Going Stowed

[base698 1]

At what altitude do you start reguarly go stowed? I know some people who go stowed from incredibly low and others who never go stowed below 500 ft etc.

Anyone got any gnarly stories from going stowed low?

[Zennie 0]

Lowest I've personally seen someone go stowed is 240. I've gone stowed from 300.

Don't think I'd want to do that much lower. You miss and... well, you better not miss.

- Z
"Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

[base698 1]

My lowest freefall is 300 and everytime I've done that low its been stowed. On many occasions I'm open just as high as the people going handheld. I don't think I'd go stowed from lower than that either :)

[PoeticDelirium 0]

I personally only start considering it from 300 ft and above.

I figure that for a lot of people, it is a comfort factor that is based on what you jump regularly. Around here, all we got is A's in the range of 250 to 400 ft. So for us, 400 ft is considered 'high'
Watched my first stowed jump from the 225 ft range about a week and a half ago. Damn, that was cool! Not for me though!

[Faber 0]

im not stowed at 400ft yet and im too lazy to climb more

I just dont see the reason,unless your doing arials or slider up.

If your bridel is proberly secured it should not be a problem to make a flat stabel delay from 400ft handheld,but i could see if it went wrong
Just me but i has been told im not normal

Stay safe
Stefan Faber

[rfarris 1]

Quote

Anyone got any gnarly stories from going stowed low?

I was with my mentor on a 300' A,(320' if we climb the beacon pole), and routinely go handheld.
Normally I get my p.c. out, get it ready, he checks my bridle routing, mates my velcro tabs, then he gets his out and does the same. Well this one night he decides to go stowed. He waits til mine is out and all s-folded before he tells me he's going stowed, clever, T. Long story short, I watched him exit, pitch his p.c., instead of it going out behind his arm, it ends up going in front of his arm and for a brief moment gets caught on his arm. He does the swimmer's stroke to clear it, and as a result his body starts to orbit to the right just before opening.

All turned out good, but it's an example of what can happen, even to very experienced jumpers.

So far, 450' is my lowest "stowed" jump. And the only reason I go stowed on it is because there isn't a platform for me to ready my p.c. on safely. I'm perfectly comfortable going stowed from 450'. But if I could safely prepare my p.c. while hanging on to the outside ladder, hold it, and maneuver around to the exit side, I'd prefer to go handheld. But I can't, so to me going stowed is the safer option on that particular tower.

But on a low (300' or less)platformed tower, I don't see the necessity to go stowed other than the "oohh", and "wow" factor.

Rod

[TomAiello 25]

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...instead of it going out behind his arm, it ends up going in front of his arm...

Was there a tailwind? And if so, how strong?

I've seen that happen three times (once to me) in strongish (15+ mph) tailwinds.

-- Tom Aiello

[email protected]
SnakeRiverBASE.com

[rfarris 1]

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Was there a tailwind? And if so, how strong?

I would say we had a 12-15mph tail wind that night.

Rod

[outrager 6]

Yo !

It seems that everybody has forgotten a discussion going on a while ago about PC hesitation.

The outcome of that discussion: basically, a combination of going stowed with a large PC and a short delay produces occasional PC hesitations that range from uncomfortable to nearly fatal. It appears to be a matter of statistics.

Having seen ugly hesitations on 300'-range stowed jumps and reading many more stories, i personally don't like to go stowed under 400' or stow PCs bigger than 42".

bsbd!

Yuri.

[DexterBase 0]

I'd like to know how you measured your opening height compared to the hand-held jumpers.

Were you using the same containers?

Were you using the same PC size?

Were you using the same canopies?

I ask these questions because I personally feel that going stowed greatly increases the amount of vertical distance used during deployment in low airspeed. Unless the other jumpers you're referring to had excessively poor PC toss technique, it's really unlikely that your deployment occured as fast as theirs.

When you toss a PC to the side, it goes into freefall with you until it catches enough air to inflate and go to bridle stretch. (This effect increases with the size of the pilot chute also.) This still happens pretty fast, but not nearly as fast as throwing the PC up to bridle stretch.

While the difference may seem small by watching video of the PC-bridle stretch sequence, the true difference occurs later in the deployment.

Since your acceleration is exponential, when you consume unnecessary altitude early in the jump, you will have to pay big later in the jump.

Basically if you can speed up the amount of time it takes the PC to reach bridle stretch, the higher you will open.

edit: typos

[base698 1]

Quote

When you toss a PC to the side, it goes into freefall with you until it catches enough air to inflate and go to bridle stretch. (This effect increases with the size of the pilot chute also.) This still happens pretty fast, but not nearly as fast as throwing the PC up to bridle stretch.

I tossed upwards on all my low speed stowed jumps. I think this is my reason for opening around the same height as everyone else. One guy did have a PC Hesi going handheld, perhaps due to older pilot chute, that caused him to be 40 ft or so lower than everyone else. This resulted in him making some noticable cringes in freefall.

[TomAiello 25]

Some things to remember about going stowed.

1) As Outrager points out, stowing a PC results in a significantly greater chance for a hesitation. This potential variation in inflation time is the real reason to go hand held at low altitude.

2) Stowed PC's have a far greater variation in inflation time than hand held PC's. This means that any given stowed deployment could open faster than a particular hand held deployment--if the hand held deployment was on the slow side and the stowed deployment was way up on the fast end of the range.

3) I have witnessed several significant (2 seconds or more) hesitations on go and throw deployments with stowed PC's. The longest hesitation I have seen with a hand held PC is around half a second.

The bottom line is that the real difference between going stowed and hand held is not speed. The difference is consistency. If you are already in the basement, you need consistency. If you have some altitude to spare, perhaps you can afford to deal with a little hesitation.

-- Tom Aiello

[email protected]
SnakeRiverBASE.com

[PerFlare 0]

Hi,

I have some rules of thumb I use for this.

Slider up, stowed.

Slider down, handheld if it is possible. If the exit point do not allow you to go handheld I go stowed. I do not go stowed low with big PC's for the same reasons Tom A mention.

Some times I just go stowed for the hell of it. And there are other variables to but ...

PerFlare

[DaveO 0]

Although altitude plays a very important roll in choosing whether to go stowed or not lets not forget about the landing area. A nasty pc hesitation can put you in a undesirable location where you can't make the landing area. Add a 90 or even a 180 degree off heading to that and all you got is-- power lines, sub-stations, fences, trees, talus, street lights, cars, .... and the list can go on. So even if the object is 450ft it might not be a good idea to go stowed. Just my 2 cents.

"When it comes to BASE, I'll never give advice, only my opinion"

[TomAiello 25]

It's interesting to note that the most experienced people responding to this thread (PerFlare, Outrager, Robibird) are pretty strongly in favor of going hand held on any jump from 400' or lower.

edit: added Robi.

-- Tom Aiello

[email protected]
SnakeRiverBASE.com

[robibird 2]

Agree with this what was said bellow 100%.
I can't really see were is the point of using stowed on object lower than 350 ft.
Exception is radical Arial, however those who are doing this are going stowed - but with PC 42'' I believe...
Robibird


''It seems that everybody has forgotten a discussion going on a while ago about PC hesitation.

The outcome of that discussion: basically, a combination of going stowed with a large PC and a short delay produces occasional PC hesitations that range from uncomfortable to nearly fatal. It appears to be a matter of statistics.

Having seen ugly hesitations on 300'-range stowed jumps and reading many more stories, i personally don't like to go stowed under 400' or stow PCs bigger than 42". ''

Robert Pecnik
[email protected]
www.phoenix-fly.com

[AdamF 0]

Going stowed is a relatively new thing to BASE. It has become the norm and for the most part that's OK.
Although many aspects of the isssue are being discussed in this thread, I'd like to draw your attention to an article written and presented over 6 years ago when going stowed was more novel.

Check out the document entitled: stowed in our library. Hopefully, it will add a bit of context to the dicussion.
In skydiving and in BASE (until recently) pilot chute reliability has been chronicaly overestimated.
It's good to see constructive dialouge on the subject.

Thanks

Adam Filippino
Consolidated Rigging

[jkbasejumper 0]

hey dex could you clarify "throwing the pc up"i have never seen any fjc teach this method before i was always tought to throw it away from the body.
if you meen up as in an angle i see your point but others may not.
also there is alot of talk about hesis' with a stowed pc and through personal expeirences i have had a couple going hand held as well as stowed is that normal? or is it just more common when the pc is stowed?

jason kennon

big country
base998

[madflicker 0]

Very good article. My favorite part is:

"if your pilot chute fails to work properly, your whole day will rapidly deteriorate."

so true:)

[link1 0]

i have never gone stowed before ...yet...but there is definitely something to just letting go of that PC into the gathering airstream that's pretty cool!

[TomAiello 25]

Quote

hey dex could you clarify "throwing the pc up"i have never seen any fjc teach this method before i was always tought to throw it away from the body.

"Throwing Up" is an advanced technique for low altitude freefalls. It shouldn't be taught in a First Jump Course.

Quote

i have had a couple going hand held as well as stowed is that normal? or is it just more common when the pc is stowed?

It's just more common. Hesitations occur on both hand held and stowed deployments.

-- Tom Aiello

[email protected]
SnakeRiverBASE.com

[jkbasejumper 0]

hey tom,
i know that it is an advanced practice but for the sake of newbies i just thought maybe someone could make it a little more clear as to the correct way to do it so someone new does not read it and think "hey i'll just toss this over my head and see what happens"
i just found the related topic on blinc any way you could put some of those here?

thanks again tom.

jason kennon

big country
base998

[TomAiello 25]

Quote

i just found the related topic on blinc any way you could put some of those here?

Here you go.

-- Tom Aiello

[email protected]
SnakeRiverBASE.com

[DexterBase 0]

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TomAiello: "Throwing Up" is an advanced technique for low altitude freefalls. It shouldn't be taught in a First Jump Course.

Absolutely.

jkbasejumper, if you're still interested in learning more about this technique here is the thread at Blinc.

Hopefully someone unfamiliar with the techniques required for going low, will not try anything without consulting their mentor. Newer jumpers should be jumping objects where minor variations in their PC toss will not make the difference between them surviving or not.

If you're relying on technique to keep you out of the dirt, you're already going really low and you should understand why things are working and why they need to be done a certain way. Just knowing which method to use is cool, but is certainly not as valuable as knowing why.

It is pretty unsettling and surprising to see how little many jumpers know about the equipment they're using. This is in skydiving and BASE. More common in skydiving fortunately.

jkbasejumper, these comments are not directed at you, your post just got me on the topic.

[base689 0]

>...but for the sake of newbies I just thought maybe someone could make it a little more clear as to the correct way to do it...
Listen to what Dexter says.
If you are a newbie and are asking about throwing up PC, probably you are doing something "out of place" for you in that moment.
To jump really low objects, as someone much more expert than me says, you have to pay you dues jumping quite a number of jumps off "not so low" objects.
Believe me, the traditional "toss PC aside your body" works really well to jump low objects, low down to 65m-213ft/60m-197ft, that, for a relatively newbie, start to be quite an extreme jump, unnecessary for a newbie to jump in freefall.
For a newbie, jumping a 65m-213ft/60m-197ft object is looking for trouble.
For a newbie, jumping an object LOWER than 65m-213ft/60m-197ft is looking for BIG trouble.
After several tens of jumps, possibly passing 50 or 100 BASE jumps, when practice, experience and knowledge will have accumulated on yourself, probably you will have witnessed personally someone who does the "PC throw up" technique.
Only after that, you could be ready for the "throwing up" technique granted you are going to freefall a 48m-157ft object and granted you want to jump it in freefall so BAD (when going SL or DB or whatever else would be way more appropriate).
Just my 0.02€

Stay safe out there
Blue Skies and Soft Walls
BASE #689 - base_689AT_NO_123_SPAMyahoo.com