TVPB

Brats & Ego's & Stuff. We know, because we were. And some of us still are. But we do not proclaim to know all. Only some things. It's just like flares and sideburns. It comes, it goes, and we always seem to be going in circles. Now, what stupid thing can I try next . . . . . . . . . Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

Here is my proxy vote too. Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

Regarding your comments on regulation, here are my thoughts. I am neither for or against it at an institutional / group / society level. HOWEVER, it should be, no it MUST BE absolutely mandatory on an individual level. Every jumper SHOULD regulate themselves. Not doing this is an utterly selfish, anti - societal act. Why? Look at the repercussions of when you go in. - your family loses one of their loved ones. As do your friends, colleagues, society, etc. - the sport has to endure another loss of one of it's breathren. - the people who are trying so hard to keep people safe are constantly being slapped in the face and their work is not being heeded or respected. - there are flow on affects related to the sports image. - we DO lose site access. This is real. It is like an endangered species being wiped out. It's great to look at the pictures and video's but NOTHING beats the real thing. Building demo's have been stopped a/c accidents, site access to well known jump areas has been made illegal and punishable, security has been increased immensely on many sites, etc, etc, etc. - the whole productivity of society is affected whenever someone dies. It takes time effort and money to replace some of the skills and experiences that many jumpers possess. It is one thing to make an attempt on Mt Everest and die in the pursuit of a goal that you have worked extremely hard for over a long period of time.It is another to make the decision and just go for it without the preparation. The first person commands some degree of respect, etc. The second is the type that makes the authorities make it harder for everyone else to get access to the Mountain. It is lazy, sloppy, unprofessional, selfish, etc. BASE is the same. Do the work, then do the jumps. Doing the work is what I am referring to when I talk about self - regulation. You are an adult capable of collecting information, opinion, etc, and making a reasonable decision based on that. You are also capable of doing the right thing (training, techniques, risk, equipment, etc). If you choose not to, you are not self-regulating. If you stuff up, and someone else stuff's up, and then someone else . . . . . . Finally the non-jumping parts of society will get the shits and introduce institutionalised regulation up to and including the level of banning the activity. Hence, it is in EVERYONE's interest if each BASE jumper regulates what they do. Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

Numbers are only relevant as a screening tool for people you have no idea about. They should NEVER be used as the only selection criteria for prospective BASE jumpers. There are people with 1000 jumps, no packing skills, no seven cell experience, no incidents that they have had to deal with, etc. There are people with 100 jumps who can pack their reserves, CRW, accuracy, cutaway, etc experience that would be more suited. How do you get into one of Tom Aiello's courses? Meet the multiple criteria that he has set. There are other places that only ask for numbers. Who has better risk management? I vote for Tom. What is crucially important in BASE jumping (and most other things in life) is a logical and controlled development of fundamental skills PRIOR TO - NOT DURING attempting higher risk activities. Roll, drag, crawl, walk, run, fly!!!!!! Don't run first!!!!! Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

The other factors (apart from site shutdown) that affect this lack of analysis: - people are concerned that family / friends will be grossly offended if their loved one was deemed to have made a mistake leading to their death. Hence they like to conclude that is was just plain bad luck and the person died what they loved doing. - on many occasions, there are insufficient or inadequate resources / skills available to truly determine root cause. The evidence may not be adequate for experts to analyse at a later date either. People involved or present will have blurred perceptions of what went on as they may be emotionally scarred by a friend / aquaintance loved one who has just been severaly injured or killed. - Many jumpers are concerned that their colleague will be branded a loser or failure too. So it is human nature to protect them. Individually, we don't all like to publically admit to our mistakes either. This may be seen as a weakness in our skill sets, which has a counter productive contribution to our ego's. The above is all opinion and is NOT necessarily true for everyone. The fact is that we are human and we do make mistakes. Whether we like to admit it or not, virtually all accidents are due in one way or another to human error. The sooner people recognise and accept this, the sooner they can adjust their behaviours and actions such that risk is reduced, skill is increased, and incident rates go down. It is also true to say that there are so many factors that could lead to an accident and that it is extremely difficult to think of and manage all of them, but if you nail the fundamentals, there is much less chance of the one off / "freaky" events occuring. The other thing that you may not have mentioned is that BASE jumpers as a group tend to be very sensitive about failure. By this I mean that many people in this sport become overly offended if someone says, "you messed up". Bad luck is often used as an answer to what is the root cause of an accident. Hence, any opportunity to analysis and improve is brushed away with this one attitude or comment. "You learn from your mistakes" is one of the most famous cliche's / sayings in history. Why? Because most people believe it and in most cases, it is true. If you don't beleive it, then you are more likely to continue making your mistakes or repeating the mistakes that others have made before you. From personal experience Nick, this attitude of yours just gets you unpopular!!!!!! I know. Because I am. But I am happy to say that there are several individuals that I have assisted in their development which I am truly proud of. It is true that they might think I am a pain in the arse, but they were open enough to understand why I have been saying and what you are saying. They will live longer and prosper. They will mroe that likely acheive at a higher level. There are others whom I have advised to alter their progression rates, attitudes, even participation in the sport - most have gone on to do their own thing because they did not take this advice on board. The end result has been fatalities, major incidents, permanent injury, premature retirement from the sport, etc. They were so focused on the final act / goal, that they lost site of the journey towards that goal. Giving this type of advice leads to ridicule / back stabbing / etc. But it is necessary. Because those that are intelligent enough to understand the underlying reasoning do take it on board, and they end up living and making positive contributions to the sport and society in general. Hence, we all have a choice. Learn, progress, achieve. OR Achieve (if you are lucky). Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

