Zennie

Happy b-day dude! 24? Dang. I forgot what that was like. - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

Tom's article is great! You might also want to go over to Blinc and read through the Knowledge BASE. You can also search through the BASE Board message archives and dig up a lot of good information. I wouldn't recommend posting the "first BASE rig" question on the BASE Board though, they get that question a lot and will just point you to the resources I've mentioned. - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

Make that 3. Now if they could just put up someone at the national level with just a little bit of charisma we might actually get somewhere. I personally think most Americans are Libertarians in terms of mindset. They just don't know much about the party. - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

And that's only if they get too inquisitive. Otherwise, I'd tell them it's a "reserve deployment device". - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

Jesus, Conway! No wonder you're so thin! And Tiff, best wishes to you and your husband for a smooth surgery & quick recovery. Look at it this way, at least he gets prescription pain meds. And those are way better than anything you can get off the street! - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

OK I chose "Mirage G3 or G4" because that is way better as a pair than "Vector 2 or 3". The Vector 2 isn't even in the same league as the Vector 3/Micron. A Micron would be my first choice in a rig. - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

Absolute lowest is 600-ish (BASE). Lowest for a skydive is about 1800 after just finishing a tracking dive. Lowest you could go to count for distance was 2000 and I was gonna milk it for all it was worth. The twisted part of me would love to do a hop-n-pop with a BASE rig and suck it down to about 600 (color me conservative ) in front of the whuffos. 'Course I'd prolly be banned for life from every DZ within 100 miles if I actually tried a stunt like that. - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

Heh. If you wanna see Bill get spun up, just use the phrase "line dump" to describe what you're saying. His take is that there is no such thing as "line dump". Rather, what you have is an out of sequence deployment. I tend to agree (for whatever that's worth). My guess is that "line dump" came to be because the phrase gives more of a visual of what's going on. - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

Looks like I'm the old-timer thus far, 37 & just out of divorce court. First off, 30 is way too young to be having a mid-life crisis. I suppose given what I'm doing now some people may say I'm having a mid-life crisis of sorts. Only problem with that is that I've always done this kind of stuff. Now I just do it more. I don't view my situation as a mid life crisis. To me it's a new life opportunity. - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

Good points. Scratch the helmet cam for the time being. BWAHAHAHA! Yep! The freeflier's mantra: "It's all about the video." Me on the video, that is. - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

And you guys don't get nearly the respect you deserve. I've seen some old video that made my skin crawl. The pioneers of the sport learned everything we know today through trial and (painful) error. I had the good fortune to meet Rick Harrison a little while back. Super great guy with a lot of really cool stories. - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

No self-respecting freeflier would go without one! My freefly helmet has a side-mount D-box (it's a Sidewinder LS). Do many BASE jumpers jump side-mounts? - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

Hoooooo boy! I'm gonna try and not sound bitter for a change so here goes... The Bad News: I just got divorced from a skydiving-hating whuffo. The Good News: Skydiving really didn't have that much to do with it (though she did gripe occasionally about time at the DZ and the expense). As you can see, there are many folks here who have non-skydiving spouses and remain happily married. The common thread among those relationships is compromise, respect for each other's interests and lack of controlling behavior. My ex "let" me skydive. In retrospect, that was a pretty bad sign. I encouraged her to do the things she enjoyed doing, even though I didn't. I didn't get that in return. I'm not saying you should get divorced, but you ought to reflect a little bit about the nature of your relationship and ask if you think you are being treated fairly or with respect. If not, you may want to go see a marriage counsellor. A lot of times that can help things. Best of luck! - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

Yeah, it would be hard to lug all that with you on a jump. My guess is with the possible exception of the radio & wind meter (you could prolly fit those in a fanny pack), everything else would be for scouting or back-country stuff. Maybe a rangefinder if you're on top of a B and don't know the exact height? - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

And just to head off any misunderstandings, I'm not saying BR's expedition is bad or unsafe. I have no idea, but I'm guessing it's very well run. Just be careful out there. - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

Another good one I forgot is a miner's light, preferably with a red filter. - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

Take a look here. Just browsing the tail end of the list, Norway doesn't take up as disproportionate of a share as I originally thought, but there have been 3 there this year that I know of. The one that immediately came to mind was Lori Barr... she only had 5 BASE jumps total, no cliff jumps, and was put off on an organized jump. But if you review the list, you'll see that that vast majority of fatalities are cliff strikes. I may make a trip out to Moab this spring, but I'm going to make sure Jimmy & Marta (from Vertigo) are supervising. I trust them & their judgment. - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

Ya. Just thought of another one.... Hand-held wind meter. - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

Just from examining your profile, please be careful and get some experience and competent training. If you don't, you may "go big, then go home" in a way you aren't expecting. The BASE community hasn't been seeing the best of times in Norway lately. - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

Skreamer's note about the laser rangefinder brought up an interesting question. If one were to be a BASE gizmo geek, what would one put in one's "goodie bag"? And even without being totally gizmo'd out, what things do you think are essentials? I'd think a handheld GPS would also be good. What else? I'm guessing some things probably can't be posted in a public forum, so feel free to PM me with those. - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

Good call. I'll make sure to bring some along on our next outing. - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

That's not a bad idea. But it might be hard to see what it's doing at night, which is when we do a lot of our jumps. My mentor takes a small plastic bag (like the kind you get at the grocery store) up, tears off little pieces and lets them go. He'll do that at varying heights to get a full picture of what's going on. - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

I only have a few jumps on a Cobalt, so I'm not expert on Cobalt opening characteristics by any stretch, but I think sometimes people are too quick to blame a piece of equipment when things go wrong. And before I go any further, I'm not saying these things aren't caused by equipment. All I'm saying is one should definitively rule out other causes before doing so. For starters, as wingloadings get higher, elliptical canopies will be more prone to spin-ups & hard openings. They become much more sensitive to minor packing errors and especially body position. Yes, I'm starting to agree with the Packer's Mantra. All it takes is a dropped shoulder (from looking up, an unstable pitch, reaching early for the rear risers, whatever) and the risers are now uneven. Now you've induced a turn. You can see where it goes from there. Packing the main asymmetrically can cause one side to inflate slightly earlier than the other. This will also induce a turn, and thus a spin. Off heading openings are baaaad juju in BASE. I'm learning just how sensitive canopies are to poor packing and body position. I'm willing to bet that all of my off-headings have been my own damn fault. Most likely from poor body position at deployment (I'm usually pretty anal about symmetry while packing). Again, I'm not saying these things are the case here, I'm just making a cautionary note. - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

Good job Ramon! We expect you to bring home a medal next meet. No pressure... - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

The other chart is good too (printed 'em all out), but strictly for calculating delay, this is probably closest to what we're after. This chart is good for a couple of things. Determining delay, obviously, but also as a yardstick for determining altitude on a new object. One of the Blinc articles I was reading talked about dropping a rock and counting the seconds to impact. Using that in conjunction with this chart should give you a rough guesstimate of height. - Z "Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon