NickDG

http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.html?topic_id=72639&f=0&b=0 NickD BASE 194

In my tongue in cheek opinion. There is nothing inherently (dangerously) wrong with currently manufactured BASE canopies . . . There is something inherently (dangerously) wrong with currently manufactured BASE jumpers . . . NickD

I've know Martin (he likes it written that way) for 15 years, and you are right, you can't go wrong . . . NickD

I'm not a climber, but I think people who jump a lot of cliffs should carry something they can use to secure their position if they get hung up. Maybe a "nut" type thing that can be jammed in a crack or ?. Jumping towers I'd always carry a carabineer in case I flew back into it, injured myself, and needed to "hook in." I'm thinking of #40 Terry Forrestal, who I believe fell asleep or passed out, waiting for rescue and then fell off the ledge he was on. NickD

>>along with the little wooden guy that we used to show body position

A slight poke at the USPA . . . NickD BASE 194

Calling me just a BASE jumper is wrong too, and kind of proves the point. I make BASE jumps for fun and for money. I make skydives for fun and for money. So when someone asks what I do the only term that covers it all is the old fashioned one, "Parachutist." BTW, I sign with my real name and BASE number because I've been doing that since going on line in 1985 and it's how people know me. I wish everyone did that as most times I don’t know who I'm talking with. For instance, I just realized " skybytch" is someone I've known for years, LOL . . . Hi Lisa! NickD

I've seen cases where people who sell gear call something "crap" simply because they don't get a good enough price break on them, LOL . . . NickD

Yes, Amigos are still available, I did some of the first live test jumps, intentional cutaways and high speed deployments, on them for Free Flight . . . and while Free Flight didn't put much into marketing them they were good canopies that later became the plane form and inspiration for another now famous canopy I won't mention . . . NickD

I think it’s important to note (for the newer jumpers) that while many square reserves have suffered damage during deployment I recall only one jumper killed in this fashion. I've forgotten his name, and the exact circumstances, but it was at Elsinore, some years ago. He was a rather large fellow getting re-current on brand new gear that was way too small for him. The chance a correctly sized square reserve that has passed a rigger's inspection suffering a catastrophic failure (one that kills you), during a normal deployment, is too low to worry about. NickD

Hi Punky, You need a mentor. Finding the right one is hard sometimes, but keep trying. This mentor needs to be someone who'll keep you safe while letting you explore the sport on your own terms. Too many use the cookie cutter approach to training when the reality is everyone has different needs. Something I've done when people have a door issue, and there are many, is take them to a DZ with a smaller plane. I'd arrange it so it's just you, me, and the pilot in the plane. We'd spend the time on the way up letting you operate the door, and just sitting there next to it when it's open. It's sometimes easier to get used to that, when it's not just those few seconds before exit. Anyway, don’t give up and keep looking for someone more nurturing. They are out there . . . NickD

Or, Buckeye . . . I spent a year there one month . . . NickD

Sitting around with a sore nut sack . . . And now I know what they mean by, "where it hurts . . ." NickD

Food For Thought . . . Moe, Lane and I are sitting on the Pet Rock once when I said, "You know something, this here is really a building." How's that?" Moe asked. "Because Carl Boenish said "E's" are natural formations. This thing, being what it is, is really man made." "Well," Moe replied," if we go with that, there's a bunch of people running around with bogus BASE numbers." "Yeah, but," Lane added, "that means I have a hundred more building jumps than I thought . . ." NickD

>> I would hope that new students coming over from skydiving like myself would open a basic physics book and at least learn how to make some calculations.>> newtonian motion and fluid/thermo dynamics. I would feel comfortable recommending that, because by the end of the summer I will be standing atop an object next to a person that will hopefully understand it.

Okay, it's working okay now . . . Nick

>>it seems rather scewed compared to most of the jumping I see/hear about.

>>deciding whether or not to take on a protege. I'd have expectations of my student, for sure, but I'd have expectations of myself as well.

Hey Jaap, I can't open the E-mail you just sent, and also some others, as the I keep getting timed out. I tried the usual like deleting the cookies and logging back in, but no go . . . Didn't want you to think I was ignoring you NickD

