JaapSuter

I just pitched high, facing the bridge. Definitely not an aerial to try off a cliff... Spun it around and ended up landing in a circle that got me a 50 dollar world lottery ticket that led me to waste an hour of my life that I'm not getting back... Oh well, my fault. Can't complain. Fortunately the second jump went a lot better. Unstable exit followed by one full line-twist and losing both toggles. But I called it out that way and it was intentional, so then it's allright, right?

Hahahaha, I love it! Mind if I nugget (yep, it's a verb now) you on this one? The comedy herein feels very Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy-ish. A book which I greatly enjoyed, as an aside. Thanks for making me laugh Chad! Now get back to your usual business of taking the winds where you go, bringing heat to objects, and shutting them down. Oops...

Thanks for your reply Nick; another great post as usual. I'm glad to see other BASE jumpers have wondered about the same issue. I was beginning to wonder if I was some crazy morbid weirdo. Of course I might very well still be... Several people have, in this and other posts, brought up the fact that our sport is one where mentoring is the dominant style of education. I just wanted to point out how much I believe this is what makes BASE such a great sport. Our sport acts much like a guild in the middle-ages, complete with apprenticeships and the obstacle of entry. While beginning jumpers occasionaly find this barrier hard to overcome, I have yet to meet a BASE jumper who complains about his progression in hindsight. The fact that we are all a bunch of passionate people helping each other out where we can should not be underestimated and is something I have never seen in any other sport. Call it romance if you will; I call it brother and sisterhood.

I wonder how long it'll take Tom to lock it down this time around...

Yeah, it's both a good thing and a bad thing that we don't have more experience with this. However, I've somehow been taught to throw the toggle to the side and behind me, away from any other lines. I'm not sure who taught me that, but it makes sense to me. Whether or not you actually care or have time during an actual line over is another issue.

Yes, but you would still want minimal forward speed on opening in case of an offheading (like rounds and a properly tuned DBS on a square). If that is your 'default' setting that is how fast your canopy is going to fly, period. That doesn't sound go to me. I want minimal forward speed on opening, and then be able to 'let something up' to fly faster. What is that thing 'we let up'?

I wouldn't mind seeing a canopy design without steering lines and the rear risers cascading earlier so you can steer by controlling the D lines. Effectively you would have four rises going up, instead of four. As far as I know, some paragliders have a riser for each line group. Those rear-rear risers could have toggles on them. Of course there is still the chance of having a line over on your C and D lines, but oh well... Edited to add: No wait, that's a silly idea. Without some way to "stow the rear-rear-riser" your flight range would be limited by whatever it is on opening. Never mind.

That seems a rather strong statement in a sport like this. Anyway, I've reached up for risers on a jump once and ended up knocking off one of my toggles. I am using pin toggles (providing more data for Tom's theory) but I'm most definetely meticulate in setting my toggles, always making sure they are pretensioned and always doing one last check in the packtray before closing the container. I'm with Calvin on this one and would like to see more research into a slider-down WLO system.

Do you base this on experience or speculation? I have used my WLOs at least ten times and thrown my toggles at least the same amount of times. Granted, never in a real line-over scenario, but many times trying to be as quick as possible after opening (after a hypothetical heading correction). I have come to the conclusion that a WLO release can be just as quick as a LRM release if not quicker. It is also cleaner. The initial phase of grasping the tab to release it might take a little longer, but then ripping it lose is incredibly fast (faster than ripping of an entire toggle) and the line dissappears quicker because of the tension than were you to throw the entire toggle away. When throwing the toggle away, there is a risk the toggle hangs up in other lines and stays there. That's why you want to throw the toggle away far. With the WLOs only a line release with a clean end, the tension on it pulls it away quick and cleanly. If I had more experience and I would have more statistics on the bending pin issue, I would strongly consider switching from LRM to WLO for all my slider down jumping. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the future, possibly with a stronger and even faster WLO design, I'll make that switch.

I think that's a great approach to have! I was just poking fun at ya! It'll be your turn to laugh when I'm all broken up at the bottom of the canyon because my slider (-down) fucked things up...

