Guess who this interesting jumper is.

[460 0]

Guess who this prolific BASE figure is.

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

[vid666 0]

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Guess who this prolific BASE figure is.

PS BASE1

[Twoply 0]

Phil Cazzone?

[fastphil 0]

Smitty, looking unusually graceful...

[jonstark 8]

PS, My hero

you got it

[460 0]

Ding ding ding. It's Phil "Smitty" Smith, BASE 1, soon to be seen in the upcoming major production "Gravity" by Scissorkick films.

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

[Calvin19 0]

classic fat cop though. wannabe mustache and all.

[PAINTitBLACK 0]

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Ding ding ding. It's Phil "Smitty" Smith, BASE 1, soon to be seen in the upcoming major production "Gravity" by Scissorkick films.

is there a story along with the picture?

[Spiderbaby 0]

I'd love to see some pictures and info of all those freaky homeade BASE rigs Phil and those guys used to jump back in the early 80's. All these threads are about way high-tech, fancy, three color tiedye containers and vented/valved this and that with a ZP nose. I'd like to know what that cutting edge rig on Phils back is in that picture.

"It takes a big man to cry, it takes an even bigger man to make that big man cry"

[pocbase 0]

ditto

The bums will never win Lebowski, the bums will never win!
Enfin j'ai trouvé:
Bieeeen

[fastphil 0]

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I'd love to see some pictures and info of all those freaky homeade BASE rigs Phil and those guys used to jump back in the early 80's. All these threads are about way high-tech, fancy, three color tiedye containers and vented/valved this and that with a ZP nose. I'd like to know what that cutting edge rig on Phils back is in that picture.

Phil's rig may be the same one he's wearing in this pic (orange), like a pigletII or something. Whatever we had for skydiving we used for BASE. We were already freepacking Strato Flyers for terminal skydives, and very comfortable with them, so for object jumping we initially just left the slider down. I think the canopy is a cruiseaire. but could be wrong...

[RickHarrison 0]

He jumped a cruislite every since about 82. A lot of us started using Piglet Containers since we skydived with them. Smitty jumped a 5 cell Firefly before that. I had an old stratorstar 5 cell in a Piglet II.
Rick H.

Rick Harrison

[tungflik 0]

I had the honor of Jumping with BASE #1 in 1992/3 I believe.

We all gathered for an A in TX. Phil was jumping a BASE specific container as opposed to a modified skydiving container. Don't recall the canopy.

Anyway, his packing tray was fitted with sewn in loops for line stows. So basicaly he rubberbanded his lines into the bottom of his container and packed the canopy on top of that. It was a prototype, Rick will probably remember that design.

[RickHarrison 0]

Same way reserves were packed. We just stowed the lines in the bottom of the pack tray and stowed them in insalled rubberbands from left to right, top to bottm, and then put the canopy on top in a free pack. Worked great. Maybe a few off heading opeinings, but it worked great for most jumps.
Rick H.
[email protected]

Rick Harrison

[zoobrothertom 5]

Didn't he use this picture for a Christmas card or postcard?

____________________________________
I'm back in the USA!!

[460 0]

Many of those old rigs were just converted skydiving rigs. The main container was chopped off and the reserve section was retrofitted to put a shrivel flap on it. I used such a rig given to me by Steve Morrell that had been constructed in 1984 by J.D. Walker, BASE 37. I used it for about 200 jumps and it worked fine. Because the container is mounted higher on the back, it was not practical to go stowed very often. In fact when I got it, it had just two rubber bands where the pouch would go. The bands would hold the pilot chute until wanted to get ready for exit. Hence I had to do my terminal jumps with my pilot chute tightly wadded in my hand. The velcro system was not as rugged so aerials were out of the question.

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

[MyTwoCents 0]

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Steve Morrell

Dead Steve, right? I know the stories and quotes have been told here many times, but can anybody please indulge us once more. I can't get enough of those.

[460 0]

You'll get a neat kick out of reading some of his stories on his memorial page at

http://home.triad.rr.com/bmorrell/steve/index.html

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

[460 0]

Steve was my best friend. Here's a Steve story:

Yosemite...

