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NickDG

Accident - Last Night?

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My brother lives very close to downtown and as a former resident of Calgary myself (I still own a home in that city even though I don't live there), I too know what sort of wind conditions which can prevail there. Now if you thinking jumping Bs in wind isn't a bad idea? Hmmm ... well ... I have nothing further to say. :S

By the way Michael, we've met each other and I like you and your bro. ;)


Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

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NO! NO! NO!
You're all are missing the point entirely!
Its not Red Bull and Miles and proper training ethic to blame at all!
There I got the last word! Now don't reply anyone so it stays that way or else bothering to post on these forums will be pointless.

edit to remove personal attacks and inflammatory comments ~TA

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Hey!

Sorry, I think I probably came across wrong. This whole thing's kind of got my back up, so perhaps I'm more defensive than I need to be.

To be honest, if I was going to sit in a stairwell for a few hours hoping for a jump, I probably would not have chosen that night because I wouldn't say the odds were good. Conditions were certainly unstable.

I suppose I just want to head off any assumption about conditions at the exit point, as long as the only person who really knows what those conditions were remains in hospital.

Again, sorry if I bit your head off there.

Michael

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Maybe I am the only one who sees this, so maybe I am wrong, but I believe very strongly that dragging wuffos (Yes all you PG pilots, this means you) into base is wrong. I believe that if soemong wants to base, great, but that they should go the establiched route. You learn a lot about jumping in general (it people, culture, social norms, heck, maybe you even start to care about jumping iteself) by going to the DZ and learning to skydive. There are transferable skills and thats whay EVERY other FJC requires skydiving backgrounds. That should be enough to make these PG pilots think that just maybe, they should go that route. But no, we've got this one guy who thinks he knows better than the entirety of the established base industry/ sport.

Whether you like to admit it, being sposored by Redbull does give that opinion, as udderly stupid as it is, some additional value in the eyes of said wuffos. It would be easy to say nothing and figure as long as one of his students doens't come into my area, what do I care? As we havce seen at the Perrine one or two people with poor attitudes and ethics can really fuck things up for lots of people. I choose to say my piece so if the shit does come down I'll have every right to grumble. In the mean time, I'll do what I can to educate those drawn in by this guy's antics.

Simply put: I'm not knocking anyone for teaching base. There are many fine instructors with excellent curriculums willing to teach it correctly. Marketing base to whuffos, however, is wrong. Teaching people that base is easy is wrong. I find it hard to beleive that the majority of base jumpers disagree with this.

BTW, if he jumperd in 20 to 30 mph winds... well that pretty much makes my case one way or another.

Enjoy your day.

edit to remove PA's, and continued response to inflammatory exchange ~TA

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As for the different routes one can take to BASE jumping... I think it's obvious that a well-prepared paraglider is on equal footing with a well-prepared skydiver in this sport.



Michael

I find your expressed points of view on this quite incongruous with the experience implied in your profile.

Maybe because you have 1200 skydives, you have forgotten what your skills and awareness were like when you had none, when you had 50 and when you had a few hundred more skydives.

I find it very surprising that no-one has pointed out in the paraglider vs. skydiver experience/skill/preparedness debate that one glaring difference between the two actvities is that skydivers deploy a packed parachute, much like basejumpers do.

How do you develop the awareness, familiarity and ability to react during deployment that a switched-on skydiver with a few hundred jumps should have, by paragliding?

The simple answer is you can not. Those who have a few hundred (and I do not mean 150 or 200, I mean 500 or more) skydives are going to be worlds better prepared during deployment and opening than a paraglider with a few thousand hours paragliding and only minimal, if any skydiving experience.

Being a paraglider with vast amounts of canopy time and far superior (to us lowly skydivers) canopy flying skills, does not help you much if you never get the chance to fly your canopy because something happened during deployment and you had insufficient awareness and skills during that phase of a BASE jump to deal with it.

As you well know deployment is one of the most important parts of a BASE jump, especially with a solid object behind you, why would someone want to enter the world of BASE with this glaring deficiency in their skillset?

I'm not saying that's what happened with this incident - I was not there, so I can not say what happened.

I'm saying this is an area where paragliders are at a great disadvantage to experienced skydivers.

IMHO the proper way to prepare oneself for BASE is something like this:
- the highest skydiving licence your national association issues (except maybe in the UK, where you need 1000 jumps for a D, a C at 500 will do)
- PRO, EJR, demo rating (whatever your association calls theirs) and 50 demo jumps that require the rating, using your BASE canopy
- compete at nationals in accuracy, once again, on your BASE canopy
- 10 or more CRW jumps, on your BASE canopy
- riggers rating and a number of reserve repacks for others

anything less than this and you are taking shortcuts around valuable learning experience

I was stupid enough to start BASE with less than this experience and I have been lucky enough to have gotten away with it so far. I am actively working on gaining this experience and I know that when I do I will be significantly better prepared than I am now at 470 skydives and 106 BASE jumps.