Just out of curiousity, are you being PCAd? Congratulations on your jumps!

I recommend sending a PM to Manship. He is, as far as I know, the only Rock Dragon owner that has done sufficient jumps on other canopies too to come up with a valid comparison. I don't have enough jumps on my Rock Dragon to comment beyond the fact that it has saved my life on most of my BASE jumps and many of my skydives. So it seems to do the job well. I think it is worth pointing out that the Rock Dragon is manufactured by Precision Aerodynamics which traditionally has a less strict quality control department than Performance Designs where most other BASE canopies are being manufactured. I've heard of at least three (including mine) manufacturing defects on Rock Dragon canopies that slipped through their quality control. Two were related to the packing tabs and innocuous, one was much worse and Apex recalled the canopy. Apex has been very helpful and forthcoming in these scenarios. As long as you inspect your Rock Dragon on delivery you will be fine. I'm actually hoping an Apex representative will chime in on this and comment on Precision's reputation that BASE jumpers talk about. I don't want to get known as the guy spreading rumors here. I've been exceptionally happy with my Rock Dragon (although again; I don't have enough comparison jumps to objectively state that it's a superior canopy).

Warning; this post is in no way intended to diminish how dangerous this sport is or to be disrespectful to our fallen brothers. I am merely exercising a curiousity I have been dabbling with the last few months. Is anybody else sometimes surprised by how few people actually die in this sport, given how close we approach death even on a perfectly executed jump? John's recent incident and the comments from other jumpers on his jumping skills got me to post this question, but there must be more jumpers like him out there. I'll go even further and admit that I'm surprised how few fatal accidents there are at Bridge Day. Heck, even my own jump was by all standards a suicidal attempt at an aerial and I'm really wondering what causes pilotchutes and parachutes to work so well... I'm not trying to be morbid here. I'm certainly not arguing that I think more people should die in this sport. On the contrary, I'm happy there are relatively so few incidents! However, if you stop and think for a second and realize that every time your foot leaves the edge it's a piece of circular ZP fabric attached to a canopy by a piece of webbing that saves your life. Call me crazy, but I think it's un-fucking-believable it works so well. But as I've said before on these forums, I'm still amazed planes can fly and boats don't sink. For now, I'm just gonna be really happy we've managed to make gear so bullet- and idiot-proof. It it has become pretty hard to create a total. It probably also helps that the majority of us is still scared shitless on every jump, regardless of how experienced we are, meaning we always have a healthy dose of paranoia to keep checking our gear over and over again.

Total chaos. I pitched before I even went below the railing. It was all rather embarrassing. Mind you, it was completely planned this way. I've done this move of the diving board many times. I did think to stretch the amount of time when taking this thing from a five meter board to a 900 foot bridge, but when push came to shove I initiated the rotation just as hard as I usually do. Pulling exactly in the rotation where I planned on pulling, but unfortunately not being very low yet... Bwhuauhahuahua, I'll blame it on Bridge Day. Anything goes there, right? Splatula. Represent.

Come on... you're gonna have to do better than that! Try aiming a camera at me next time. I have a tendency to try killing myself much harder when somebody points a camera at me. I guess it's not peer pressure, but camera pressure. Unfortunately, I'm not joking. Case in point, my first and last attempt at some inverted chaos during Bridge Day...

Cleatus, stop masturbating for a split second and get your ass up north, before it starts snowing.

Congratulations bro, it seems the bug has you! Be safe out there...