Steve went to jump the **** **** in Yosemite National Park, which required a lot of coordination, not just because of the danger, but because the jump is illegal. Steve had to hike to the jump spot, no small problem in itself. There was an issue with his assistant who did his job with dispatch, yet found that he had not brought enough water. Of course Steve didn't care, because he was not hiking back down... More important than the jump hike, there was the coordination of the landing site, a field some distance from the base. As in Steve' s days of urban building jumping, a good getaway van and nerves-of-steel driver were essential. You had to have a reliable person at the site to spirit you away before the authorities arrived. Unlike the building jumps, there was a much longer time between the time Steve and his team split up and time when they had to be back together to make their escape. In this case, Steve relied on an unidentified female who, to her credit, was in the right spot, ready to pick him up. The nerves-of-steel part is in question.
The jump at the **** **** is one of the most spectacular BASE jumps there is (probably explaining why Steve had to do it), allowing one of the maximum free fall times of any cliff in the world. Steve used most of it. When he dumped his pilot chute, he had a spinning malfunction. The dome is so high that it is one of the few BASE jumps where it makes sense to carry a reserve chute. Steve saw the rock pile coming up quickly cut his main and dumped his reserve.
Steve did not have time to prepare for a landing among a pile of boulders, and cracked some ribs and twisted an ankle pretty badly. Some rock climbers helped carry him down. Unfortunately, the getaway driver was so far away, she could not see Steve once he fell among the rocks and she flipped out. This was in the Days of Yore, before cell phones, so she had no way to communicate with Steve or the hike team. She went to a pay phone and called the park rangers to tell them that a Captain Steve Morrell had been killed on the **** ****. She even gave them Steve's home phone number, though exactly why they would require the phone number of a "dead" man is unclear. No nerves-of-steel, perhaps, but no fool either, she apparently fled.
In what was to foreshadow the infamous hike out of the desert in Saudi Arabia (more on that later), it took six hours for Steve to reach the pick up site, where he found no ride home. How exactly he got home is one of the many Mysteries of Steve, but when he arrived, there was a message on his answering machine (the Days of Yore did include answering machines) from the park service, which was quite eager to talk to an actual dead man, having tramped all over the rock pile looking for his body. Finally the rock climbers informed them that he was, in fact, alive. They proceeded to charge him, with "Unauthorized aerial delivery of a person without a permit" . A felony would have gotten Steve dismissed from the Air Force. As Steve, the eternal optimist, said later, "If you throw enough money at something, it will go away," and the charge was reduced to a misdemeanor. Time has obscured exactly how this was done. The lawyer cost many thousands of dollars, but "throwing money" at the problem meant that Steve could stay in the Air Force. One version has the charges being reduced to not with jumping off the cliff, but to "disturbing Kestrel nests". Event though Kestrels routinely dive past their nests at over 150 mph, the Federal government believes that baby Kestrels would be disturbed by seeing a human go by at a paltry 120 mph. Another version of the story says this was what the original charge was, there being no real law against jumping off cliffs. As for the Park Service, Steve joked, "We'll have no gravity in this park, young man!" However the Air Force knew about the entire affair because the Park Service had contacted them from the start, and the AF decided Steve needed his "wings clipped,' so to speak.

Saudi Stories

After Steve's Yosemite jump, the Air Force decided to cool his behind somewhere, as in somewhere away from the officers who had had to deal with the park rangers. In the old days when his dad was a pilot, the standard place was some radar station in Alaska. Steve's father had several friends who drew this punishment. In the 80's though, there was a better place than mountainous (i.e. lots of cliffs) and now thoroughly modernized Alaska: there was Saudi Arabia. Hot, strict and far away. It doesn't get any better than that as punishment.

How hot is it in Saudi? Well, the Air Force made Steve sign a formal, explicit contract before he left that acknowledged in writing that he understood how hot it was and that he would not ask to come home because of the heat. (Steve said later even that did not prepare him for how hot it was.)

Now there is an important thing to understand about Steve in the 80's. Steve had gone to college with many people from the middle east. The nephew of the king of Jordon was one of his classmates (his father had been assassinated) and an number of his classmates were children of Iranian bigwigs in the Shah's government. Most were stranded in the US when the Iranian revolution took place (a number of their parents were executed or missing by graduation) Furthermore, by this time Steve had already traveled all over the world, and had a very loudly proclaimed multi-culturalism. "It's not them, it is just their culture" was his often (read: ad nauseum) repeated phrase. Those of us parochials back in the states (including those, who had knocked about much of the same territory 30 years before) who thought this or that group of foreigners were a bit off were just narrow minded and un-cultured. So it cannot be said that what happened to Steve in Saudi did not cheer some people up a bit....

