From the Bridge Day Fatality thread - skydiving experience in BASE

[pash 0]

From the BD fatility thread, I took this quote to discuss how skydiving experience is an impediment to base:

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The skill sets for each sport are entirely different, and while an airplane can be used to practice certain things (i.e., canopy skills), skydiving is more of an impediment to a first-time base jumper than otherwise.

I acknowledge the skill sets are different and these are different sports. Can anyone with any real insight explain why it is an impediment to know how to skydive and then try base jumping?

Is it that it is a "clean slate" theory? I am just confused as to how just because someone can skydive, they are more impeded to learn how to base jump.

I am thinking this is not 100% true (maybe somewhat true but 100%??) because the basic assumption is that knowing how to skydive is a skill impossible to discard when trying something new. Anyone who has skydived has necessarily discarded some of their "life training" up until that point.

I get that they are two different sports. When approached by any responsible individual a "new sport" I just don't buy that knowing another sport is more of an "impediment" when that very other sport required one to toss out years of ingrained human nature.

Again, this quote, in context, is what is concerning to me considering that it seems to be given as fact from one of the premiere base jumpers on this website. I am neither a BASE jumper nor a premiere skydiver.

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The skill sets for each sport are entirely different, and while an airplane can be used to practice certain things (i.e., canopy skills), skydiving is more of an impediment to a first-time base jumper than otherwise.

[base_rigger 0]

IMO skill-set are different from exit up to the 5-6 second mark. After that you got so much air around you that you are in SD territory.

Experienced and current skydivers (like 1000+ jumps) make much much better BASE jumpers because 1. they tend to be good canopy pilots and 2. they have been through and saw enough shit in SD that their attitude is usually not the typical young-dumb-and-full-of-cum-150-jump-wonder-I-want-to-BASE-now-show-me-the-way-I-got-the-money.

You know you have a problem when maggot is the voice of reason at the exit points

[RiggerLee 61]

I think you would find that it’s the type of sky diving as much as any thing else. Some skills translate others are ether irrelevant or even a hindrance. It can be very amusing to watch a hot shit canopy pilot who had a saber for a student canopy, who’s first rig was at 1.2 to one and only got smaller from there, and has made his last thousand jumps on a cross brace. I’ve watched these people bust their ass trying to fly a big slow seven cell. All of their motor skills are wrong. Their judgment is off. They will box them selves into a corner with turn rate, turn radius. They’ll stall it trying to sink it in. It’s always worth a show.

Free fall skills are rather different from exit skills. I love going on balloon jumps to watch them all shit them selves and squeal like a little pig as they tumble from the basket. It’s great watching them paw the air and kick like a student.

This doesn’t even begin to touch on any of the “BASE” specific skills that they will need to learn over time as they go on in the sport. Hell I’m still learning. Right now I’m working on my marksmanship with a big bore rifle. Who would have thought that that would be a “BASE” skill?

Lee

Lee
[email protected]
www.velocitysportswear.com

[FIREFLYR 0]

I believe this thread thoroughly explores this.
http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_view_flat;post=917427;page=1;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;mh=25;

~J

"One flew East,and one flew West..............one flew over the cuckoo's nest"
"There's absolutely no excuse for the way I'm about to act"

[worldsocold 0]

having line twists and dealing with them at 2500-5000 feet with 50-150 jumps a few times is always better than line twist at 300 feet with absolutely no skydiving expeience? i had 300 skydive before i did BASE.
NOW have over 600 sd's and lots of wingsuit stuff. still learning! but those 600 (300 more than when i started) i've learned alot more since i started and see things a lot differen'tly.

basically skydiving just makes you alot more comfortable under canopy. just remember a faster opening, harder opening, slower moving riser pulling ,f111 faster sinking canopy! alot diff. than a semi-elliptical!

if i had 2 do it all over again i would have all 7 cell accuracy stuff right out of A license status. up to 300 jumps. thats just me.

another thing. next time on your landing pattern at 400 feet look at the ground. that's a typical BASE EXIT POINT! actually that's kinda high!

anyway

NPS SUX ASS

[MikePelkey 0]

_______________________________________________

Can anyone with any real insight explain why it is an impediment to know how to skydive and then try base jumping?
_______________________________________________

In my humble opinion having as long as 2 1/2 minutes to clear line twists or any other malfunctions without having to worry about bumping into objects would become ingrained recovery procedure or habit to a skydiver over time.