The book I'm working on won't make much sense to wuffos. When I started it I made a conscious decision not to go for cross-over appeal. The goals of the book are too preserve our history for future generations of BASE jumpers, to allow Para-historians to track how we went from living breathing sacks of potatoes to the competent flyers some of us are, and to ensure our place in history as legitimate contributors to humankind's age old dream of flight. I doubt you'll ever see it on the shelves down at Barnes & Noble . . . On the subject of what Jaap mentioned about my story of homemade BASE rigs, you have to put in context of the times. The first issue of my BASE magazine in 1989 had an article like that and it reflected what people are doing. Before there were real BASE gear manufacturers people are tearing containers off existing skydiving rigs leaving only the harness. They would then have a local skydiving rigger, or in some cases do it themselves, build a simple Velcro closed container and attach it to the harness. Some of these people actually became the BASE industry we have today. This is a time when nobody thought there would ever be a BASE gear industry and I know several BASE jumpers who built complete rigs themselves with no prior rigging experience. The point of my original story was the same as my point has always been; get as much information out to jumpers as possible. I know out in Arizona Ritchie S. and J.D.W. are actually hand sewing rigs together when neither had, or knew how to operate, a sewing machine. I think the article was called, "The BASEment Rigger . . ." and again it merely reflected what was going on at the time. Todd got mad at me as he was just starting T&T rigging (what would years later become Basic Research) and while he was right on the a practical level he was wrong on a historical level. I'll upload the piece here if you want as long as you guys read it with all the above in mind. To me the fact jumpers wanted BASE jumping so bad they resorted to hand sewing their own BASE rigs together told me we were on to something. That BASE jumping wasn't just the passing fad so many of our distracters said it was. In those days I called it, "having the BASE fire in your belly," and now, all these years later, that fire still burns . . . NickD

I'm having probs too. I have e-mail I can't open. I keep getting timed out. I tried all the usual, deleting the cookies, logging back in and such . . . NickD BASE 194

Now, that's a book! LOL, that's killer, Japp! NickD

The Rise and Fall of Everything.com . . . In the late 1989 there is a nationwide BBS called GEnie where the first public jumping discussion boards are set up. I was the Sysop (a Mod today) of the BASE section and we rejoiced in our ability to communicate and instantly began sharing information, having fun, and building relationships that last to this day. The interface was command line driven and most struggled at first but we learned from each other and slowly the community grew from just a handful to where almost all areas of the country are represented. For the very first time a line-over off a Florida tower is instant news in California. Safety was the biggest benefit. Many a post began with the title, "Hey, Don’t Do This," as BASE jumpers are experimenting and more often finding the wrong ways first. There was even a young fellow named Tom Aiello lurking around those boards. This community of brothers (I don’t recall any woman BASE jumpers online at that time) hummed along very nicely until America Online rolled out their graphical interface in about 1993. A new point and click generation came online and things changed. Okay, sure times change, but the vitriolic words being spewed here have nothing to do with changing times. It has only to do with small minds trying to decide who the real men are when real men keep those things mostly to themselves. GEnie, like all places on the internet, ran its course and died. And it all started with a small flame war no one noticed until it was too late. Unless you guys get a grip on yourselves it is going to happen here too. One day, and one by one the Moderators will have had enough and start to leave and that will be the beginning of the end. I know we'll never get back to those earlier times, and I realize we speak and think in a language that spans more than one generation, but like Janis used to sing we could all, "Try a little bit harder . . ." NickD

>>Hmmm, has there EVER been any canopies with an even number of cells made and/or tested, such as a 6 cell, 8 cell or 10 cell? If not, why not? Just curious...

Hi Larry, Take heart, Brother. The same thing that happened to you (and us) will happen to them. Here's an edited version of something I wrote a while back . . . One night about ten years ago I'm at a raging party in the Perris Ghetto and I'm wandering from group to group until sitting in with some Perris old-timers and they are railing on free flyers. And oh, how we laughed. We guffawed at the clothes they wore, especially the hats, you know the kind only your old Uncle Charlie wore, and we mocked the lingo, "they should call themselves the sick dope bombs," one said, and we rolled on the floor laughing . . . I mentioned seeing young Fritz (or was it the other guy, I couldn't tell them apart) sitting at a table in the Bombshelter. He'd gathered all the salt, pepper, mustard, and ketchup containers, and he is arranging, and then re-arranging them on the table and he is sooooo serious. We rolled on the floor laughing some more, the poor saps, my God, it must hurt to be so young . . . But, after a while I stopped laughing. It hit me all of a sudden that we are about to be paid back for something that happened four decades ago in skydiving. These very old-timers I'm with are some of the ones who invaded skydiving back then, and literally reinvented the sport with their long hair hippie ways and RW while shocking the Straights who practiced mostly style and accuracy. Relative Work is the new thing. And it's hard to take for the Straights, as many of them still held that exiting more than one jumper on a pass is dangerous, some of these guys came up when that practice was outlawed. Now with the advent of Atmonauti (a slightly different take on free flying) we see the first small signs of resistance to change in the free fly community. "Who are these guys," they are asking, "and why are they changing things?" Well, here's a tip my young brothers, resistance is futile. Someday, about ten years from now, Fritz and a bunch of free fly old-timers will be at a raging party in the Perris Ghetto and they'll be rolling on the floor laughing. But their laughter will only serve to obscure the freight train that's coming right at them . . . NickD