When to give you up? That is a tough one. It is very personal too. Here are a list of possible clues as to when you might consider alternative passions in your life: - you feel no fear / nervousness / respect / passion / etc on for any of your jumps. - your standards and attention to deal are diminshing. - you are losing touch with technology and modern techniques. - you happily accept that you could die participating but are not proactive about reducing the likelihood that it happens. i.e you let "shit happen" instead of making shit happen. - you are in the death spiral of increasing complexity for stagnating or reducing reward. - you become more scared than you have ever been and the fear is consuming you to the point where your control over the situation is no longer evident. - your currency level (frequency & quality of jumps) is diminshing. - you start to make more errors (have more incidents and accidents). - you got into the sport for the "wrong reasons' in the first place and you are not getting what you want out of it. - you have been personally involved in too many accidetns / deaths in the sport and it is having an adverse affect on your psyche. - you are getting older and logic tells you that you should reduce complexity but it does not give you the satisfaction that you desire. - etc. It is a personal choice. Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

Try Lake Wales - Florida. Or contact the USPA. There should be plenty of PD Lightnings around there too. Better to jump compatable CRW specific gear. Good Luck. http://ozcrw.tripod.com Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

Thank You For the time, effort, analysis, and publishing of the results. I would just like to add that this CAN happen to any one of us. An example which led to a different outcome was a staggered deployment 2 way where the first guy dropped the p/c as you described in your report. This led to a delayed opening immediately next to the second guy (hence no staggered opening as planned). A wrap resulted. The main saviour in this example was the fact that both persons knew what was happening and were prepared to deal with the results. These were two experienced jumpers. We must maintain as much diligence, vigilence, and focus as possible on EVERY jump. The rest of the time we can be mortal human beings. To err is to be human. Our job is to minimise the "erring". Condolences to all concerned. Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

More toggle turkeys welcomed to the flock. Nearly 20 first time students. 4 tutors. 13 PD Lightning Canopies. 3 days. The local parachuting club has ordered two new PD Lightnings, purchased two second hand PD Lightnings, and is likely to get a further two new sponsored PD Lightnings. This is serious commitment and serious fun. Thanks for the hospitality, commitment, willingness to learn, and the fun we had. Welcome to CRW. If anyone wants to go for a holiday to a great Drop Zone that is surrouded by some amazing tourist attractions in a relaxed atmosphere with wonderful people, go to the Darwin Parachute Club at Batchelor in Australia. They are having a boogie mid 2007. Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

Information is important Jaap. If there is nothing there, then newbies have nothing to BASE their decisions on. Reivention occurs. Fundamental repetition occurs. People make the same silly mistakes due to lack of information. This is not a good outcome / scenario. If there IS something there, they have the opportunity to use the information in a positive / productive / affective / safe manner. People can use the information in conjunction with coaching from qualified persons in a controlled learning environment. We have issues with the quality of some of our teachers. We have issues with the qualty of some of our students. This will always be an issue regardless of what you or I or anyone else produces. The bottom line is that they are adults and are responsible for their own actions. Do not remove the information. There are many people who will use it properly and it will benefit their lives and evolution in this sport. Those that do not use it properly will inevitably stuff up whether the info is there or not. Cater to those that are common sense, suitably motivated, and respectful of what they are doing. The others have both the opportunity and ability to derive the same benefits from your information. Don't deny the former. The latter have made decisions that you have NO control over. Keep up the good work. Tom Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