In that respect alone skydiving skills would have to be considered an impediment rather than a carryover skill.

In theory, there is no difference bretween theory and practice. In practice, however, there is. -

"RIP Forever Brian Schubert. Always remembered, Never forgotten" - Leroy DB
http://www.johnny

[TomAiello 25]

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_______________________________________________

Can anyone with any real insight explain why it is an impediment to know how to skydive and then try base jumping?
_______________________________________________

In my humble opinion having as long as 2 1/2 minutes to clear line twists or any other malfunctions without having to worry about bumping into objects would become ingrained recovery procedure or habit to a skydiver over time.

In that respect alone skydiving skills would have to be considered an impediment rather than a carryover skill.

Knowing how to clear the line twists in the first place, and especially doing so instinctively, is pretty much a skill you can gain (and practice with much more safety) skydiving. I've seen people thrown off the bridge here with zero skydiving experience who have experienced line twists and failed to clear them before hitting the water.

-- Tom Aiello

[email protected]
SnakeRiverBASE.com

[Bolas 5]

One thing that was a real eye opener for me in BASE was dealing with line twists:

In line twists, your first priority is to control your heading, climbing above the twists if you have to in order to steer then deal with the twists.

That blew my mind. It makes sense but as a skydiver I never would have thought of it.

Stupidity if left untreated is self-correcting
If ya can't be good, look good, if that fails, make 'em laugh.

[dploi 0]

Some very simple BASE jumps can be safely accomplished with much ground training and no skydiving experience. Skydiving experience will always make a first BASE jump safer in that the jumper has at least some experience freefalling and controlling a parachute in a relatively safe environment.

Need it be any more complicated than that?

[Shawndiver 0]

Depending on the individual, it can enhance or complicate the learning process.

I taught scuba diving full time for many years. Some of my most difficult students were the ones with strong swimming skills. Since many of these skills (proper kick and breathing technique for example)are completely different than those in scuba, it took longer to master because they had to overcome years of muscle memory and habit to develop the correct methods for scuba.

This is where the student attitude can make a difference. As an experienced skydiver, if they go into the sport saying "I've done a thousand jumps, just show me the exit point" and then try to use the same skills and experience to jump a bridge that they use to exit an Otter, you have a problem waiting to happen. If they use that past knowledge of how long it took them to learn to exit a plane cleanly, and realize that they need to go through that learning curve again to achieve a proper BASE exit, then the learning experience should be that much more successful.

_________________

[TomAiello 25]

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I taught scuba diving full time for many years. Some of my most difficult students were the ones with strong swimming skills.

A better analogy would be teaching SCUBA to someone who had never even tried swimming at all before. Would you do that?

-- Tom Aiello

[email protected]
SnakeRiverBASE.com

[pash 0]

I don't want to sound like I'm making the conclusion just yet but I've been reading the input from all of you and it made me think....(thank you for replying BTW). It sounds like the "impediment" could be bringing the attitude that success in one sport automatically equates to success in another sport.

Maybe the problem is thinking BASE is a natural progression of skydiving? Maybe it's harder for a well-seasoned skydiver with the wrong attitude to look at BASE with open eyes and as a student?

I'm hopeful that most "well-seasoned" skydivers got that way because they always considered themselves a student of some kind and were always open to learning something new. But then there are the exceptions.

I just found it difficult to believe that given two different people, both with the "right" attitude to making a first BASE jump, that the one who's skydived is more impeded merely by the fact that the sports' skill sets are different.

What do you think - is it in the attitude?

Jason

[980 0]

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The only thing base has in common with skydiving is a parachute.

RhondaLea, I disagree.

BASE jumping and skydiving also have the following in common:
-freefall
-development of better awareness through experience (both in freefall and under canopy)
-pull priorities (1: pull, 2: pull on time, 3: pull stable)
-development of better judgement through experience and being exposed to incidents

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The skill sets for each sport are entirely different,

different - yes

entirely different - no.

