TomAiello

Here's mine.

Too small to jump from fixed objects. Which means that it is less suitable for training with (since, ideally, you'd train with exactly the same canopy as you will BASE jump with). You'll want a BASE canopy in the 240ish size range. So I'd say the Raven III (249, I think) would be about right. If I recall correctly, the next size increments of Ravens are 249 and 282. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

It looks fairly good, except: 1) It's probably smaller than you'll want to BASE jump (but still much better practice than a Triathlon or similar canopy), edit because I read the ad through, and saw that this Raven has bridle attachment point. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Students at big DZ's often don't get taught to spot. And they end up getting out whenever they are told to, after the load was spotted by someone else, for their own flight paths. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

That's insane. It'll probably take me 3 years to get to 300 jumps. What did you do for a living? I was single, had no girlfriend, worked a government job that let me sneak out during the weekdays, and had no cost of living (I owned the house, and rented rooms to my roommates for enough money to cover the entire mortgage payment). I pretty much took every paycheck straight to the dropzone to buy blocks of tickets. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I'll take a swing at that one, too, if it's ok. I started skydiving with the immediate intention of moving on to BASE. I made a bit over 300 skydives in 3 months, and then pretty much just went BASE jumping. I made most of my skydives on a 150 square foot 9 cell ZP canopy. If I had it to do over again (and had a bit more knowledge going in), I'd opt to set up a much larger rig and put a BASE canopy in it for those skydives. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Much better. I overlooked that in my listing of canopies that would work well. Accuracy canopies are definitely a good choice for a pre-BASE training canopy. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Although the Triathlon is closer to a BASE canopy than many skydiving canopies, it's really not that close. If you're really serious about BASE as your primary focus, consider using a Super Raven, a PD 7 cell, or an older (hence used and cheaper) 7 cell like a Cruiselite. The best option of all, of course, would be to simply pick up a BASE canopy--either buying the one you will use for BASE straight away, or picking up a secondhand one for skydiving duty. Any of these is going to be very large, and require you to get a very big skydiving rig. Honestly, if you're going to get a Triathlon 150 or something thinking it's "close" to a BASE canopy, you're just going to be fooling yourself. Aside from having 7 cells, they have very little in common. Bottom line: If you're serious about training for BASE, skip the Triathlon and just buy a BASE canopy straight away. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

That's a bad reason to switch canopies. If you lay my Troll 290 out on top of a Blackjack 310, they are almost identical sizes. It would be a mistake to move from that "290" Troll to the "310" Blackjack and expect to get an additional 20 square feet of nylon. The numbers used to describe canopies (and pilot chutes, too, for that matter) ought to be viewed as "model names" rather than precise size specifications. They definitely do not transfer directly across between manufacturers. Obviously, and for similar reasons, this means that discussions of wingloading using precise decimal numbers ought to be taken with a grain of salt as well. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I can't remember if your Troll has 4 or 5 brake lines? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

You are confusing forward speed at opening (with brakes set) and available (i.e. maximum) forward speed. See discussion here. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Single wrap with the medium sized rubber band. My reasoning goes like this: The stow band is there to prevent the canopy fabric from moving sideways. If it gets pulled outward, and flexes a little, it's not really a big deal. But if it is already tight, and it gets pulled outward and breaks, then you lose the benefits of having it in place. I'd rather see if flex a little and allow the fabric to travel outward a centimeter or so than to see it break and lose the line control entirely. No one says I'm right, though--this is just my current opinion and reasoning. My thoughts change over time just like everyone elses. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

In my FJC, I give a lecture about specific local sites, in which I hand out informational sheets with guidelines for specific areas. I also give a (separate) lecture on BASE ethics, which includes a discussion of the "Contact the Locals" rule. Either of these would present an opportunity to give UK students some contact info for experienced UK jumpers, and ask them to touch base (pun intended) with them if they haven't already done so. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