Nick You are just recording facts and anecdotes. You are not creating them. Keep up the good work. I for one, do appreciate your efforts. The young person you mention is showing obvious signs of fear and he does not appreciate the reality check. After all, this shit is supposed to be cool, not dangerous. And "if I don't know anything up front, I will have no time to worry about it as I am going in". Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

Great effort to Heather, Glen, Jimmy, and the whole team. Lots of time and hard work has gone into this adventure. Funny, it didn't seem that long ago that the tall skinny one was curious about some fat bloke jumping a suit at Picton. The circle has fully turned. Good stuff. Congrats. And yes, we are all jealous in a good way. Tom Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

Categorically YES. Your body is moving and it is displacing air molecules. This displacement induces turbulence / burble. As the body speeds up the burble magnitude becomes greater. At lower airspeeds there is less likelihood of p/c hessies because it is physically harder to place your pilot chute there and the forces are not as strong as in higher airspeed deployments. I think it is worse around the 2 to 5 second mark - at terminal anything in the airflow will catch air and initiate deployment (i.e. bridle). At lower airspeeds the force is less and hence a bridle may not have sufficient drag to initiate deployment. Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

Hand held - student/inexperienced initiates throwing motion - i.e. hand with p/c moves towards body and then away, at full extension away the p/c is released. I have seen an inexperienced jumper released when the hand was directed towards the body and the p/c ended up on the persons back. Net result was a hessie a/c p/c in burble. IT cleared with wild thrashing and resulted in off heading. No video. As I have said, anything is possible. Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

Just because you OR I have not seen it, it does no mean it has not happened. Lazy throws are common. Just as they are on CRW jumps, freefall jumps, accuracy jumps, etc. P/c gets caught on the back due to restrictions caused by packing errors and/or equipment configuration issues, OR, the most likely cause is placing the p/c into the burble on the back (lazy throw). Everything happens in this sport. Any scenario you can dream of has probably already occured!!! Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

Without knowing all the facts, I tend to agree with you. I have travelled a fair bit around that part of the world and most people describe paragliding as "jumping from a cliff". I don't know how many times I have been told of potential "jumping sites" and turned up to find a good launch point for paragliders - or a BASE site that resembles Homer Simpson's attempts at Springfield Gorge!!!! BTW - depending in the site, pg with a BASE canopy can be fun too. Just make sure you know what you are doing. Really know, not think you know. Anyway, I hope it is not triple digits. If/when we get there, I think the numbers will start to lose meaning. Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

Quite apart from all the b/s I just wrote: There is one thing I left out: We are human. To err is to be human. Enjoy more, err less. If at all possible. To gfd - it seems by the posts that you were a wonderfully entertaining, loving, caring, living, person. Thank you. To all her friends and family, live with her spirit and passion and fun. Share it with others. Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

