've been around long enough to know there is nothing noble in dying young. And its useless and silly to say, "they died doing what they loved and believed in," especially when its someone who's life is mostly in front of them. The real shame of dying young is the future lost, the loves, the laughs, and the good times that are not only gone, they never happened at all . . . NickD

I always four line my canopy, cock my pilot chute, and set my brakes before laying the gear down for someone else to pack. I can deal with anything that happens after that . . . NickD

I once wrote that Yosemite is a special place for BASE jumpers, its the birthplace of our sport, and the place that fired our imaginations. I think we have as much of a "traditional" right of access there as anyone from an historical perspective. The one bright spot in the below article is the Ranger who says, "Everyone wants their cut of the pie," and, "other users have just as much legitimacy." Well, I just want a small piece of that pie. I'll enter the park, I'll hike, I'll jump, and I'll leave. I don't want to camp there overnight, I don't need the adulation, support and ego boost of a like minded community around me, I just want to jump . . . The culture of BASE jumping exists outside the confines of any single place or object. Yosemite will never become the Mecca of BASE jumping, like it is for climbing, but it will always be our Plymouth Rock. I try always not to use anyone else's park access as an excuse for our own, but I'm going to do it now. It is very obvious that so many Park Rangers being climbers, or at least having climbing backgrounds, is the only reason climbing is even tolerated there at all. That's not democratic, it's nepotism. BASE jumpers, if allowed to police themselves, and operating within the confines the sport, would be a group that would have the least impact (no pun) on the park's resources, less than climbers, less than tourists, less than anyone. Years of government mismanagement is what we have now. On a busy summer weekend Yosemite is nothing more than a small city with a lot of trees. Until access is doled out in fair and equal shares between everyone with legitimate uses it will only get worse. So the question becomes what is a legitimate use? Use must be based on more then Yosemite is a beautiful place to do your thing. Can golfers argue they be allowed to play a few holes in the meadow? Could skeet shooters practice their sport there? Could an outdoor bowling alley be erected simply because it’s a beautiful setting to roll a few lines? No, there has to be something unique between the place and the thing you want to do. Sure, there are other cliffs in the USA, but I don't know why exactly I'm more comfortable launching from El Cap than almost any other site. I feel inexplicitly tied, like its everything I'm about, to that rock. It's very easy to throw up our hands as the situation seems hopeless. The ways things work in Yosemite are wrong, and these ways are entrenched. It's the reason the frustration of many jumpers can be so easily turned into direct action. A few years ago a handful of jumpers protested by jumping. Now, by my count, we have more than sixty willing to do the same. Next year it will be more, and the year after that even more. The momentum is in our favor, and I know sooner or later we will gain some form of limited access. It's already a fact I don't hang around after a jump, so limited access is fine with me The BASE community (for the most part) has grown up, and we deserve another look. When it is all said and done I foresee a day when Rangers still struggling with the same problems will point to us BASE jumpers and say, "Why can't you guys be more like them." NickD

Bank of America says they are serving you better by firing all their tellers (who were all part time employees anyway) closing all the real banks and going to kiosk type system and that's better for who? Imagine the next time you walk up to manifest and there's a machine . . . NickD

If we go with "not pre-inflated" then just draping it over the edge is a BASE jump. On wing suits not being BASE, well, there is a fine line somewhere out there when we'll cease being jumpers and start being aircraft. Felix's crossing the English channel with the hard wings came close to that. Is the fellow who pulls the ripcord on his parachute equipped Cirrus airplane a BASE jumper? Tom's right though, BASE is whatever it is to you. To me BASE is a bridge in the middle of nowhere, a few belly down delays, some beer, some girls, and a decent sunset . . . NickD

No, I didn't write that. Some of the thoughts and phrases are mine but the words are put together differently enough that I think they used some of my stuff for research. That's cool . . . NickD

