TomAiello

I have been very confused on that issue myself. Here's what I've learned. Every manufacturer I contacted (CR, BR, Vertigo) says that their canopy is measured according to the PIA standard. In general, the Troll is about the same size as the next larger canopy from other manufacturers. I'm not sure why Atair doesn't measure their canopies using the PIA standard. A question for Stane, I suppose. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I'm trying to sort it out. If you go to the realone web site with a mac, they want you to pay. But if you go there with a PC, you get that link (for the Mac) where it's supposed to be free. I'll follow the link with a mac tonight and see if I can get it to work for free (for longer than 14 days per email address). -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Ok, now I'm really boycotting RealPlayer. If you load their page on a PC, they let you have the player free. But if you load it on a Macintosh, they want money for it. I think I'll stick to my (free) quicktime, thanks. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Hmmm. So it is. That must have changed recently. The last time I tried to download it--in January--they wanted a credit card number to get the Macintosh version. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Do you have it in any other format? I'm opposed to RM, since they want me to pay for what everybody else gives away for free (the player for their format). -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I did a similar thing hopping around in rock shoes, back when I was a climber. It took about six months to heal. It sucked. You might want to see a doctor. I know a guy who did that, and kept aggravating it to the point that he eventually needed surgery (and his doctor told him never to run again). Treatment sooner, rather than later, would have prevented that. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I got this response from the owner when I inquired where she had acquired the gear: Take it how you like. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Here's a few threads to look at for starters. Body Armor Poll and discussion. Protective Gear Safety Jackets Forum Search for term "body armor". -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Go make a jump. That's what I'm going to do, anyway... -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

You should also remember that there are often trespassing laws that might apply to just being at the exit point, even if there are no laws specific to jumping. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

It's a really old suit. Original birdman, before the name "Classic" was used, back when that was the only suit. Can anyone tell me what the "S.U.I.T" on the label stands for? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

My apologies if it appears that way. I try to be as fair as possible. If you see something that sticks out, drop me a PM, and I'll have a look. Remember that I do have a limited amount of time, so I'm more likely to police people who are prone to repeated one liners, in the hope of cutting the amount dramatically, than to remove the only innapropriate post that someone has ever put up. The flow of communication is the important thing, I think. If the one liners and inside jokes, responding to each other, exceed a full screen, you can almost be sure I'll jump in. Until that point, it will depend on how much time I have on any particular day. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

It depends on where they are jumping. I know several people with a ton of jumps who've never made an illegal jump. If all your jumps are in Florida (your area, from your profile)? I'd say you're going to get busted sooner or later. The real way to avoid the problem is just not to make illegal jumps. Go on trips to any of the dozens of legal jump areas around the world. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Here's my general reasoning on this: 1) Humor is fine. One line zingers that only your friend gets are better done in PM. Jokes unrelated to BASE belong in Talkback. So if you post "hey, you look sexy in that pink hat..." it ought to be a PM. If you post "so, three guys walk into a bar..." it goes to Talkback. 2) This thread, while couched in humorous terms, is really part of a more serious discussion in the "BASE without Skydives" thread. While Ray may have chosen to make his point in a humorous manner, he is still trying to make a point about BASE without prior skydiving training. That means that this thread fits very well into the underlying nature of this forum (discussions about BASE, generally focussing on people who are starting, or thinking of starting BASE). In short, I disagree with your basic premise that this thread is not BASE related. Despite it's humorous approach, it is a thread about the idea of BASE jumping without prior skydiving experience. That's clearly BASE related. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I skydive with a Protrac, whenever I skydive. I often use a GPS skydiving (with a wingsuit) as well. I'd imagine a Protrac would be a fairly valuable tool to practice delay, if you used it to clock very short delays. Does anyone have experience using one for that? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I don't know. I did static line. I still don't feel like the static line course gave much in the way of delay training. No one ever looked at the delay, or watched the video to see if I was doing the correct delays. I had a look at it last year, and noticed that all of my delays seemed wrong. On the early delays, they were way too short (my 5 second delay was more like 2 seconds) and on the later ones, way too long. My point is that the delay itself was never really part of the feedback my instructors gave. I wouldn't doubt that my instruction was sub-standard, but it's the only experience I have to work from. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