While the specific movements involved in safely deploying, flying and landing a large, lightly-loaded, 7-cell, BASE canopy compared to a small, highly-loaded, 21/27 cell crossbrace skydiving canopy are very different, the mental processes required to do so are very much the same.

While many people might say you cannot learn anything applicable to landing a BASE canopy in a tight area by landing a highly loaded crossbraced canopy on a huge dropzone LZ, I say that you do learn many applicable thought-processes and those are far more important than simple reflexes.

One of the most valuable things you can learn from (a relatively large amount) of skydiving experience is to control your body and parachute through a feedback loop. To do this you must learn to understand how your possible inputs affect the system and how the system communicates its state through its outputs.

Case in point is stalling your canopy or riding your canopy very near the stall point to set up a landing in a specific spot. While the stall characteristics of a BASE canopy and loaded crossbraced canopy are very different, the feedback is very similar. The crossbraced canopy has a much smaller flight range and control stroke and is far more sensitive around the stallpoint, which makes it better practice than a large 7-cell because they are so forgiving and therefore only develop your awareness and skill to a lower degree.

Doing 200+ skydives a year on a loaded crossbraced canopy has you:
-on the permanent lookout for everyone else in the sky and on the ground -thinking about and keeping track of the wind conditions
-walking the landing area before ever landing there
-aware of your altitude and location at all times
-plan escape routes or 'outs' before exit
-constantly evaluating the canopy traffic and your location and height in order to move to a contingency plan if needed
-making contingency plans before you need them
-keep stable through deployment or suffer the consequences
-thinking 2 steps ahead of where you are

The skills above transfer directly to BASE jumping.

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and while an airplane can be used to practice certain things (i.e., canopy skills), skydiving is more of an impediment to a first-time base jumper than otherwise.

I believe this is only true if you are a bad skydiver or a skydiver who has built up lots of ego and no real experience but lack the judgement to know it.

I am also not advocating doing all your skydives on high performance canopies either, doing jumps on a large 7-cell lo-po canopy is needed also.

[d_goldsmith 1]

I figured she meant the fact that they might jump off chest to the wind and rely on air to get them belly to earth.

[Shawndiver 0]

Actually, yes I have. And again, it was determined by the attitude. If the person did not swim because they were deathly afraid of water, you had to overcome those phobias first. Once that was done, or if the person just had never gotten around to learning to swim (and there are more of those than you think!) the practical skills came pretty easily because you were working with essentially a clean slate. No old habits to get rid of.

Edit to add:
I realize the differences between teaching in a controlled pool environment, and hucking someone off a structure, but I believe the basic pretext of attitude vs. skills is a valid one

_________________

[TomAiello 25]

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Actually, yes I have. And again, it was determined by the attitude. If the person did not swim because they were deathly afraid of water, you had to overcome those phobias first.

Did you teach them to swim first, or just go straight to the SCUBA?

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...never gotten around to learning to swim (and there are more of those than you think!)

At risk of digressing, I taught adult swimming lessons for 6 years. I don't have any SCUBA instructional ratings, but just from a water safety perspective, teaching a non-swimmer to SCUBA dive seems like non-starter to me. Why the heck wouldn't you want to teach them to swim first?

Having seen first hand how much a person who can swim and has grown up around water and swimming can take for granted (I once had to perform CPR on a non-swimmer who didn't realize the diving boards were in the deep end of the pool, where the water would be over his head), I shudder to think what dangerous assumptions a non-swimmer might make in the SCUBA environment, or a non-parachutist might make in the BASE environment.

-- Tom Aiello

[email protected]
SnakeRiverBASE.com

[460 0]

If I had had more skydiving experience and especially more canopy experience, I would not have had the injuries I've had BASE jumping. Period. Now I walk with a slight limp and I paid a lot of money for injuries that I could have prevented by just making skydives.