I'm in the same boat as the fellow who likes his jeans. I brought a pair of Churchill body surfing fins to a skydiving tracking meet in the early 80s and when I asked if I could use them, I got a large collective groan from the group and, "Fly your body, man," was the general consensus . . . The collective history of wing suits goes back to the early 20th Century when barnstorming parachutists are trying new ways to get people to come see their acts. The problem of going too low was first experienced by these jumpers and they called it target fixation. Most of the "birdmen" of that time died wearing their wings. Granted the wings of old were sometimes wooden or metal braced and the parachuting gear was pretty complicated but still there was only one birdmen from that era that survived a full career of jumping the wings. It was so rare a feat they wrote a book about him. When wing suits made their comeback in modern times I couldn't help but think, okay, here we go again. Yet the first years of wing suit flying on the drop zone went pretty well and now there doesn't seem to be a problem with skydivers using them. It's probably because they pull high and don't get sucked in by the visuals unlike their barnstorming relatives. The first BASE wing suit fatality is in 2002 and since then six or seven more have occurred. Is this a learning curve we'll get over, or the beginning of some real problems? Sure, I marvel at BASE wing suit flight and I'm drawn to it, but I'll probably never try it myself as (and this is just me) it seems to violate a cardinal rule that demands BASE jumping be kept as simple as possible. In the old days we told new BASE jumpers they could follow others or be pioneers. This meant going to sites already jumped successfully instead of going around trying out new sites for the first time. In the same vein newer BASE jumpers should realize they never have to jump the wings, never have to do Tards or even aerials, and its okay to spend the day in your old jeans . . . NickD

>>I believe Carl Boenish originally defined a BASE jump as one which requires a canopy in a container

Sheesh . . . just dump the coach rating and go back to Jumpmasters. Being a Jumpmaster "was" the training ground for becoming eligible for the Instructor rating. The coach rating is now giving wholesale access to pre-A-licensed jumpers in order to learn a trade. Rational jumpmaster training is holding up the malfunction pictures in the hanging harness room and assisting in other aspects of the FJC with a seasoned Instructor. The Jumpmaster Certification Course (JCC) taken prior to becoming a Jumpmaster would explain twenty ways to kill your student, ten ways to kill yourself, and five ways to bring down the whole bleeping aircraft. Static line jumping is a no fooling around thing. You are chucking the gear as much as the student and you have to understand how both of them work. We need to stay true to the original intent, no matter how anyone spins it. All student instruction is to be under the direct supervision of an Instructor. That means as long as I'm kneeling behind her in a C-182 I can hand the static line to my mother and let her tap one out. The coach rating is adrift and subject to interpretation. Sometimes it looks to me, like a layer of insulation between DZ's and the courts. and/or another profit center, at worst it shows the people making the rules aren't allowing student training its due. We blew it on the canopy landing thing. But, it wasn't our fault, we all bought into the seven or eight AFF jumps and hello limbo land for students. And a student is anyone without an "A" license and it seems like we are shirking that duty. We need to remember this is a sport and not a business. I read Capitol Commentary in PARACHUTIST and feel like I've been to a board meeting . . . and need a drink. NickD

Totally, the problem is two canopy containers are so complicated their own account makes the reserve necessary. Every BASE jump is a cutaway . . . NickD

Just keep an old Javelin J-5 around. Almost everything fits in that . . . NickD

Jimbo is one of the coolest cats I've met in this sport . . . My Hit Parade: Jacque Istel Sparky, my FJC instructor Carl Boenish Jimbo NickD

>>"Hey Twardo...Let me pack up and I'll make one with ya!" Says D~1....