I think you have likely forgotten how low your level of awareness during deployment was 10 years ago, when you had only 50 skydives.

For me that's only 3 and a half years ago and I think I remember how oblivious I was then.

I do not regard myself as experienced yet and I seriously suggest to anyone with less experience than I suggested above to gain some more before taking up BASE.

The list of people who were glad they waited and gotten more experience is as long as the list of those who did not wait and now regret it.

cheers
sam


soon to be gone

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Sam,

You're quite right. I've been thinking about that particular aspect (skydivers dealing with packed parachutes opening) quite a lot recently, but I have absolutely overlooked the hands-on-the-risers reaction that hundreds of CRW jumps, in particular, have given me.

It has also been my experience that, although skydiving does not imply sound rigging knowledge, a heads-up skydiver with hundreds of BASE jumps likely has more experience with all the equipment that comes along with a packed parachute.

That having been said, there are certainly a lot of skydivers who have not developed such a quick reaction on opening, or who are not really all that familiar with their own gear. On the flip-side, there are a handful of paraglider pilots who I would say are particularly well-prepared for BASE jumping. Neither skydiving nor paragliding experience should be taken alone as suitable preparation for BASE.

Thanks again. You make an excellent point.

Michael

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Heya i do agree that bashing Scott,Miles or Redbull dont help anyone however if bashing them will save another person to make the same mistake again i do belive its all worth it.

I do feel sad for Scott,it cant be fun laying there knowing a masive bill will arrive by the post one of theese days. its not what he need.

All i hope is that people out there learns from this sad mistake so it wont be dublicated...No matter if it were you,me or Scdott making a mistake...

Stay safe
Stefan Faber

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I edited my post to include a riggers rating, as I totally agree that rigging knowledge is absolutley vital. I have completed my observed reserve packs and will be doing my rigger A this year.B|

I did mean to have it in there the first time around.


soon to be gone

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Not all consequences are foreseeable. Failure analysis may prevent repeats, but there will always be more than one way to fuck up the same exact jump.

Which is why it is not only knuckleheads who die untimely deaths.

rl



Whilst this is certainly true, so is the fact that if you delve back through the events preceding a consequence you will see that the consequence was absolutely preventable.

Decisions made...consequences determined.

PS sorry for disagreeing with you R. Please don't beat me up.;)



You're a real smartass, y'know, but I've passed on the cat o'nine tails, and you'll have to beg your beating from the successor rope mistress. :)

Email follows.

As cleverly as you did that, I'm sure no one is paying close enough attention to what you wrote to realize what you said.

What I find discouraging is that I am somehow on a "side" of this argument that I want no part of. Plainly stated, I agree with Tree about the underlying issue. I'm just not so sure as he is that the underlying issue is the issue in this case, and the examples I would use to make my argument are not such that I would choose to discuss publicly anyway.

But those who rewrite--or allow the revision of--the lessons of history are doomed to forget them. [sic]

Perhaps once Nick publishes and the past becomes less fluid thereby, we can stop having these arguments and simply refer to a repeat incident by chapter name or number and leave it at that. Or maybe the fatality list needs the addition of a "near miss" section.

And wouldn't that be enlightening.

rl

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Or maybe the fatality list needs the addition of a "near miss" section.



I think that non-fatal incidents are often overlooked in this sport. We only see the major screwups, but I think there are lessons to be learned even if you do so much as bruise your pinky toe on landing.

Occasionally people point out that Nick's list proves there is no correlation between experience and accident-rates, because there are many experienced jumpers on the list.

Aside from the fact that these experienced jumpers are pushing it more, I think the conclusion falls short anyway simply because it excludes all non-fatal accidents.

I would not be surprised at all if there was a strong correlation between experience and non-fatal accidents, and would love to see more analysis in this direction.

Unfortunately, there is little bookkeeping in this area, and few people post on the forum when they "merely" break a leg.

I recall one extensive accident report from BASE813, which was very impressive! Rest assured that as long as my body is still capable of moving my fingers over a keyboard, I will bore you all to death with my accident report. When that time comes...

Cheers,

Jaap

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I will try not to beat up on the injured in this post as I am sure he has taken enough but I would like my point to be considered.

~Taking people well below the skydive grade into the BASE environment is irresponsible to the person you tell is OK to do it, and to the people around you that you call a community. If you want to forever be known as a bunch of screwups, keep this up.
~When you as a BASE jumper do things well beyond your skill level without considering the consequences, you let your community down - see point one.