Sad Days. It was not that long ago that number 1000 was handed out on the positive side of the ledger. I was more concerned at the time on who was getting number 100. Well here we are, almost. #99 has come far too quickly. Your thoughts have been around for a long while. The problem is that they interfere with the progress that many people desire. When those thoughts have been made public, rejection is often the response. r..e incident analysis. I think it is VERY IMPORTANT to understand the physics AND THE PSYCHOLOGY of incidents. Why should we look at other people and what they do / have done? And more importantly, why should we allow other people to look at us? For external perspective!!! Most of us are often so caught up in our own little worlds that we don't see the detail that may have an unwanted affect on the outcome of our actions. When we OPENLY evaluate what others have done, it gives us a physical basis to confirm or alter our actions. The psychological is VERY IMPORTANT. Much more than the physical to some extent. If we can understand why certain actions were undertaken and why some decisions were made, it allows us to control the basis of our own thoughts. We can make decisions based on prior experience instead of learning as we do. The classic cliche's that come to mind include: "you can't live long enough to make all the mistakes", learn from other's mistakes", etc. Thank goodness someone is listening. I've been trying to get that message across for a long while. A few things I'd like to add (again), whether people like to admit it ir not, there is a lot of detail that goes into each and every jump. This detail changes immensely depending on manouvres, techniques, personal skills/experiences/abilities, etc. The detail is also different for each jumper and each jump. The same exit point and site can present two totally different jumps in two days. It's kind of like playing on a links (Seaside) golf course. You could play a 120m par 3 with a sand wedge in the morning and have to use a 3 wood in the afternoon. If it is a skins game and there is $1m riding on your shot, things have changed yet again. But it is the same hole!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you accept that this detail exists on each jump, you can then consciously make an effort to understand each component of the detail (i.e. reading winds at exit point, size of p/c dependant on delay, glide ratio required to make landing areas, etc). Once you start understanding each component of the jump, and then work our how to put it together in a sequential manner, you can then start placing conditions on each component of the detail (i.e if the canopy opens this way, I will/can - this is plan B stuff). Once you have worked all this out, you can actually start assessing what options are riskier than others (i.e. commencing deployment on a slider up jump 50 feet off the deck would definitely lead to a fatality, hence we need to commence higher, but we have too low airspeed, so we should pack slider up, etc). etc. I agree totally with one thing though - I think it is very important to understand why? Why are you jumping? Why are you doing the next jump? Why are you attempting the manouvres you have planned? Why? Your motivations may determine your outcome. r.e. the incident analysis. I think this should be a natural thing for all intermediate and experienced jumpers. This is the feedback mechanism that tells us what we should / should not do. Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

De ja vu. RIP DT and RIP C. Condolences to D and co. Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

Riposa in Pacem. Condols to all who knew, and those that didn't. Make every one count. Count more than the next one. Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

I don't want to second guess people like Tom whom I know are dealing with a heap of *^%% already. I also know that they are doing their best to educate a bunch of trigger happy adrenalin junkies. But I have to open my big mouth and say: this is exactly the type of stunt that is going to exponentially add to "The List". The more complexity that people add to their jumps and the more precision that is required, the lower the margin for error and the higher the chance of an incident. This is NOT a hindsight comment either. It is a foresight comment - inevitably, it will continue to happen. From my own personal experience I know that people like Tom A are doing their best to educate the troops, but I think it is better to say that this type of jump has bad idea written all over it. As I said, failing the option of convincing people not to do it, giving them technical advice is the "least worst option of two bad alternatives". Hope everyone learns from the experience. I hope J recovers 100% to tell the tale. Sounds like a great horror story with interesting video!!!!!!!! Tom A suggested an alternative in this shit happened scenario. I wonder if the jumping group considered this? I also wonder if the people involved were capable of assessing the situation during the jump and then acting out the plan B if it arose? This is the type of thinking and action/reaction that allows people to do high degree of difficulty jumps successfully. Plan the jump. Think of ALL possible stuff ups. Have an action plan for the stuff ups. Practice them until they are ingrained. Make sure you have the skill and experience to do the jump. Then execute. Just a thought. Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