What happened started on the first day he got there. His family Bible was confiscated by the "mutaween" or religious police. It is worth noting that this Bible was tucked as far down in his luggage as a 20's something military pilot who hasn't read it since the last big flight school exam could stuff it. Actually, there are several who believe Steve could not have found it if they had told him to. When he asked later if he would get it back, he was told no, it was already destroyed. These people don't mess around, Steve thought.

This was confirmed a few months later when Steve was invited by a friend to attend an execution. Two men were beheaded (Steve thought it was for drug dealing) He got a great "I attended a double header tee shirt" but admitted privately that it shook him up to see the sword fall and the heads roll. Even more disconcerting was an accompanying execution by stoning of a woman for adultery. The stoning methods were much more modern than the old pick up and hurl a stone of biblical times. The woman was placed in a pit, and a dump truck full of rocks was backed up and emptied on her. "It's not them, it's just their culture" Steve repeated to himself, with considerably less conviction.

Steve's job in Saudi was flying bigwig passengers in a turbo prop. This was at the time of the first Gulf crisis, when Iran was our enemy and Iraq our friend, al beit a "friend" that accidentally fired a missile at one of our cruisers killing 34 sailors. Steve flew cabinet secretaries and ambassadors up and down the gulf, getting radar locks from missile batteries on the Iranian coast, which qualified him for hazardous duty pay. One day he co-piloted for a Colonel who wanted to fly the Egyptian ambassador to Cairo. Now, flying Colonels were a joke even his father's days in the Air Force. They fly only enough to keep their rating, and so are known for screw-ups. The colonel wanted to spend time with the ambassador, and assigned Steve to help if he got in trouble flying. He did. He flew into one of the worst sandstorms in Egyptian aviation history. Very quickly the colonel realized he was going to lose the plane without help, so he turned it over to Steve, who had been sweating bullets watching things go from bad to worse. Steve brought the plane down in a howling wind with no visibility on some remote runway, earning a citation, and a friend in high places he would need later.

Security on the base was very tight, so much so that Steve was instructed to check his car or jeep over for bombs before starting it. This was very weird to Steve because his vehicles were on a gated base guarded by the local military. When Steve pointed this out to his commander, the commander nodded as if to say EXACTLY. Steve got the message.

Steve was by this time less than enamored with Saudi customs. One night, he met an Irish nurse at a party and offered to drive her home. They got on the road, but had misjudged the time, for the sun was setting and they were still on the road. Why the worry? because the mutaween, who had confiscated his bible were out at that time to start checking cars. No woman, Saudi or non Saudi are allowed to be in a car with anyone but their husband or brother. It appears that this rule applies all day but that the mutaween only enforced it at night. Steve looked ahead and saw a mutawen roadblock. Steve grabbed a blanket from the back of the car and pushed the nurse down on the floorboard, and covered her with a blanket. Steve got through the roadblock. Some later suggested that the police ignored the obvious lump on the floorboard to avoid a national incident. Steve did not believe it, for by this time Steve's opinion of the Saudi people was very very low, particularly for an avowed multiculturalist.

The problems ultimately centered around a single phrase: Inshallah. This phrase, Steve was told meant "If Allah permits" or "God willing". The Saudis used this phrase for everything, and used it to procrastinate worse than a cable TV repairman. Want your airline tickets? "we will have them Inshallah" Need the water main repaired? We will fix it inshallah". Steve came to hate that term, several times almost snapping and grabbing the speaker by the collar and yelling: "I don't want it inshallah, I want it Thursday!"
But he held back, after all, "It's not them, its their culture" He also reminded himself that this was a country where literally 99% of the people had been living in tents in the desert just one generation before. Allowances must be made.