One cool thing about BASE jumping is we are always experimenting and probably will never get to a point when we aren't trying new things. We are still exploring all aspects of this sport and one of them, how to start BASE jumping, has always been in flux. From 1978 to the late 1980s BASE jumping instruction is passed freely from person to person. Most BASE jumpers of the period are already fairly experienced skydivers before they start BASE jumping. There is no question about skydiving before BASE jumping. However, Bridge Day is open to anyone who wants to jump, and there are several cases of people making a first ever jump there. The wisdom of the day said skydiving before BASE backed up by folks like Ritchie S., who made a hundred BASE jumps before his first skydive, and he told people not to learn like he did. There are a few people building BASE rigs and pilot chutes, but these are still home and garage based operations. In 1987 large pilot chutes and longer bridles are being heavily suggested at Bridge Day after Steve Gyrsting towed his skydiving pilot chute to impact. When 1990 rolled around there are a few people calling themselves BASE outfitters. In some cases these folks offered guided trips with BASE gear and instruction included. Keith Jones (now serving in Iraq, see the current issue of SKYDIVING) is an early outfitter and so was Moe Viletto. In the early nineties the garage riggers like the Todd, Adam, and Dennis became Basic Research, Consolidated Rigging, and Gravity Sports Ltd. For the first time Todd found himself selling BASE rigs, and now BASE canopies, to people he didn’t know. Adam worried about it saying BASE rigs are loaded guns and soon all three are offering some form of basic BASE jumping instruction. By 1995 large pilot chutes and longer bridles are mandatory at Bridge Day and fifty previous parachute jumps are required. In 1996 Bill Von wrote the definitive Bridge Day FAQ and its here http://www.afn.org/skydive/skydive/usenet/1996/aug/0520.html where he suggested 100 previous jumps were better. The BASE manufactures are using 150 before selling gear. In the late 90s the number starts to grow and 250 is heard a lot and some people are saying even more should be added. So now here we are still in the infancy of BASE jumping instruction and still experimenting. The stand alone BASE courses are still few and far between. I do believe that the better we get at teaching BASE the more we can shave off the previous jump number. When they started teaching the three-hour first jump skydiving static line course it was called dangerous and mad as every one knew you had to attend weeks of Army training in order to jump. When Ritchie said not to learn the way he did it was a different sport. I'm not saying I'm for Death Camp, but it could head closer to that if we taught BASE well enough. When Paragliding first appeared here in the United States I thought without skydiving experience those people aren't going to last long. I was thinking wuffos just flying around willy nilly. But, look at how good they got and all on their own. I think we are closer to growing our own then we've ever been. All we need is a sympathetic DZ to let us offer a pre-BASE skydiving course. A seamless one on one course from first skydive to first BASE jump and all with the same instructor. A Perris/Potato course of instruction would sell like hotcakes. . . "Hey Tom, another batch coming in on the noon plane, watch out for the loud kid and the old guy, but the rest are good to go." NickD

Why do I picture you hanging on to your rowboat for dear life as you get swooped by jet skis . . . Have fun! NickD

>>How dangerous is base really ???

Every skydive, no matter the type and from the very first one, will add to your air awareness. To get air aware you'll need to go from flailing, groping, blind man to flying, dexterous, focused man. And yes . . . giggle . . . even RW will help . . . NickD

Yes, until you know who's who and what's what on whatever drop zone you go to keep the desire to BASE jump to yourself. Think of it like your first lesson in BASE security and secret keeping. And, it's not for nothing. Chances are you'll have a non-BASE jumping skydiving Instructor who might lose enthusiasm after you mention, "I'm just getting this outta the way, so I can BASE jump!" In the meantime you can talk about BASE jumping here with us. You might even meet someone from a local crew on this forum before you know them on your DZ. Many have done what you are doing, and some find skydiving cool enough and never make a BASE jump, some put BASE off for years, and some make X number of skydives, take a BASE course, and never set foot on a DZ again. Point to Point, first skydive to first BASE jump, has always been variable depending on what sort you are and who you hook up with. If you haven't seen it yet, start educating yourself here. http://www.basefatalities.info/ You won't understand it all just yet, but sometimes in BASE jumping it's better to bring education to the experience rather than the other way around . . . NickD