Birdmen, Batmen, and Skyflyers Michael Abrams's book Birdmen, Batmen, and Skyflyers is being published in May by Harmony Books. The following is an excerpt. Published in the July, 2006 issue. I N T R O D U C T I O N DeLand of the Free: Wingsuits for Whuffos The giant Belgian I'm strapped to, Vladi Pesa, goes over the plan one more time--we will jump out of the plane together (actually, I'll lift my legs, and he'll do the jumping) and hurtle toward earth at 120 miles per hour. After thirty seconds or so, our parachute will open and then we will look directly up to see Jari Kuosma flying in our direction. The flyby is made possible by Kuosma's wingsuit: a white jumper with red webbing between the legs and triangular wings connecting the arms and the torso. "If I hit you on the way down," Kuosma cheerfully adds by way of ending the briefing, "you die." At 13,000 feet the door opens, and the earth rushes past us, a blur in the square doorframe. I manage to make it to the edge and put myself in position: head up, arms back, thumbs behind my harness. Pesa tightens the straps that bind us together, grabs my legs with his. The fact that Kuosma has been stuck outside the country and hasn't used his wingsuit for the past three months worries me for an instant. But it's a bit late to voice any concerns. Pesa is counting down in my ear How, exactly, did I find myself in such a situation? In the early autumn of 2002, a friend of mine took me for a drive to Gardiner, New York, where a drop zone known as The Ranch was holding a "pond swooping" contest. This was the first time I'd seen any skydiving of any kind, and this particular variation of the sport--unlike others that take place thousands of feet above the ground--was well suited for viewing. After their invisible free fall, these sportsman would open their tiny, high-performance parachutes, glide down to fifty or so yards from the ground, and do a kind of hard turn that would flip them and their canopies facedown, parallel to the earth. The parachute, in other words, would stop slowing them. But before they hit the ground they would straighten out again, hurtle horizontally over the earth--with their legs bent so their feet wouldn't touch the ground, though their knees might brush the taller weeds--toward a pond in the center of which a spongy square raft floated serenely. Skimming across the pond, and dipping an occasional toe into its murky water, they would do their best to land on the buoyant target to earn ten points I was entranced by the sight of human bodies falling and fluttering out of the heavens. But I was also attracted to this subculture made up of people highly skilled at a potentially lethal activity, which, though stunning, no one had heard of outside the sport. But swooping, it turned out, was not the most obscure of skydiving's potentially lethal subsets. Talking to some of the veteran divers, I learned that there was a "birdman" who jumped with a set of wings of his own devising who was supposed to have been at the competition. He didn't show, though, thanks to visa troubles that kept him out of the country I decided to track down this birdman, Jari Kuosma, and subsequently discovered that he was not alone in his pursuit. Not only were skydivers in the thousands beginning to use the wings he was selling, but there was a long history of men trying--and failing--to do what had only become possible in the last few years. A little research revealed that from Icarus to airplanes, human history was filled with a certain kind of inventor and dreamer who, with homemade wings, had tried to fly from whatever precipice he could find--risking, and often losing, his life in the attempt. Peasants, kings, and scholars had leapt from rooftops, towers, and cliffs wearing an endless variety of frames and feathers and breaking a similar variety of bones. And the plane, to this type of daredevil, was just another precipice from which to try his more organic form of flight: as soon as parachutes and propellers appeared, a bat-wing phenomenon swept--and swooped--the country, with proto-skydivers doing their best to glide through the air on wings of stretched canvas for crowds often in the tens of thousands. They were, however, little better than their predecessors at keeping their bones whole. But now modern technology had finally caught up with the imagination. And Kuosma, it turned out, had competitors. Not only were there several wingsuits on the market, but hi-tech rigid wings were being built that could send people shooting across the sky as fast as 180 miles per hour. After some three thousand years of failure, we were living in a veritable renaissance of personal flight One particular statistic intrigued me: seventy-two of the seventyfive batmen who jumped from planes for air shows from the 1930s to the 1960s were killed in their wings. Months earlier I hadn't even heard of such "birdmen," and now there were seventy-five of them, most of whom had died some kind of presumably spectacular death. Who were they? Why did they keep at it? Why didn't the rest of the world know about them? [Note: After an article I wrote about Kuosma came out months later, it quickly became apparent that the statistic was not quite accurate. Several birdmen (most of them calling themselves batmen now as well as in their winged heyday) contacted me, usually claiming to be one of the first to use a bat-wing. Adding them to the bat-wing jumpers I already knew had survived proved the estimate way off the mark. Further research revealed that the numbers came from a quote by Red Grant, himself