NickDG

>>She has stated time and time again that many people could learn much by getting trampoline or direct gymnast coaching... Just fyi.

>>but back in the 70's....Rich Piccirrilli and Sylvia Lindgren were jumping from a hanglider. Took place in Elsinore.

I did a small seminar, part of a bigger FAA thing, for CFIs in my area after mine (a WW II fighter pilot) told me to stay 1500-feet above those little parachute symbols because, "those parashooters jump from 800-feet." It might not be a bad idea to send info to local flight schools in your area, maybe with something they could post on a bulletin board. You might even gain a student or two . . . NickD

Besides trying the upboard advice, an occasional slammer is a fact of life when dealing with parachutes in any configuration . . . NickD

LOL, that was my first thought too, but I thought he deserved better. There have been a few blind skydivers. We had a guy at Elsinore that did pretty well on his own using radios and lot's of support. His landings were always a bit rough though. I think potato BASE, in a limited fashion, would be easier for him than skydiving. He'd also get more out of it as BASE jumping is more of a tactile experience. The trap door feeling, the onset of the rushing wind, the slower opening sequence are all things he might appreciate and enjoy. He'd also have more control in certain ways if you look at it like this: One potato, two potato, three potato, GO! One potato, two potato, three potato, THROW! After a few jumps he'd also probably be able to know, just by timing, when he was about to land in the water. Think about it. Most people's first BASE jump is a big blur anyway. Take the ground landing out of the equation and what's stopping him? Besides, after getting to know Russel, I know anything is possible . . . NickD

Hi Tom, Any slots still open . . . ? http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/OtherSports/2005/04/22/1008525-ap.html NickD

Very cool. I started in 1975 too, and have all the same issues. I remember a letter PARACHUTIST received after printing the October '75 issue riling at them for putting a military jumper on the cover. It was a different world back then. It's funny how we never find the center of things. The total anti-military attitude was wrong then, just as the total pro-military view is wrong now . . . NickD

https://quill.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/mer_uldl/ops/cgi/att.pl/attachments/1114050279_5705-1_dd_enhanced_456.gif NickD BASE 194

>>The secret of our pioneering success with these low objects

Five seventy has it right . . . NickD

In 1989 Bill Ottley invited me to Washington. He's a fan of the Fixed Object Journal, the BASE magazine I was doing, and he wanted me to be the next editor of PARACHUTIST. He picked me up at the airport in a too flamboyant old Cadillac convertible and gave me the rube's tour. By the time we passed the 600-foot Washington Monument I'm sitting on the leading edge of the trunk when Bill says, "Don’t even think about it." He owns a nice four story brownstone and there's an elevator and four apartments. I meet the neighbors, all young single male stockbrokers. We drink and watch the BASE video he asked me to bring. We talked about a lot of things. And I asked him how he did it? When I first joined the USPA in 1975 they didn't know where the money for the next meeting was going to come from. In just a few years after taking over the Exec Dir position the USPA is now worth about 3 million in cash and real estate. "I've a Harvard MBA," he told me, "President Bush (the older one) was my classmate and all my friends are in power now. I can do anything I want." I slept fitfully that night . . . The next morning I arrived at USPA headquarters in Alexandria. Bill's office is adorned with pictures the biggest is a three foot by four foot shot of his El Cap launch, a jump he did during the short legal season. I mentioned thanks for leaving us flapping in the wind, but he countered with that was the board's decision. PARACHUTIST was still done in cut and paste style and one of my duties would be to move it to computers. He offered me thirty five thousand a year and I asked for forty. He countered with 38 thousand and I turned him down. When he asked why, I told him PARACHUTIST is a house organ and an ad well. If the XYZ canopy company comes out with piece of crap we have to say so before the AD comes out, no matter how much they advertise. That was the deal breaker. He showed me the books; he showed my how much PARACHUTIST figured into the bottom line of the USPA. But, I turned him down again because between the time he invited me to interview and the time I got there, I was told I had cancer. I didn't want to be the shortest tenure editor in USPA history. As it turned out, it was the biggest mistake of my life, since I didn't die. And if anyone should ask me again . . . NickD

>>Hank Henry - Hank was also a Marine, but I met him in his off-duty hours.

