TomAiello

Why? If a single piece gave significant speed gains in initiating the turn, it would be far more valuable than maintaining the ability to do a front (very rare) or rear (the place of which would be taken by the Bryan cord--my new name for this device) riser turn. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I've done test jumps (without a wall in front of me) like that. Vented canopies turned fairly well. Unvented canopies had lots of trouble (I think they need to get flying more before you can get them to turn that way). They just tended to waffle there until I let up and allowed them to inflate, then pulled down again to turn. Still, I've never tried it with a direct frame of reference in front of me. Every time that happens, I'm too scared to mess around, and just grab both rears. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I wonder if you could just grab the slider and have the same effect? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Snopes -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I just had to move this over here. It's too funny to let it stay bottled up in BASE. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

When I last modified my sig line, I got back a red error message to the effect that it exceeded the allowed length of 200 characters. But it appears to work anyway. Perhaps because the extra characters were in the URL for the PM bit? More a feature than a bug, at any rate. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

He is not physically in the wheelchair during the jump. These were slider down BASE jumps, so tracking wasn't a part of the jump. He landed in water. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I already have Sporto's photos. We burned them onto a CD for Russel to take home that night. Thanks! -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I nominate Quade and Billvon. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Dude, come on. What's he supposed to say? "That guy sucked and I'm glad to be rid of him"? Be realistic. When someone leaves government service (or your dropzone, or your department, or whatever) you stand up and say some nice things about them, even (or perhaps especially) if you despise them. That's just the way things are generally done in polite society. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I'm trying to find anyone who took photos of Russel (the guy in the wheelchair who jumped over Memorial Day in Twin Falls). I've gotten some photos, and I'd like to put together a CD of them to give to him (Russel, that is). If you've got some photos of him that you would be willing to let him have for private, non-commercial use, shoot me a PM or email. Thanks! -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

General word to all (just responding to skreamer as the last poster). Let's not let this devolve into a "you guys were dumb for jumping" finger pointing match. Some people decided to jump. Some people didn't. Many people learned things. By keeping this discussion positive, maybe some more people can learn things. Thanks! -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Sounds like a good idea to me. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

That depends on if you mean the wind conditions or the condition of people's heads. The latter is almost always more important. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I was a bit worried about the example that might set. The thing is that Russel didn't have to worry about winds on landing, or turbulence over the trees, since he was intentionally landing in the water. Same goes for the (very small) number of folks who made intentional water jumps on Sunday afternoon. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I wasn't trying to say that wind on Sunday was just as bad as Saturday. Saturday, on the whole was definitely worse. By comparison, that made Sunday look good, even though Sunday was also quite bad. Many people jumped Sunday afternoon in conditions that on Saturday morning they had backed down in. The wind that folks were backing off in at 7am Saturday was roughly the same wind that they cheerfully jumped in (and some got injured in) at 3pm Sunday. In fact it was roughly the same wind recorded at 9am and 11am Sunday. Regardless, in my opinion, winds on Sunday were too high for most beginners to be jumping in. And we had a lot of beginners jumping on Sunday. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I don't have any specifics. But, the injuries that I know of all happened to low time jumpers. The problem appeared to be one of group dynamics, more than anything else. On Saturday, almost everyone grounded themselves for wind. By sunday, with a huge number of jumpers in town, everyone was chomping at the bit. Despite the fact that conditions were just as bad by 10am Sunday as they had been Saturday morning, everyone pretty much decided to jump anyway. I still have the (five) voicemail and answering machine messages from various jumpers (at least two of them very experienced) urging me to come down to the bridge and jump (I had gone out around 7am and decided not to jump) on Sunday. At any rate, it's my opinion that the injuries largely resulted from too much pent up "jump fever", which caused a very large number of people to jump in marginal-to-bad conditions. On the other hand, I have the luxury of not needing to jump on any particular day, because when everybody has to go home at the end of the weekend, I'm still just a few minutes away. That makes it easy for me to wait for better conditions. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I've impacted water at a touch over five seconds with very little out. I know of two people who have died at the same spot impacting with nothing out. I also know of two people (other than myself) who have survived very high speed impacts there. I think a lot depends on how you hit the water. If you hit it flat, you're pretty much toast. If you can hit feet first in a good "entry" position, you can probably get away with a life flight trip and a hospital stay. I'm not sure how this bears on impact at terminal, which I suspect would reduce the survivability to near zero. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I've had two water landings in a suit (SF1, which is fairly restrictive). On the first I only had to swim for a few minutes, but on the second it was more than 10 minutes before the boat pulled me out. While swimming in the suit is difficult, it is not impossible. The suit takes on very little water, actually, because once you cut the wings away, they tend to collapse. Definitely a good idea. Swimming in the suit is a pain. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I bet those darn kids will just pull the fence up and slide underneath. Pesky little brats, I tell you. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

A manufacturer (who happens to have manufactured some gear you might have worried about) once told me that he keeps no "official" records of gear ownership. He might have some unofficial "personal" records that he could refer to in the case of lost or stolen gear, though. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

One additional thought: That may not be true if you are jumping into a headwind. This is because the headwind adds an additional horizontal component to your velocity, and thus increases distance travelled per time, making it important to turn in minimum time (in order to minimize absolute distance travelled). I've used toggles to turn around 180's on solid objects with headwinds. But heck, since you ought not to be jumping solid objects in a headwind, it's probably not that important. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

The second part of that is very important, and in my experience, often overlooked. A canopy that is flying slower will generally turn slower. That doesn't mean you're more likely to hit the object. It just means that you will take more time to do the turn. In fact that "slower" (in time) turn is less likely to strike the object because it is "faster" (in distance used). -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Can you explain this a little more? Are you talking about "fast" in time (in which case I generally agree) or "fast" in forward travel before the turn (in which case I don't think I agree with you)? Just because something reacts in less time does not always mean that it reacts in less distance. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Was the canopy vented or unvented? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com