A few thoughts about PC inflation: When you toss your PC, it has to do two things. 1) Inflate itself 2) Pull--opening the container and moving the canopy to line stretch. These two functions are both essential to the role of the PC in the parachute deployment, but they are different things, and are influenced by different factors. Some of these factors overlap, some have no effect on the others, and some actually work against each other. Note also that: (a) a PC must (1) inflate, prior to (2) pulling, and; (b) (1) inflation is fairly complex, and subject to far more variation than (2) pull The most important characteristic of (1) inflation is not top speed. It's consistency. It matters little if you can make the PC fully inflate in 2 feet on 1 jump in 100, if the second jump it takes 200 feet. Far better to have it inflated in 10 feet on every single jump. (These numbers are obviously just made up for purposes of illustration.) (1) What can impact inflation? (a) Presentation: The biggest determinant of time to PC inflation is the manner in which it is presented to the airflow. If you toss a tightly wadded, inside out PC into the air, it will likely hesitate noticeably, if it inflates at all. If you pre-inflate the PC by holding it at the bridle attachment point and "lofting" it into the air, it will already be mostly inflated and will likely reach full inflation and begin pulling almost immediately. There are numerous small steps between these states, and lots of debate about various folding methods, which I won't go into here. But the bottom line appears to be that more you can present the PC in the correct orientation, and the fewer folds you put into it, the quicker it will become inflated, and more importantly the more consistent the inflation will be (meaning that it will inflate in approximately the same time in repeated pitches). (b) Air speed: Faster air will inflate a PC faster, and more consistently. (c) PC construction: PC's of different designs experience variance in inflation, most importantly with regard to consistency of inflation. Without delving too deeply into various construction features of pilot chutes, note that features impacting inflation include (a) fabric used (so much so that a set of PC's were recalled from one fabric lot), (b) weight on the apex (handles or caps), (c) reinforcement tapes and the ability of the PC to maintain it's shape under load, and (d) wear of the PC itself. (d) PC size: larger PC's tend to inflate slower and with greater variance, simply because there is more fabric and a longer process to reach inflation. It's important to understand that the biggest goal here is to increase the consistency of repeated inflations--not the overall fastest single inflation. Since we have no way of predicting which inflation is going to be the fast one, it's foolish to "play Russian Roulette" with PC's. If you can find a technique that allows you to predict with great accuracy the altitude consumed by your PC inflation, you will be ahead of the game. 2) What can impact pull? (a) Air speed: PC's pull harder with more air blowing into them. (b) PC Size: Bigger PC's exert more pull force. (c) PC construction: Some PC's, by nature of their design, will yield more pull force per size, and some less. (d) Less oscillation: When a PC orbits around the jumper, the pull force is directed at least partly to the side. Any force used in driving sideways reduces the overall "straight up" component of the pull force which is the most "usefuly" (from a jumpers perspective) element of the pull. Our goal here is basically to match the pull force to our requirements, without overly distorting the pack job as it moves out of the pack tray (a phenomenon generally referred to as "center cell strip" but which includes various other causes as well). Some interesting things to note in the context of this discussion: 1) A larger PC can exert more force (reducing the time to move the canopy to line stretch), but also be more prone to hesitation (increasing the average overall time to inflation). To say that "smaller/larger PC's get you open faster/slower" is a gross oversimplification at best. 2) If you can use a presentation that will sharply reduce your inflation time and variance, you can easily (and should) increase your PC size to take advantage of greater pull force. 3) If your presentation method is one with a greater variance in inflation time (say, a stowed mushroom), you may wish to reduce your PC size to try to (to whatever extent) try to counteract this. 4) PC size (the original topic) works on both sides of this equation. A larger PC works to make your overall opening both faster (more pull force) and slower (more time to inflation and greater variance). More is not necessarily better or worse--the issue is more complex than that. This is a huge topic, and, in my opinion, a poorly understood one. I'd love to write a six volume treatise on this (I think this post is already stretching the limits of acceptable volume), but I'll refrain for now. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

From skydiving: a) Canopy control: Especially if you are a CRW or Accuracy jumper, and hence have experience maneuvering a canopy in close quarters, or jumping a large 7 cell canopy similar to a BASE canopy. Recommendation: take up both CRW and Accuracy early in your skydiving career for maximum benefit. b) Tracking skills: Just because you aren't terminal (yet) on a BASE jump doesn't mean that you can't track. Learning to track from an airplane will help you to dial in a subterminal track, too. c) Airflow "reflexes": Get used to using terminal airflow to recover stability, or to hold heading, or whatever--basically to make your body move where you want. Remember that these skills, also, will have some transfer value to subterminal situations. Having good reflexes like this can really save you on a "just-terminal" or "not-quite-terminal" jump, where you have only a few seconds of good air speed to work with in regaining stability after a problem. d) Familiarity with parachute openings: BASE openings are kind of like skydiving openings at 10x speed. Understanding, and feeling, many skydiving openings will help give you a feel for what's going on during a BASE opening, and also transfer some skill in controlling the opening, giving you some chance (no matter how small, it's still better than none) of controlling an opening to counteract a problem. Familiarity will also make you more alert, and better able to begin controlling the parachute immediately after opening. Other skills: a) Knowledge of wind and micro-climate: Paragliding and Ground launching are good sources for this kind of thing. Understanding the basics of how air generally flows over irregular surfaces is very helpful to a BASE jumper. You can also find reference books with this information, both from a practical perspective (for paragliding pilots, mostly), and from an academic one (look for fluid dynamics texts). b) Rope rescue skills: There are courses available in this, and taking one is a very good idea. To establish familiarity and currency, though, definitely do some roped climbing so that you are very comfortable with using ropes, belaying, rapelling, etc. If you have a chance, go out and just mess around with the rope in unusual contexts, climbing water towers, rappelling off bridges, etc. c) First Aid skills: I think it's obvious why these are desirable. Courses at many different levels are available. d) "Stealth" skills: I won't discuss these here, but consider what you may need to do to access various objects, and what skills might come in handy. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Sean, Can you forward me (via email or PM) a list of the moderators on that forum and their contact info (email, or whatever is most convenient for each of them)? Why don't we just send this message, along with a list of that contact info, to all the folks who teach commercial FJC's? Thanks! -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I make this assessment on every jump. Jumps are dramatically different in risk level, so each needs to be considered individually. Conditions change, objects are different, and even how you feel changes from jump to jump. Ever tried to perform at your best athletically the night after a drinking binge? Some people do that. In my opinion it's very silly, but there you go. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