Todd, and his brother Troy, and I are already BASE jumping for a couple of years before I first met G.B.s Simon P. Jakeman. In America, at that time, all effort is in going lower and lower. I remember Todd saying one night about Brits, "They are light years ahead of us . . . " NickD

>>I think more people would care more if it were World BASE,that way it dont only link to 1 nation

>>i couldnt be bothered sending off for a number on a bit of paper.

>> a guy who cut away from his main for fun and had a reserve mal.

There was a time when the best advice for getting into BASE was standing in the loading area at [enter big DZ here] and whispering, "Psst . . . BASE jump . . . anybody BASE jump . . . Psst . . . ?" It's better now. NickD

Here's my Wild A$$ Guess . . . Looking at an "un-official" BASE number list there are probably around a dozen of the first 200 BASE awardees still BASE jumping. And if they are anything like me they are holding on to the sport by their fingertips. The reasons are varied, but the idea, "that people are just going for a number" doesn't ring true to me. A few may have done it, but in general a BASE number (especially in the old days) was too hard to achieve for it to be done on a lark. Really, how many BASE jumpers have you met, then or even now, with a BASE number and just four BASE jumps? BASE numbers 1 thru 200 are issued between 1981 and 1988. People who began BASE jumping back then tended to already be fairly experienced jumpers with substantial time on the drop zone. The majority of those people are now in their fifties and sixties and hucking into old age isn't easy . . . I didn't meet my first teenage BASE jumper until 1989 or 90. In the 200 to 300 BASE numbers bracket the level of active BASE jumpers goes way up, and so do the rest of the numbers, and each by a greater magnitude. In the 80s we used to talk about the coming explosion in BASE popularity and what it would look like. We all thought the explosion was always right around the corner and not, as it turned out, 10 to 15 years away. BASE numbers are a good indicator of general BASE activity and it's not until the year 2000, as the numbers passed 550, the real explosion came. What made the explosion possible in the first place? Some say the gear got better, others that our knowledge and skill improved, but I think the most important difference in BASE then and now is the number of accessible sites. It's now possible to be current on a level impossible before the mid-nineties. To a lesser extent it was the gear too. I remember my first 70 BASE jumps as experiments as on every jump I was trying something new to me. The line-mod, the tail-pocket, different types of toggles, canopies and rigs all came along faster than I could jump. Gear has somewhat stabilized since then and one can do hundreds of BASE jumps with the same configuration. That's a point of comfort I've never experienced. At least not yet . . . NickD

I created much of the print advertising for Rigging Innovations in the early 90s and a lot of that was for the "new" Flexon. R.I. has always built good rigs, and at the time the Flexon was "the" hot rig, at least on the west coast. They used a new fabric for the Flexon container called Amptron. It was a slick and smooth fabric that looked good. Sandy Reid (head of R.I.) liked to joke the main selling point of Amptron was if you spilled beer on a Flexon it would bead up rather than soak in. Flexons were also some of the first modern articulated rigs and one of the first to forgo Velcro. They had some trouble with tuck tabs at first, but the later rigs were better. I don’t remember the BOC arrangement, but a master rigger could modernize that for you. Call R.I., with the serial number, for any outstanding Service Bulletins but if the rig is currently airworthy there shouldn't be any nasty surprises . . . NickD

This photo (in high contrast) was taken when we called every back country cliff "Freedom Canyon." You decide, but that looks like a pilot chute to me . . . NickD

At a long ago Bridge Day a group of us guys are watching Hanna launch a floater off the rail. After she opened someone said as a matter of fact and to no one in particular, "Have you ever met a female BASE jumper you didn't like?" No one replied, but everyone is smiling . . . BASE jumping "does" get you women. It got us Hanna, Amy, Anne, Marta, Karin, Karen, and all the rest. And we are all richer from having made their acquaintance . . . NickD