It's not an -oly. The word you're looking for is Monopsony. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Spence, are you feeling ok? You do know you're going to have to use a slider over there, right? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Answer is: a few posts above this. But I do know some folks who did that. I think they're nuts. But they probably think I'm nuts, too. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I don't think it would work that way. As someone earlier in this thread mentioned, doing your first BASE jump is often so dramatic _because_ you have the perspective of skydiving. Without that perspective (both in terms of altitude and in terms of culture) I tend to think that a first BASE jump would actually be a bit less scary, depending on the individual. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I'm definitely not advocating learning to fly a wingsuit off a cliff. It's a freefall dependent skill that _really_ needs to be learned out of a plane. I made my first BASE wingsuit flight after about 150 wingsuit skydives. The thing is, I _suck_ at wingsuit flight. Out of an airplane, it was really hard to tell how bad I sucked, or what was going on. And unfortunately, I was making those jumps at a DZ where every other wingsuit flyer was working all day, so I'd get maybe one jump with other people for every ten solo jumps. Without a frame of reference, I had no idea what was happening on the skydives. But on a BASE jump, I had an instant frame of reference, and that made a lot of difference. This is one of the big reasons that CRW, for example is far more valuable canopy training than just doing solo canopy drill dives. The other canopies around you give you a frame of reference. Still, since they are moving, you will probably learn more with a stationary referent. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Sure. But that had happened on dozens of skydives before that. And on the skydives I had no idea what was happening, and couldn't tell what worked and what didn't, so I couldn't work on it. On the BASE jump. I could see, and correct, and get instant feedback to my changes in body position. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Mostly, I started this discussion because of an email that I've seen passed around the internet. In it, a relatively low experienced BASE jumper, who learned without ever making a skydive, declares his intention to start a "BASE School" for non-skydivers (specifically, college students). I've inquired about whether this is a joke (surely, I thought, it must be), but received no response at all to my repeated inquries. That makes me think that we're going to see this kind of thing sooner, rather than later. It also makes me think we're going to see it from "instructors" with no skydives, and relatively little BASE experience. So, I'm interested in this discussion for two reasons: 1) To get as many people as possible to provide illustrations of why they think this is a bad idea (so that hopefully some prospective students will read and think about at least some of these arguments), and; 2) To talk about what the safest way to conduct such a course would be, so that any potential "instructors" will at least try to do so in the safest possible manner (for example, PCAing a round over water, rather than putting their students off for a hand held 2 second delay). So, another question for you: If you saw someone actually giving a first jump course like that described above, what would you do? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Remember that in this hypothetical example, we are talking about PCA's. Overdelaying a PCA will be very challenging for even the most gifted primate. But, what exactly does skydiving teach you about delay timing? On a skydive, you look at an altimeter. This has nothing to do with delay or pull altitude determination in the BASE environment. Everyone, regardless of their skydiving experience (absent some old school skydivers who really did pull at BASE like altitudes back in the day) is going to have to learn BASE delays from the same starting point (i.e. no relevant experience at all). The only people I can think of who _might_ have an advantage are hard core bungee jumeprs, who have experience judging things like sandbag releases. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

In my life, I've noticed that most of the time that "everybody knows" something, it turns out not to be the case. In all seriousness. I don't think that massively greater canopy flight time is going to make as much difference as everyone automatically assumes. For example, I have learned more, per jump, about wingsuit flight, on BASE jumps than on skydives. I think this is because the frame of reference is better for seeing what is going on in terms of absolute flight (as opposed to relative flight). For the record, I believe that someone who makes 50 directed "BASE training" skydives (like say, DdOg, who had the advantage of coaching toward BASE from the beginning) is 85% of the time going to be better prepared than someone who just runs out and makes any 200 skydives (like me) to prepare for BASE. I think that Clint's BASE oriented skydiving training program is a major step forward for BASE education. I wonder if there oughtn't be a skydiving "training" segment to every FJC? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com