A couple of years ago, Dave B. was in a film that toured with the Banff Mountain Film Festival, in which he snowboared off terminal cliffs, and then "skyboarded" (still on the snowboard, of course) to move away from the cliffs. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I do a single wrap at pretty much any altitude. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

The purpose of the primary stow is not to keep the slider up. The primary stow is used to stage the deployment of the parachute. Ideally, the canopy should move to line stretch before it begins to expand. The primary stow is intended to keep the canopy together while it moves to line stretch, inhibiting expansion until after line stretch is achieved. If the canopy begins to expand prior to reaching line stretch, there are several potential negative consequences: 1) Slack lines are thrown back and forth as the fabric moves outward. The lines are still in loops as this happens. This can increase the chances of a tension knot. 2) Slack lines can be pulled out of the tail pocket toward the canopy. As the line attachments move outward, they draw line from the tail pocket toward themselves. This line has to come from somewhere, and it is pulled (it is unrestrained without the primary stow)from the mouth of the tail pocket simultaneously with the normal line deployment (the lines feeding out of the tail pocket, running to the risers). Two different parts of the same lines are now being yanked out of the same (relatively small) opening at high speeds. This, too, increases the chances for a tension knot. 3) If the canopy somehow reaches relatively full expansion prior to reaching line stretch, it can decelerate before the jumper hits the end of the lines. This stops the jumper more suddenly (but not in less consumed altitude, actually), greatly increasing the opening shock that the jumper perceives. In the most extreme case, this can injure the jumper and/or damage the canopy. Picture falling at terminal and suddenly having a fully inflated canopy for the most extreme case, but be aware that I have seen jumpers knocked unconscious by this kind of out of sequence inflation on delays as short as 2 seconds. The primary stow stages the deployment to slow the jumper throughout the process (instead of all at once), and reduces the chance of a tension knot resulting from slack lines being thrown around, or pulled multiple directions, as the canopy moves to line stretch. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

No. Not given your experience level and selection of jumps/objects. We're becoming accustomed to seeing people with hundreds of jumps from the same 3 (or 1) objects, all of which are very forgiving. If your cliff strike incident, for example, had been an offheading experienced here in Twin, it wouldn't have been an incident. Same with the 180 (in fact, it wasn't really an incident anyway). Your tree landing wouldn't be an incident by most people's standards, and in fact, wouldn't have been an incident at all for many people chosing to jump easier sites. Short anwer: your incident rate is probably about average--it's just your selection of sites that's advanced, possibly combined with the fact that you are more forthcoming about your own experiences/incidents than 99% of jumpers. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

In theory, colder air ought to be better for PC inflation, for basically those reasons. If you read through this thread, you will see Lonnie's comment. At this point in time, I'd guess that Lonnie has more sub-zero BASE jumps than anyone else on earth. The theory seems to agree with his experience, but where they might disagree, I'd go with his experience first. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

[shudder]can...we...not...talk...about...that...please?[/shudder] Having experienced that multiple times, as well as NG tube (rubber hose that runs down your nostril and into your stomach) and ET tube (breathing tube down your throat), all of which Hecker got to have, I will state my educated opinion that the NG tube is by far the worst of the lot. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Come on dude. What's the point of starting yet another thread to carry on the same old endless pissing contest? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Perhaps they just don't want to get dragged into another of this forum's seemingly endless wingsuit brandwars. Have you considered just emailing to ask? I find that most manufacturers are quite a bit more talkative when they don't feel like they're going to have to defend whatever they say. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com