I was vegan for two years, and vegetarian for ten. If it wasn't for a certain tri-tip offered to me after an unplanned long delay, I would probably still be vegetarian. These days, I still prefer the vegetarian dish over meat. That's not to argue that I care about animals per se, but to show that I am very familiar with the debate on ethical treatment on animals. I've seen and been on every side of that argument and if I was anything like the self-righteous dick I was in my vegan years I would have personally attacked the crap out of the original poster. If one of my friends wanted to PCA a kitten, I would politely but forcefully ask he'd not do it. If he would persist, I would leave the scene and reconsider my friendship. That said, I don't think PCAing a kitten harms it more than we harm most animals on their way to our stomach. To worry more about a kitten that is PCAd than about the pork on our plate tells me said person has never visited a modern industrial strength farm and slaughterhouse. It is indicative of our society today to worry more about cute little kittens than about the meat on our plate. Aw shucks... I tried to avoid it, but now I'm inevitably drawn into an ethical debate. My original comment was to avoid this since it is not what these forums are for. I think you and I equally care about the kitten, and equally love the meat on our plate. Today, I'm comfortable acknowledging I'm a complete hypocrite for being so. It doesn't make me a better person, but I've found that self-rightenousnes veganism doesn't lead to higher moral standards either. Meanwhile, BASE 704 is laughing his ass of because he managed to drag my ass out and make me write this long post. Oh well. Rightfully so, you deserve it 704...

Actually, as far as I know TowerTopper erects towers for a living, so the chances he does know what he's talking about are fairly big. He is also correct in stating that there are people out there who would have been able to rescue John more efficiently. However, what TowerTopper overlooked in my opinion is that the people that are standing by 24 hours a day and seven days a week to help us, might not consider wire rescues their first priority. Their time (and my tax-money) is much better spend on training for more common occurences like traffic accidents or kitchen injuries. I agree with you (Feeblemind) that TowerTopper's wording may have come off a little abrasive, given the circumstances. However, your personal attack in retaliation does little to improve the situation. I personally believe that whoever managed to get John of that wire safely did a phenomenal job, and I hope John agrees with me on this. There may be people out there that can do a better job, but until they are willing to step up and do this job or offer free training to fire-departments across the country, these people should not complain. Two cents...

I took the opportunity to write a little bit about how to use the wind to your advantage on antenna jumps. Check it out in the antenna section of BASE WIKI. Since I only have one-and-a-half (don't ask) jump from an antenna, I need somebody to make sure what I say is actually correct, and that I'm not some half-baked moron rambling bogus mumbo jumbo. I do the latter that a lot, so please leave corrections, comment and suggestions on that page.

Your question brings me to another thing I've been thinking about recently. Imagine a hypothetical person that keeps jumping in Yosemite, keeps getting busted, and keeps going to jail. That person is going to accumulate a lot of jail time, which at some point is will cause a judge to think; should this person really go to jail for two years because he's practising his passion while I'm sending drugdealers away with ten weeks probation? I'm reminded of a bunch of Greenpeace guys that went to jail for a peaceful but illegal protest they did. There was a big uproar in society for it. Obviously the environmental cause is going to find a lot more support among the disinterested public than us BASE jumpers, but I'm still intruiged by the question what would happen if the punishment for BASE jumping was higher. In some ways, 2000 dollars is not enough. It's almost worth that amount of money from what I can imagine. Now put twelve months of jailtime on it, and the NPS is going to have a shitstorm in their pants... Who's willing to sacrifice himself to test my theory?

To reiterate what Tom has mentioned above, I am moderately confident that you mean that the WLO toggles should only be used on slider-up jumps. On slider-up jumps, your brake-lines are routed through the grommets and these lessen the impact forces on the stow-point during opening. Furthermore, as Tom points out, the pin doesn't go through the white loop on slider up jumps. I can't imagine why the difference between slider-down and -off would matter in the case of WLOs, but I don't mind being corrected on this.

I jump slider down. My first fifteen or so jumps were slider off, but once I started jumping my BASE rig out of planes, the rerigging was too much work and I left the slider on for all my jumps. I started out with a scary clean DexterBase style origami cranebird for my slider, but have since gradually allowed my slider to be sloppier and sloppier to the point where I really don't care much anymore how it lays in the bottom of my container. I'd say that I now have thirty slider down jumps with a bunched up slider that most people would consider sloppy, and have noticed no adverse affects. Granted, that may very well be a poor statistical analysis. We'll find out tomorrow morning when I'm finally gonna get that 180 on my 75th jump. Woohoo! It's all body-position and winds, right...

You are da man! Awesome...

I also have to say; massive kudos to BASE 704 for bringing the best out of us. This thread certainly served its intended purpose already...