Catapult?

[chickenhawk420 0]

Sat bored last night thinking about different ways to launch off a cliff (nice big canyon type valley) for base. Monster trucks, was my first idea, didn't seem economic or particulary environmentally friendly (be awersome though- off beaten track, flooring the accelerator, straight off). Then i came up with a bungee slingshot type of thing, then the answer. A huge catapult set back slightly from the edge to throw you into clear space for the drop. I even worked out a rough design for the "seat" of the catapult. Thought the biggest problem would be the catapult hitting the container as your launched so a cross between a toddler booster seat (molded round your arse but a "U" cut out the back so there is nothing that could come in contact when launched. Only a daft, lazy stoned think about it (*this is purely "what if... coz i wanna do it" type theory*).
So what dya think? Would jumpers be interested in something like that?
Also i was thinking if it was a legal place to BASE, then there could be structures built out from the cliff to create different and interesting jump points?

[SkydiveMonkey 0]

My idea for my DZ is to build a massive 20,000 foot high dome around it to keep out the weather. It will be made out of chicked wire and perspex to keep the costs down, and it will eliminate the need for a plane with a track running over the top and a cart hanging from underneath. You can stop the cart at 200 foot or whatever to keep the BASE'ers happy, and you can take it up to 20000 and stop it for balloon style jumps or keep it moving and get out to keep it the same as a normal plane launch.
There's no tomorrow - you ain't gonna live it for me - The Offspring

[rhino 0]

Sounds good.. When do we start construction?
Blue Skies .....

[chickenhawk420 0]

Can i have one? Remember Uk colder so we need it more see, more shitty wheather

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[chickenhawk420 0]

oh yeah i forgot, lots of boobies in there as well to give it that asthetically pleasing feel

[SkydiveMonkey 0]

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Remember Uk colder so we need it more see

I jump in cornwall, so that's why I'm building it !!!
There's no tomorrow - you ain't gonna live it for me - The Offspring

[indyz 1]

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A huge catapult set back slightly from the edge to throw you into clear space for the drop.

Howzabout a trebuchet?
--
Brian

[chickenhawk420 0]

Now we're talking- actually it isn't far off what i was thinking about. I thought that if you did have a all year round legal site for BASE it would need something to make jumping from the same location a bit more interesting.
It would be tight being flung through the air to "land" in some nice clear space with a BASE drop below you. Is it still BASE as your not "jumping off" anything but being flung from it?

[ernokaikkonen 0]

>You could also have a steam catapult(...)
Sometimes the only thing that keeps us from jumping on our small cessna-dz in Finland is the lack of jumpers, or the fact that all our pilots are at work and we have no-one to fly the plane. So one of these days I was just hanging around the DZ thinking of an alternative solution. Naturally, the catapult-approach came to mind. I was thinking of buying a second-hand aircraft carrier with the nuclear powered steam-catapult-thingie, and planting it upright in the middle of the airfield... :-D
So I made a few calculations:
The catapult/slingshot/whatever will shoot the skydiver straight up. The thing is 400m tall. The "muzzle-velocity" is 132m/s (or 475 km/h), which is survivable and flyable for a good speed-skydiver. The calculations assume that the jumper will be launched in a head-down attitude(or actually, head-up...). The acceleration is limited to 3,2G's.
So, when the speed-skydiver exits the catapult(400m tall, remember?) @ 132m/s, he/she will come to a complete stop @ ~800m AGL. Assuming the jumper stayed head-up for the whole time.
Suppose you can't/won't go head-up, but would rather be launched belly-up? With the same acceleration, you'd be 600 m AGL at the highest point... It's a bummer when gravity and drag pull you to the same direction...
So now you have two options:
- Enduring over 3 G's of acceleration and insane airspeed to get you to an altitude only slighly less than a regular hop'n'pop, _directly_above_ a 400m tower.
or
- Putting on your base-rig and jumping from the top of the tower :-D
Gravity sucks.

[SkydiveMonkey 0]

There's no way a skydiver could survive the g forces of that catapult - it launches a fully loaded plane at (like you said) about 140 knots. A skydiver weighs a little bit less than an F-14, so he will be launched faster. They did a test and calculated that one of these catapults could launch the cab of a truck over 2 (or was it 3) miles away. Still a nice plan though - I'll give it a go !! Better than just complaining about no pilot etc.
There's no tomorrow - you ain't gonna live it for me - The Offspring

[ernokaikkonen 0]

>There's no way a skydiver could survive the g forces of that catapult - it launches a
>fully loaded plane at (like you said) about 140 knots. A skydiver weighs a little bit
>less than an F-14, so he will be launched faster.
Yeah. There was the idea of limiting the G's to the 3,2 specified in my post. I don't remember where I came up with that figure, but it seems reasonable that a skydiver would endure that much for the six seconds it takes to accelerate to those speeds.
Then again... A quick search on Google tells me that a fully loaded F-14 weighs about 33000kg. An average skydiver weighs, say, 90kg fully equipped. This means we could launch a 366-way from the catapult!! Some minor details may need some more consideration, but...
What's the going price for a used AC-carrier these days? :-D

[SkydiveMonkey 0]

366 way eh? We'll need some sort of tray for everyone to sit on for launch. I wonder if pro-tracks etc will beep at 1000 - can they react to climbing that quickly? I know they take samples at 4Hz on the way down.
There's no tomorrow - you ain't gonna live it for me - The Offspring