This sport let's you do what you want, and when you want within basic reason but if we don't look out for each other and consider some of our actions we will always be fuck ups to the public. In this case I see poor judgement, poor training, and poor mentorship.

To whomever in this thread posted that 50 BASE jumps is not low level skill with zero skydives and only paragliding experience your fucked in the head, sorry. I also agree with whoever said we should not be advertising into BASE we should react to people looking for it.

Japp makes a killer point, I think the injury to experience list would tell a different tale of things.

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Hi Tree,
Thanks for setting the record straight on all this, it's been a really big help for me. I think I was confused before but now that I know Miles, Red Bull, and learning to BASE jump with paragliding experience are bad I will try to die in my sleep tonight because I am closely involved with all three. My simpleton paraglider brain would have never made the conection that Red Bull was responsible for that janitors emotional health. Gosh, it has me wondering what other bad things RB is responsible for but I guess I won't have to wonder because you'll point it out to me.

Also, thanks for setting the record straight on Cliff H. By your rational I guess you probably aren't a real BASE jumper either.

Othar Lawrence

edit to remove PA's ~TA

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This thread has been becoming really productive. Get well Scott. Give us some real details from your jump if you have the time/will to do so.

nic

-the remark about the vatican having an opening, very mature.

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I have a question for miles: Who is "MEAT?" Your ad in the mag says to call "MEAT." I'm not sure I want to learn to BASE from a guy called MEAT.

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I'm just wondering. Was the moderator chap sponsored by an energy drink company or taught by the world famous guy? I remember he splatted his guts in Idaho, jumped exit points there that were frowned upon by locals, busted his back on sacred Indian ground, and femured in Europe.

Were that blinc dude and the devil horns bloke also taught by the world famous guy? I remember they burned the park.

I remember the world famous guy and his friends doing the sickest jumps.

I don't remember Tree from anything. Never heard of him.

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I don't remember Tree from anything. Never heard of him.


Forum search found this-
http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=368808#368808
Quote

So then why are his canopy skills so poor?
Perhaps its because his interests ly elsewhere, such as having competitions to see who can eat the most ecstasy, falsifying USPA numbers and pissing dropzone management enough to get banned. Thats right Mark/Tree has been permanently banned from Skydive Dallas for being, well for being the Mark / Tree you have seen posting here.



Starting to smell like turd slinging in here. Isn't the internet fun?

Happy hucking-OJ

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All,

This is obviously a very contentious thread, and resorting to name calling is not going to help. I'm very disposed to let this discussion run it's course, and make it as productive as possible.

I will not stand for (a) people making personal jabs at Scott (as I think he's down enough without being kicked by a bunch of folks on the internet), or (b) people making random personal attacks that don't contribute to the discussion.

Please, calm down. Feel free to discuss the incident. Do not call each other names, or make useless, trivial comments.
-- Tom Aiello

[email protected]
SnakeRiverBASE.com

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Shane,

This thread was actually looking like a useful, productive discussion with a minimum of name calling. Then you began posting a string of name calling, innuendo, and general silliness. None of your posts included any relevant information, useful discussion, or mature thoughts. Perhaps if you think that there is no effective communication here, you ought to go elsewhere. Personally, I think it's posts like the one's you've made in this thread that reduce or eliminate effective communication.

Accordingly, I've banned you from this forum for 14 days. If and when you come back, try to contribute to the communication signal, rather than the static noise.
-- Tom Aiello

[email protected]
SnakeRiverBASE.com

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Tree,

The fact that Shane is trying to draw you into a flame war is no reason to degenerate to that level. You are contributing real discussion here, so I won't ban you. But consider this your last warning in this thread.
-- Tom Aiello

[email protected]
SnakeRiverBASE.com

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Othar,

You've got good thoughts and points to make. Interjecting silly comments and slinging turds (in your words) doesn't help.

When it looks like other people are degenerating into flames, throwing yourself into the fire is pointless. Why not stand back and continue the real discussion with those who are interested.

As with Tree, consider this your last warning in this thread. There are lots of good things being said and discussed here. Let's try to have that discussion without the turd slinging.
-- Tom Aiello

[email protected]
SnakeRiverBASE.com

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Everything you've posted here is personal attacks and flames.

What's the point of trying to side track the discussion into that? I see a lot of people here trying to have an adult conversation. You're not one of them.

I've banned you from this forum for 14 days.
-- Tom Aiello

[email protected]
SnakeRiverBASE.com

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And you guys really truly believe that these forums are ever productive?
HELLLLLOOOO!



Actually, they are remarkably productive when people actually have mature discussions.

I can see why you don't ever find the threads you participate in productive.
-- Tom Aiello

[email protected]
SnakeRiverBASE.com

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