Han-Solo

it is loic. a true inspiration to all of us...

if you can make a gadget (that i can afford), that makes it possible to backfly the bigwalls, not worrying about the space below me, i'd definitely be interested. but i don't think counting seconds is the way to go for this (at least not for this use). some kind of positioning device (at least 2-D) would be required. for a flat groud, a timebased system is fine. but for a tallus/mountainside, it's useless. would it be possible to make something like this cheap enough? or small enough?

i'm glad you all enjoy the vids. the first jumper is me wearing a nike jacket and a regular pair of hiking pants. the ace up my sleeve is some rubber bands and a cord to tighten it. the second jumper is a whole other story. this is a super suit (home made) under development, which has been refined for over a year. these jumps were made last year. this year it is even better. some of you might have seen it at the heliboogie in kjaerag. we logged glideratios better than 2:1 after 15 sec of flight with it!

QuoteI smell a troll. Quote definitely! i smell one too. it's illegal, but it's the best

i've witnessed one example of this. it wasn't documented though. the line mod came in handy.

the answers to some faqs: stay awhile. be prepared for some weatherdays. be in good shape. hook up with some locals. yes. but you don't want to come all the way here for those. it' not worth it. assessing the weather, finding the right spot for the day and the conditions. doing a nice jump and having a beer to go with your smile there is no helijumping here (wildlife preservation) true, this is why having a local contact is a good thing. true, for the illegal area. yep, you need a car to get around . this is basic for independent bigwalljumping. because i love this area, and i don't mind sharing the experiences. it's not going to be. to much gravity, to few (bigwall)jumpers. contact with locals = less risk of accidents. some have contacted me to try to throw in a couple of days in the area in combination with their stay at the heliboogie in kjaerag. not the best way to do it. it's a bit early in the season, and you might have only bad weather. i'd say this area deserves at least ten days if you want to have a good chance of some fine jumping. don't expect to be jumping every day. (it's the quality, not the quantity)

Most of you have probably heard of the big walls of Norway, and then you think of Kjaerag. Many of you are probably aware that there are other walls as well. Being a Norwegian I must admit I haven't been to Kjaerag myself (trying to go there this summer... ) Anyway, I’d like to tell you a little about the area where I do most of my bigwall jumps. My impression is that foreigners have heard of these walls, but only vaguely know were they are (up north...), and apart from long freefalls they are known for looong hikes. This is an area consisting of three great valleys, all walls situated a maximum of an hour and a half by car from each other. As far as I know at least 18 bigwalls have been jumped in this area. More than ten of these provide the same or more flying altitude then Kjaerag. The three biggest ones give about 1600m of potential freefall (exit to landing). Apart from an area including two of the walls, everything else is legal. In addition to this there are still several possible exits that haven’t been explored yet. These are probably ws exits at best, but might turn out to be very spectacular. I write this because I find it strange that when I and a bunch of other locals roam this area during the summer, we hardly ever see any foreigners. Especially since Norway is supposed to be “famous” for its bigwalls, and I know a lot of you visit Kjaerag. So I figured there were two main reasons for this; - the area is too famous for its looong hikes - too much hassle getting there, where is it, how to find the walls and the way to the exits, etc.. If it’s the first one I can tell you the hikes vary from 1-2 to 4-5 hours. Most include all of the elevation, some none. It’s less painful if you’re fit. If it’s the second one, I’d be happy to help my fellow BASErs. This area is never going to be overcrowded; there is plenty of gravity for all of us! And it would be a blast to see some new grins once in a while.

don't no if this helps, but i had the same problem myself (consistent 90 deg right). but it was early in my career and i'm not sure what caused it. i had it narrowed down to(well, i thought anyway) : -handheld pc resulting in asymmetrical body position after throw -not cautious enough with the symmetry and separation of the center cell during packing -the multi i started going boc, changed my packing a bit, and switched to duo (attaching all three frontlines to the center cell). haven’t seen it since...