Looks like a death sandwich without the bread - Steve Deadman Morrell, BASE 174

[mostwanted 0]

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The crossbraced canopy has a much smaller flight range and control stroke and is far more sensitive around the stallpoint, which makes it better practice than a large 7-cell because they are so forgiving and therefore only develop your awareness and skill to a lower degree.

do you all agree?



edited to format bold

[base_rigger 0]

Yes.

You can put first time SD students under a BASE canopy loaded at .7.

Try to put them under a velo at 2.5.

Flying a docile big 7 cell is no where nearly as demanding as flying a highly loaded twichy SOB, more landing it than flying it.

You know you have a problem when maggot is the voice of reason at the exit points

[wwarped 0]

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The crossbraced canopy has a much smaller flight range and control stroke and is far more sensitive around the stallpoint, which makes it better practice than a large 7-cell because they are so forgiving and therefore only develop your awareness and skill to a lower degree.

do you all agree?

NO.

I still need to unlearn habits developed while swooping...
- different approach angles
- different required range of motion
- I can turn my BASE canopy far closer to the ground
- swooping does not require a stand-up landing with no forward speed
- BASE canopies collapse differently from swooping parachutes
- line twists create different hazards

use the correct tool for the desired learning.

DON'T PANIC
The lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
sloppy habits -> sloppy jumps -> injury or worse

[mostwanted 0]

sorry - my fault - i guess i have to edit my posting because the quote referenced to "stall-drills", didn't it?

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Case in point is stalling your canopy or riding your canopy very near the stall point to set up a landing in a specific spot. The crossbraced canopy has a much smaller flight range and control stroke and is far more sensitive around the stallpoint, which makes it better practice (added: concerning the "stall-drills") than a large 7-cell because they (added: the 7-cell canopies) are so forgiving and therefore only develop your awareness and skill to a lower degree.

do you all agree?

[980 0]

no, I did not mean that it's better practice for stallpoint drills.

I meant it is better practice for the skills I listed after that paragraph:

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Doing 200+ skydives a year on a loaded crossbraced canopy has you:
-on the permanent lookout for everyone else in the sky and on the ground -thinking about and keeping track of the wind conditions
-walking the landing area before ever landing there
-aware of your altitude and location at all times
-plan escape routes or 'outs' before exit
-constantly evaluating the canopy traffic and your location and height in order to move to a contingency plan if needed
-making contingency plans before you need them
-keep stable through deployment or suffer the consequences
-thinking 2 steps ahead of where you are

The skills above transfer directly to BASE jumping.

[d_goldsmith 1]

If it's better practise overall, then why would anyone that fly's a 21/27 cell have any trouble landing a big tarp.

[980 0]

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If it's better practise overall, then why would anyone that fly's a 21/27 cell have any trouble landing a big tarp.

because there's idiots everywhere...

My point is that even (I think especially) jumping the skydiving canopies most different from BASE canopies (crossbraced canopies at high loadings like 1.9 and above) develop mental skills that help you when flying a BASE canopy on BASE jumps.

As homework I leave it up to you to see what percentage of active BASEjumpers regularly skydive a loaded crossbrace canopy and how their BASE landings compare to BASEjumpers who don't, as you obviously have too much free time.

[bert_man 0]

Being able to quickly identify and correct a dangerous situation with instinctive canopy inputs (while swooping a highly loaded x-braced canopy for example) is one hugely important skill in BASE. A swooping freeflyer with thousands of jumps may not be very familiar with a big 7-cell f111, but they should be able to quickly figure out that their canopy is opening off-heading and is going to slam them into a wall if they dont yank on some seatbelts.

Most first-, second-, or tenth-time skydivers have little or no concept of their heading, no idea what their canopy is doing on opening, and have to memorize flash cards to figure out why their canopy isnt there, square, or flying where they want it to.

Additonally, somebody may appear to be a great student and pick up the book knowledge and exit practice very well, and then brainlock when they are actually put to the test.

Most experienced skydivers have already dealt with their share of high-speed no-shit-there-i-was-about-to-die situations, and the shock and awe has been replaced with automatic corrective responses.

Whether those responses are correct is another story... but its better than freezing...

-Ghetto
"The reason death cannot frighten me, is because life has cured me of fear."
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