Fast advancement of BASE technology??

[Kirils 1]

I have less than 10 BASE jumps now and I'm still very skeptical if I willl continue. What amazes me is the rapid advancement of BASE canopy technology!
You guy's gotta be embarassing the conventional canopy manufacturing community! Why not apply your brillance and port over your concepts to non BASE community? Is there so much political pressure to prevent it? I just bought a BASE PC for my regular rig because it has a superior deployment.
The new BASE designs are great.

"Slow down! You are too young
to be moving that fast!"

Old Man Crawfish

[PhreeZone 15]

A lot of the base concepts like vents and multipoint attachments don't really have a practical use in terminal skydiving. Vented PC's might be the only item I know of that could carry over but I'm yet to see data that proves they reduce off heading openings compared to a properly constructed PC from RWS or Cazer at terminal. What other options can be carried over?

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

[NickD 1]

BASE gear technology can advance quickly, and it did, especially in the early years, because there’s no bureaucratic red tape standing in the way of new products and ideas.

BASE riggers are totally free to dream up new ideas in the afternoon and then go try those ideas off the roof of the Flat Iron Building that night. BASE jumping is the only aviation type activity that exists (and thrives) without intervention or oversight from any outside source.

You can see the negative effect oversight causes in the area of General Aviation. Newer ideas like fuel injection and electronic ignition, rather than carburetors and magnetos are still rare in small aircraft because the FAA makes manufacturers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on shake & bake testing followed by huge amounts of paperwork. Most of this documentation is worded to hold a new idea up in court, not an aircraft up in flight.

The downside for BASE jumping is anyone can open up “Joe’s BASE Factory, Inc.” and sell gear. This concept would chill spines in almost any other endeavor. However, to my knowledge, no one has ever been killed by truly catastrophic failure of this gear. This is due to the fact the sport is (still) small and the peer review is brutal. As the sport grows this may not always be the case. And I think it’s inevitable you’ll one day see BASE rigs hanging next to the Kayaks down at REI.

How the BASE gear industry came to be is a story in itself but the first BASE gear manufacturer is probably Master Rigger Jim Handbury from Southern Californian.

In the early 1980s jumpers, who traveled to Yosemite, start to realize if they give up some altitude, there are plenty of jumps right in their own backyards. This is how Phil Smith (BASE #1) started jumping a local tower in Texas. “I drove by this darn thing hundreds of times on my way to work and never paid any attention to it. The morning after I returned from the Valley that 1100-foot tower leaped out at me like I’d never seen it before.” Phil’s probably the first person to experience the long climb thinking, “Oh man, what the hell am I doing?”

Meanwhile, out in California Carl Boenish decided to tether a hot air balloon at 300-feet over Lake Elsinore and do freefalls from it. Carl went to rigger Jim Handbury and asked for a container designed for the job. Carl’s thinking is the skydiving rigs of the day are too complicated for the task at hand. Handbury builds the first rig and deliverers it to Carl a few days later. It’s a single container harness system held closed by a strip of Velcro on its bridle. Except for the shrivel flap and other further refinements it’s remarkably similar to what’s used today.

My own very first BASE rig is in the style of times. You’d spend a weekend picking the stitches out of a second hand skydiving system in order to separate the container from the harness. Then you sent the harness to one of several fledgling BASE gear providers who returned it (sooner or later) with a spanking new Velcro closed BASE container attached. Put a Pegasus, Unit, or Cruislite in the container and presto, you had the hot set-up.

Nick
BASE 194

World BASE Fatality List
http://juliabell.home.att.net/

[Dd0g 0]

Quote

BASE gear technology can advance quickly, and it did, especially in the early years, because there’s no bureaucratic red tape standing in the way of new products and ideas.

In more recent times, I also believe that we benefit from BASE gear manufacturers that are both active in our sport and that truly care about the folks who use their gear. From BR and CR through Morpheus and Vertigo (in the States), each manufacturer is headed up by real, honest-to-goodness jumpers with heaps of knowledge and plenty of desire to make gear better for the sake of their many jumping friends.

Were it not for these hands-on, caring manufacturers, we'd be left with the temptation to simply sit back and "let someone else take the risks of being first." Instead, we have manufacturers that actively seek out experienced jumper feedback and who actively engage with the jumping community in debating new ideas in gear configuration.

Finally, we have a minimum of classical "marketing" in BASE. We hear about gear from other jumpers, good or bad. We try the gear ourselves, and then buy it - or not. There's nobody in the world who makes a dime from being a "sponsored jumper" from the manufacturers, and therefore there's not a lick of economically-motivated "spin" about BASE gear from independent jumpers.

Peace,

D-d0g

+~+~+~+~
But this, surely, was the glory that no spirits, canine or human, had ever clearly seen, the light that never was on land or sea, and yet is glimpsed by the quickened mind everywhere.

[Faber 0]

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What other options can be carried over?

WLO-toggles to bigger reserves

Saddelbags(i realy need one,to rubberbands,beer openers and stuff)

One you cant carrie over:
The smile at your face when you put on a BASE rig instead of a skydive rig

Stay safe
Stefan Faber

[NickD 1]

To address the original question of this thread:

There is indeed something that carried over from BASE to Skydiving. However, the device in question is originally a skydiving mod that fell out of favor, flourished in BASE jumping, and then re-appeared back in skydiving.

It's the tail pocket.

BASE jumpers use it now on otherwise free packed canopies and skydiving CRW jumpers use it as a way to control the lines without using a deployment bag.

I remember Fred Lunquist, at Lake Elsinore, having a similar setup to the BASE tail pocket on his Nimbus skydiving rig back in the early 1980’s. Only his pocket is sewn onto a stabilizer, and not the tail of the canopy, and it’s called a side pocket.

This is during a time when experimenting with deployment methods is cool. There is one fellow who just sewed a pud to the nose of his Strato Star and just reached back at pull time and grabbed that . . .

Nick
BASE 194