I've heard of a french crew that tried to make a jump off of [url"http://www.tvmountain.com/actualite/04/baghirati.htm"]Baghirati III[/url], witch could have turned out to be one of the longest freefalls ever. But they had to walk back down due to a ledge below the exit point. Too bad, it would have been a nice big wall

maybe not the quickest there is, but i've used one logging at 5 hz. the accuracy was amazing. though i never had anything to compare the actual accuracy to, as mentioned, what you want is relative accuracy. it has only bee used for basejumping, but small variations in flying performance were very noticeable. opening characteristics too. also movement on the exit down to half a meter is very noticeable. but it wasn't made for jumping or any other sporting activity, and was very bulky and impractical. i have been looking for a gps that logs quick, but 1 hz is the quickest i've seen around. i don't believe increased logging speed will make it more inaccurate. what it does is it makes it possible to see the errors that occur, and then you are able to manually correct them later if you'd like. for example, if you log at 100 hz and you trace your log suddenly you have ten feet between two points, you can adjust this. but if you log at 1 hz, because your points would typically be 100(ish) feet apart, an offset of ten feet is undetectable. using this 5 hz logger i've often seen these offsets occuring, in the range of 10-20 feet. because of the bulky impracticality of the gps i used, i have been looking for something smoother with the same update and logging speed. not having found anything in this range, the project now is to assemble one...

those are our medium walls.... what is your question? yes we do. my first was a typical 140m A.

very nice! too bad my connection is a bit to slow. baffin is truly amazing. looks like my home cliffs

the latest addition to nick's list was trying some flips, having about 20 jumps under his belt. he chose a relatively safe wall to try this.... one try do or die

i didn't see that, my bad here's the plot of that flight again, distances in meters. note that this was not a very good exit or flight. according to the terrain plot it should be possible to outfly the ledge, but the rest of the terrain is not very steep, so getting to the landing looks tough. anyway, have a go at it, and bring the camera. a two-way would look good

how are you gonna plot that? do you have some accurate terrain data? ps. i sent you some plots a while ago... not good enough?

maybe he's talking about something like this

Quote flying down the mountain...reply] aren't we all flying down the mountain?

IMO the altitude of the object has very little, if anything, to do with how easy or difficult a jump is. basejumping in general is very easy, it's doing it safe that can be challenging. all these altitudes can be jumped safely, if you have sufficient spacing to objects during the jump, and there's a good landing area. how easy or difficult a jump is, is decided by what you make of it. johnnyb's lowpull in lauterbrunnen f.ex., is that an easy jump, because it's full speed? or a gainer from a 70m cliff? not far from where i live there a wirespan of about 250m into a gorge. no good landing area makes this a winter jump as the snow is covering the rocks and boulders. this is a subterminal slider up jump, and when the snow is fine i'd say it's definitely an easy one. altitude is a factor where you either have enough or you don't (the inbetweens are risky but few...). the other factor are far more interesting and important when it comes to assessing a jump.

well, some of the shots are troll related....

i did one today from a 200(+)m wall. second time here, and also my lowest exit. video shows about 7sec, just in time to start flying. very good references to learn how fast you take off. the place has a perfect landing area though...

it was his second base-jump. the first one didn't look very good either. a documentary was made (in norway) on the incident and the following trial. good thing the judges could see straight.

i'm not sure about the name of the album, but the tune is "mountain song" (yes, big bang) the guy in the other low flyby clip, does most of the filming in these ones. all done tracking (no ws). is this similar to the atmonauti way of flying?

well actually he did about 50 deg below the horizontal line at the best parts of the jump, which is okey for an old school technique... he does alot better now! take a look at these clips to see some examples: http://www.stud.ntnu.no/~hansho of course wind is a factor when jumping from a plane, but most big wall jumps (i hope) are done in "relatively" calm conditions, so any gps log would be informative of the glide ratio. as i understand this it's very similar to the way big wall tracking has evolved; wider and steeper position, with head low trying to cut through the air instead of trying to float on it. i guess atmonauti is as good a name as any, but its all about developing our way to fly

what is this "standard track" that you all are referring to? what is actually the difference between a naughty track TM, and another good steep track? if angle of attack is the only variation, i don't really see what the fuzz is all about. any poasistion has its optimal angle of attack, which usually is much steeper than most skydivers realize. if there are other differences, please enlighten me... i'd really like to learn about this. and for the record; i'm in! ps. gps plots from bigwall tracks have shown terminal glide ratios around 1:1. other jumps done without gps somtimes has proven better than this too.

hmm... looks like it already has