a bat-wing survivor, who was merely taking a wild guess at how many of his compatriots had died trying to fly.] Though the subject appeared somewhat comic at first--a seemingly endless litany of the injuries and deaths of daredevils unwilling to learn from the endless injuries and deaths of those before them-- the fact was that their efforts had somehow led to flocks of skydivers now flying about the clouds, more or less safely, and others now pushing the limits of what could be done with a set of wings Theirs was the true history of flight, it seemed to me--one that the airplane had usurped. Both before and after the appearance of mechanized flight, men have yearned and struggled to fly like birds. As one skydiver told me, if piloting a plane is flying, then rowing a canoe is swimming. The airplane is merely a product of this initial drive, a minor offshoot in the long tale of human flight The Wright brothers succeeded thanks to engines with ever-greater power-to-weight ratios that were able to overcome the limitations of the human body that had stymied so many of the birdmen before them (and, of course, their patient, scientific approach had something to do with it). We may think of them as the legends who made the first airplane, but in their minds their inventions were meant to achieve the dream of human flight, the realization of the ancient myth of Icarus and Daedalus. They were part of a rush of inventors competing to be the first to fly, to succeed with new materials and understanding at what was to them the end of a long, absurd, and repetitive history of attempts to flit birdlike about the air. The Wright brothers' success, though, did not allow us to flit. Instead, now that their wings have evolved from glider to biplane to jumbo jet, we sit crammed into a pressurized cabin with two carry-ons and no leg room. Today, airplanes dominate the sky and the story of man in the air. But the development of the airplane is only one part of man's grand quest to fly. While many dedicated their lives to perfecting the machinery that we soar in today, others persisted in the dream of a more personal flying experience Kuosma's wings mark the culmination of that dream and the beginning of a new era of flight. Of course, the invention of a wingsuit that would allow anyone to play among the clouds with palatable odds of survival came in bits and pieces during the twentieth centur. But Kuosma is the first to mass-produce such suits. And as president and founder of BirdMan, Inc., he's had more mileage in wings and has developed more skill with them than any known human. If you buy a wingsuit from him, he'll be glad to give you personal instruction. "It's as if a basketball fan could take a few lessons from Michael Jordan," one skyflyer told me I located the man some months after the pond-swooping contest I had witnessed, and he suggested the possibility of flying by me while I made a tandem jump of my own. Whuffo that I was (that's skydivese for a virgin of the air), I waffled, but after watching a videotape of Kuosma steering around the edge of a cloud, I couldn't resist the idea of seeing it with my own eyes. Unfortunately, Kuosma, whose business was in DeLand, was still stuck in Finland, and it would be months before we could try any such demonstration. That meant months for my imagination, fueled by parachute disaster stories I'd been reading, to establish a rather strong and ever-building thrum of fear. It also meant months of stagnation on the ground for Kuosma (you're only as good as your last jump, they say), and he had to take up ski-jumping to satisfy his adrenaline addiction. Finally, in January of 2003, I met Kuosma in DeLand, just days after he had arrived there himself Kuosma looks like the European expat extreme sportsman that he is. Put a surfboard under his arm instead of a wing, and he'd fit right in on some Southern California beach. His two-toned sandy blond hair has a Tintin flip in the front that points straight toward the heavens. Around his neck he wears an Incan figurine on a black band, and on his right shoulder there's a tattoo of Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man--but instead of a second pair of arms, it has a set of wings. "When the perfect man creates, he can fly," he told me, explaining the drawing in what he refers to as his "Finglish." Mom and Pop Kuosma were a bit less daring than their child. His mother was a secretary and his father ran a shop that sold old U.S. army surplus. He was also an amateur pilot, and as a child Kuosma remembers being in awe of the skydivers he saw at the airport with his father. As a teenager, Kuosma took up martial arts and started jumping off roofs with his pals. His mother's friends thought the boy might "need some help," but their advice went unheeded When his father died in 1990, Kuosma was all set to take over the family business, but a few lawyers managed to make off with the inventory. "They ended up stealing everything we had: all those nice army clothes, boots, and everything. But I don't think I would be here right now if that didn't happen. So thank you to those lawyers." With nothing to do, he headed to the old airport and took up sky-diving. In the lives of the birdmen, the loss of a parent turns out to be one of the few common threads Soon he was something of a big bird in a little birdbath. In 1994 he was one of fifty-seven people who broke the Finnish record for the largest free-falling formation. Later he took a trip to Estonia, where he learned a Russian technique for jumping at frighteningly low altitudes. Kuosma