The "best foot forward" idea was discounted years ago in skydiving. Drop zones have been pro-active in dealing with the media since the early 80's when PARACHUTIST began running articles on the subject. However, skydivers are still misunderstood by the media and they have more access issues than ever. In fact, you can say over the years the best thing for the image of skydiving was the advent of BASE jumping. In articles about BASE jumping, where skydiving is cited as a way to explain it, skydiving comes off like the more sane activity. Something I think lost on more recent BASE jumpers is the fact we thumbed our noses at authority a long time ago. It's a founding principal of our sport. As soon as we bargain for access we must make promises in return, promises no single BASE jumper has the right to make on behalf of the rest of us. I can't help but get the feeling that because some don't favor illegal jumps they're looking to change the very nature of the sport. Jean Boenish (without Carl to guide her) tried to impose "her own" ideas of what BASE jumping should be and finally she left the sport frustrated. Will the day come when an illegal BASE jump gone wrong in Nevada reflects negatively on our year round access at Bridge Day? Will that Nevada jumper be ostracized by the BASE community? When that days comes shut the lights and lock the door as BASE jumping as we know it is finished. The organization of Bridge Day is the best it's ever been. The people who do that organizing are referred to as "leaders of the sport" by the media. But the truth is they aren't, no one is. I'm really not the rabble rouser I sound like here and I'm willing to play ball up to a point. But we pass that point by hiding the truth. Something unseen is the amount of contact I've gotten over the years from people outside the sport. People who say they understand more about BASE then before. These people get more from the List than the distracters who see it only as the "death list." The List shows our human side, it shows we care about our past, and it shows we mourn our losses. The only way BASE jumpers would ever get the media into their corner is the same way the government has done it. We have to get our buddies to start purchasing media empires. If Jason asked me to remove the List while he was trying to purchase FOX news I might accommodate him . . . The BASE Fatality List will stay up as long as I can manage it. When the time comes when I can't do it anymore I will pass the job onto someone who'll promise to do the same. To those who don't like it I say find a way to use it to your advantage. NickD

In about 1993 Moe Viletto and I stopped by RWS just to say a quick hello. Bill Booth was a subscriber to the BASE magazine I used to publish back then and he graciously gave us a tour himself. We went through all the departments, but like most people the thing you'll remember is the tensile tester. After loading a piece of Type 7 into the machine Bill put a load on it and then opened the case. We each flicked a finger at the webbing and it felt just like a piece of steel. After closing the case Bill pulled the webbing to destruction and THAT was impressive. The highlight however was Bill taking Moe for a flight in his personal aircraft, a Lake Amphibian. We they returned Moe said Bill gave him an aerial tour of all the local radio towers we were hoping to jump. Over the years I've met most of the major manufactures, Le Blanc, Sherman, Strong, and Galloway, etc., and they are all great guys but Bill Booth is special. Anyone who purchased Bill's new Wonderhog in the 1970s experienced a sea change in skydiving rigs. His bringing the throw out pilot chute and Three Ring release to the sport is still probably the biggest innovation I've seen in skydiving gear. He dosen't get enough credit for that today as you needed to be in the sport before that time to truly appreciate the significance of the Wonderhog. Oh, and we saw the Fur lined diamond studded Vector too . . . NickD

Hey, I'm sitting up . . . let's see if I can type. In 1981 Carl Boenish said this: "Some are calling it fixed object jumping. Probably fifty or more bridge jumps have been made, over four hundred cliff jumps, and maybe another fifty tower jumps, and now, six building jumps. There have also been a couple of building jumps in the prior five years. We have established an award for the fixed object jumper. It is called the BASE award. The term BASE is an acronym derived from "Building," "Antenna tower, " "Span," and "Earth" (any natural formation). Any fixed object jump should fit into one of those categories. Any person who makes at least one jump from each of the four categories receives a BASE number. To date, there have been four numbers issued. BASE 1 – Phil Smith, BASE 2 – Phil Mayfield, BASE 3 – Jean Boenish, BASE 4 – Carl Boenish. I think we will issue 100 to 200 numbers in the first three years." Carl is a bit optimistic as by 1984 the BASE numbers hadn't yet broken one hundred. BASE number two hundred isn't issued until 1988. He can be forgiven as up to that point BASE jumping had been going pretty good. Carl at the time knew it was dangerous, of course, but it was the generation after Carl passed away that found out how dangerous. Congratulations Matt, I can't tell you how stoked I am we reached that number, and of course, for you earning it. All our experiences are slightly different, but we all share that first building, that first tower, that first cliff, and that first bridge. We've all felt the same doubts and fears, the same exhalations and happiness. We are still what Carl wanted us to be, a small band of Brothers . . . NickD

Hi All, This is Julia, Nick's girlfriend. Nick had his surgery and is now back home. His prognosis is good. All his scans initially show no other cancer anywhere in his body. However, this is subject to a further radiologist's review. Nick wanted me to thank everyone who wrote and called. Your thoughts and caring helped carry him through. Julia