What finally broke the back of Steve's multiculturalism was when his car's emergency brake broke. He could pull the brake lever up, but it would not lock. Steve took it to a repair shop that was reputed to be able to handle Steve's brand of car and explained the problem to the Saudi mechanic. The mechanic said that he would fix it, Inshallah. Steve ground his teeth, but said nothing and left. Just before lunch the mechanic called and said that Allah was merciful, he had it fixed. Steve brightened and got a ride to the shop. He paid the mechanic, and hopped in the car. he had actually gone a block before he looked down at the emergency brake. Where the handle had been was nothing. Where the handle went into the floorboard was a neat patch of duct tape. Steve angrily turned around and drove back to the mechanic. When Steve demanded a explanation, the mechanic eagerly replied: Steve had had trouble because the brake's locking mechanism would not work. By removing the brake, he no longer had this problem, no? What finally did if for Steve was the realization that the mechanic was very pleased with himself for the cleverness of this solution, and still was expecting Steve to praise him for his imaginative thinking. Steve said later that right then and there he realized: "Its not their culture, these people are #$!@ messed up!"

The accident that saved his life

You would think that, having been charged with a felony in the States, barely escaping expulsion for the Air Force, being sent to Saudi as a punishment—and all for BASE jumping from a cliff—Steve would have been a little chastened. Alas, no. What did he do as soon as possible after arriving in Saudi? He went looking for a cliff, the purpose of which it does not take a genius to guess. (I must interject here: He sent me a photograph of himself at the bottom of said cliff, looking happy as could be, with this caption on the back: “ Me, shortly after making the first cliff jump in Saudi Arabia, a bitching 500 foot cliff I found in the desert!” Actually, it’s one of my favorite photos of him. It captures perfectly his personality, his smile, and that devilish gleam in his eyes. Also, the caption in pencil was so very Steve. Did the man ever write with a pen?)
If I’m not mistaken, this must have been the very cliff that almost cost Steve his life but also saved his life in a bizarre turn of events. Near the end of 1988, Steve did a jump from a cliff in the middle of the desert, far from the nearest road. Friends video- taped the entire affair. Immediately before the jump, Steve, ever the macho man, grabbed his crotch, yelled, ”Party ‘til impact!” and jumped. Very shortly after that, there was a thud, clearly audible on the tape, followed by some pretty loud screaming allllll the way to the bottom. Then silence. The friends at the top of the cliff started yelling, “Steve, are you all right?” repeatedly, probably for several minutes. Finally Steve’s tiny voice could be heard from below, “Nooooooooo!” He had rammed into the cliff, shattering both feet and ankles. Later, he showed the video (to me anyway) over and over, finding it highly amusing. Weird.
It took his friends several hours to carry Steve back to their vehicle. At one point, Steve claims that vultures were circling overhead like something out of a grade B movie. By the time he made it to the hospital his feet and legs had turned totally black. The Air Force would surely look upon this latest incident unfavorably, considering why he was there in the first place, so the official story became that he was rock climbing without a rope. I’m not sure which was dumber. ( I knew about the new BASE jumping, but I don’t know who else in the States did. It took his family a little while to see through the rock climbing story. Apparently the Air Force either bought it or pretended to. But there is the story that that Colonel that he helped land in a sandstorm protected him from immediate court marshal)
Due to his little “rock climbing” mishap, while he was in the hospital, Steve missed his flight home for Christmas. That flight turned out to be Pan Am Flight 103, which blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland. If it hadn’t been for his illegal BASE jumping, he would have died in 1988, and we would not have had him with us for eight more years. (As soon as I heard about Pan Am Flight 103, as usual my Steve ESP clicked in and I called his mother and learned, and as usual, that Steve had literally dodged another bullet.) Steve told me later that he thought he could have survived the disaster because he always had his parachute as carry-on luggage, and if he had had enough time, he could have bailed out. However, having just spent eighteen months in Saudi and being the only survivor MIGHT have cast some suspicion him. He was such an optimist, I always thought a fitting epitaph for his tombstone would be, “This is only a temporary setback.”
Steve’s mother has a great picture of Steve on his military flight home, both feet in casts after surgery to put his feet and ankles back together with as many screws, bolts, plates, etc., as required to create the bionic man, a big smile on his face that clearly says, “I am stoned on pain killers.” In fact, he frequently said that he never let anyone forget when he had a dose scheduled—nurses, doctors, custodians, whoever. Macho man could only take so much pain after all.

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

[pocbase 0]

Classic!
I had already read bits and pieces of this.
Thanks

The bums will never win Lebowski, the bums will never win!
Enfin j'ai trouvé:
Bieeeen