was the first to try the stunt in Finland--he jumped out of a plane flying at 250 mph, a mere 300 feet above the ground. At that speed the wind should open a parachute instantaneously. "In my case it did," says Kuosma, "And I was pretty glad." Kuosma was flying the smallest parachute in Finland at the time--135 square feet, compared with the usual 300 or so. The size went some way to placating his need for speed (currently he uses a canopy of 75 square feet) by allowing him to perform what is now a standard maneuver called a hook-turn--the same trick the pond-swoopers used to zip across the earth at 60 miles per hour. A slight miscalculation can cause a jumper to snap his legs against the ground instead of skimming over it (skydivers call it "femuring"), and the whole business made the Finnish skydiving association skittish. They passed rules banning certain kinds of landings just to get Kuosma to quit his hijinks. (In fact, hook-turns are the primary cause of death and injury in skydiving.) By then, Kuosma had earned a bachelor's in business and administration, had followed that up with a degree in international business, and had taken a job at Sonera, Finland's largest telecommunications company. "I thought, okay, now the good job at the big corporation, and the career, and that will be my thing to do. So I went for that and I got the very nice job at the big corporation. I had a suit on and all that good stuff. It took me two weeks to realize that it was not for me." Within a few months, Kuosma had quit his job and drawn up a business plan to manufacture and distribute a new parachute that was well made and super-fast, but still unknown to the skydiving community. But the plan would end up being used to produce something else entirely. Not long after Kuosma left his job, he and his friend Robert Pecnik traveled to a 3,700-foot cliff in Arco, Italy, that they planned to jump from. At an Internet café there, they came across a photo of a skydiver named Patrick de Gayardon in a wingsuit. Gayardon was the world's most famous skydiver, and he had built the first truly successful "ram-air" wings. Unlike the single-layered wings that had failed his predecessors, Gayardon's wings were made of cells that filled with air--like modern square parachutes--and gave his wing enough shape and rigidity to truly fly. At the sight of Gayardon streaking across the sky, the two friends instantly knew what they had to do-- build a set of wings like that for themselves. Pecnik already had some experience making jumpsuits for skydivers, and Kuosma had already devised a business plan to manufacture speedy parachutes. "We thought, 'Hey, it's easy,' " says Kuosma. "We have wings and we can make suits, so why not put them together?" By the end of the year Pecnik had made three wingsuits. They headed to DeLand to try them out. Gayardon had invented the wingsuit and wowed the skydiving world with spectacular stunts, but after 500 flights he went the way of the batmen of the thirties and forties--a malfunction sent him to his death in a Hawaiian banana field just months after Pecnik and Kuosma had seen his photo. Undeterred, the pair based their wingsuits on what they had seen of Gayardon's getup, but neither Pecnik nor Kuosma was an engineer of any kind, and when they went to test their wings for the first time, they gave themselves a 50-percent chance of surviving. "It was just such a big jump into the unknown," says Kuosma. "We were doing something that we knew some people had done before . . . but they were all dead." Kuosma and his partner did not die. In fact, everything went as planned, except for one thing. "I could never have expected it to be so mind-blowing, so beautiful, so absolutely addicting. I came down and I was absolutely high." Armed with a business plan and a little money, they set up shop in Slovenia, where Pecnik had his jumpsuit business, and made the first eighty wingsuits. In June of 1999 they packed the suits into a car and headed to Austria. They were down to their last Finnish mark and had to smuggle the wingsuits across the border to avoid paying customs. From there they set out to visit every drop zone they could find. Many of the airfields wouldn't allow Kuosma even to demonstrate his suit; the head of England's largest drop zone told them they would have to leave if they so much as said the word "wingsuit." Where he could, Kuosma gave a seminar, flew his suit, and then offered to pay for the flight of anyone daring enough to try it. Volunteers returned to earth slack-jawed, and word began to spread. The experience, they said, was wholly different from an ordinary skydive. The wings of the BirdMan suit fill with air as soon a skyflyer spreads his limbs (not something he should do right away, or he risks hitting the tail of the plane), and within seconds the noise of the wind dies off and the body begins moving forward. The suit is made of ripstop nylon, a fabric with "zero porosity," so the wings remain rigid in flight. The shape of the wing is made by the arms and shoulders of the person in the suit, and it takes a few flights to find the ideal position. Cutaway cables enable the flyer's arms to be freed in an instant, which reduces the danger of being caught in the kind of inescapable flat spin that killed many of the bat-wing jumpers. Anyone who's logged 200 skydiving jumps and has at least $799 to spare can buy a BirdMan suit and slow the downward speed of his free fall from 120 mph to 45 mph and cruise horizontally through the clouds. This almost doubles his time in the air before opening his parachute. By 2003, more than 2,000 people--including many women, a first in the history of birdmen--had experienced wingsuit flight. Four had died. (A small number, perhaps, but not exactly comforting when you're sitting in the hull of a rising twin-prop.) Watching Kuosma fly is breathtaking. At first he drops straight down like any free-faller. But in a matter of seconds the wings catch the air and the fall curves forward in a graceful cycloid. If there's a plump cumulus in sight, Kuosma banks toward it and glissades around its edge, or plunges right through. He can fly on his back, make figure-eights, or soar along a highway--outrunning the cars below. "There are no speeding tickets up there," says Kuosma. And that's more than just a clever way of putting it, coming from a man who's been jailed for exceeding the speed limit while driving through Georgia. Three of the four deaths attributed to the BirdMan suit occurred on jumps from stationary heights like cliffs or bridges. It's hard to know to what degree the wingsuit can be implicated. The chief thrill in base jumping--an acronym for jumps from buildings, antennas, spans (i.e., bridges), and earth--after all, is the threat of death. "Officially, we don't even recommend base jumping," says Kuosma. "We can't really recommend Russian roulette to anybody. Although it's fun." The other death occurred when an inexperienced skydiver tried to jump with a friend's wingsuit. No one knows exactly what happened, but he was sent into a spiral and hit the ground wrapped in his parachute. The deaths give Kuosma pause--but a short one. "Accidents do happen a lot," he acknowledges. "It's always really hard, but you just start getting used to it. It's something you accept as the price for what you are doing." "That yawning door, opening into space, is like the very jaws of hell," wrote the French birdman of the 1950s, Leo Valentin, of his thoughts in the plane before a jump. "We're not birds, look at us, we're only men! So quick--let's get back to earth. To earth--at once!" My thoughts exactly. Then the Belgian launches us into space. We flip out the back of the plane and suddenly the fear is gone. I am out there. A pinprick of consciousness punching through the atmosphere. The sun watches from the edge of a 360-degree horizon. The wind blasts against my eardrums and they pop and pop and pop. I eat clouds. Scream with pure joy. The planet spreads out below me, indifferent . . . and then a simple foomp. The world changes from sensory overload to total peace, absolute silence. We're hovering, seemingly motionless. The Belgian taps me on the shoulder and points up to the left. I look up in time to see Kuosma pop out of a bank of puffy clouds, his canopy already open. He spirals around us, grinning. It's like meeting a long-lost friend in a dream. Before long, the drop zone rises to our feet and we've landed. "I'm in love again," says Kuosma. His eyes are wide and his face is flushed. He's overjoyed, despite the fact that he had to abandon our little plan. "I was like a kid again. My heart was pounding in the plane." He had followed us till we went through the cloud. Rather than risk a collision, Kuosma changed course and found us after he'd opened his canopy. But it hardly matters. I'm just glad I'm no longer a whuffo. [Note: Months later we tried the flyby again. Once under an open parachute, I looked up over my right shoulder and saw a speck emerge out of pure blue. The speck soon grew to human size and Kuosma whipped through the air in front of me, just feet away, throwing me a grin and a thumbs-up sign.] Soon the beer appears. War stories and life philosophies start spilling out as the sun goes down. "You feel smaller up there," says Kuosma, "but much bigger. Because you know how small you feel and the knowledge makes you feel bigger." A Yorkshireman named Steve Ashman is at the table with us. He, too, has had his first wingsuit flight in months, and he's positively glowing. "I went through my first cloud today," he says with a grand, goofy grin. Steve learned to skydive just to fly the wingsuit. And once he'd flown, he tells us, he never looked at a bird or the sky the same way again. He pauses before quoting Leonardo. "Once you have tasted flight, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you long to return." Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/outdoors/outdoors/2855946.html Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

Matt was obviously thinking that the pilot chute was a ham/cheese/tomato sandwich. He does NOT like throwing them away. Tell Matt his pilot chute is a falffel vegie burger. He'll throw it so far away that he'll never have a hessie again. Seriously though. most hessies are due to lazy throws, followed by incompatable and worn gear, etc. Make sure the mesh is not overstretched, ensure you launch it out of your burble, allow for relative wind (this changes on aircraft type due to varying airspeeds), and allow for the angle of your body to relative wind. If you are going a longer bridle, make sure it can fully retract, otherwise your performance and safety can be affected. Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.

I wouldn't say real good. Just improved a little. We learnt a lot from the Yanks and about ourselves. That made a big difference. No matter how good or bad the teams are, it is still our moral duty to take the piss out of the SA K lovers. And now that plastic has come into the debate, our old colonial masters as well. Are the Brits taking a team to Russia?? Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.