GaryP

Whilst I'm not advocating the use of non-BASE specific gear, regarding this statement; It's the "Super Raven" (as distinct from the Raven) that can be of some use in BASE... and only for slider-down jumps. Putting a slider on ANY Raven is dangerous. g. "Altitude is birthright to any individual who seeks it" .

Tom - I can't remember my source - have just always known that ambulance services are a charged commodity as I remember seeing some prices quoted in some literature somewhere for both road and air ambulance services. This is also confirmed in my ambulance insurance literature. I didn't give it much thought about the other organizations that may be involved in a rescue and had just lumped them into the one category of "Ambulance". Treeboy clarified the QLD situation for me a while back. These are paid for by the QLD taxpayers. My ambulance insurance costs me $27 each year to pay for any costs involved in ferrying my ass from anywhere in Oz. Makes sense. g. "Altitude is birthright to any individual who seeks it" .

To those that think that taxpayers pay for these rescues... you are wrong. In Australia all ambulance rides and search/rescue operations ARE CHARGED TO THE INJURED IN FULL. Taxpayers do not pay for these except if the injured is a recipient of Social Security (pension or other benefit). Taxpayers are charged in full and need to have ambulance insurance to guard against these costs. The only exception to this is the state of Queensland which does fund it's rescues from the public purse. The main drain of services seen in Australia, especially in the Summer months are... fishermen who get swept off rocks, bushwalkers who get hopelessly lost, tourists who get out of their depth in the surf, football injuries. At least with a BASE accident there's no time and money being wasted searching for the person as locating the injured is never a problem. g. "Altitude is birthright to any individual who seeks it" .

Click here for 50sec f/fall - no wingsuit Footage c/- Hans Solo. attchd. pic is a side view of this amazing Norwegian mtn. g. "Altitude is birthright to any individual who seeks it" .

You are right - Trusting something on every jump IS NOT the same as using it on every jump ... I never thought of it that way. It makes sense. I do hear the single-parachute mentality from time to time and I do aim my sentiments at those who are naive and unaware that they are using one themselves. After your prior post I'm in no doubt we are on the same page here.

Just wanna touch on The111's comments. I can tell from the commnts that my post was understood clearly by many but also not read/understood properly by others. I just wanna make a few points clearer for those who care to be informed. Sorry... but they do and that's exacty my point. My post refered to the scenario when a skydiver elects to cutaway. Being willing to place oneself in freefall with only one parachute (the reserve) is something each (sensible) jumper is prepared to do on every jump if the need arises. So I must disagree with your opening line and say that skydivers DO jump with just their reserves - each time they cutaway that is - and that's something they are willing to do every jump. Therefore, each jumper is willing to use a single parachute system on every jump. You are correct - I am not seriously reccomending ppl use a tersh - it was a jibe, a dig, a joke. Obviously your chances of survival mathematically of reaching the ground safely (design faults aside) are higher with 2 parachutes. This is basic maths. My point is not to say this. I made my post to bring to light that those ppl who knock single parachute systems are often not aware that they are using these systems themselves given that they only jump with one reserve. That is they put their lives in trust with a single-parachute system. No problems with this statement. I do stand behind my logic and I have not seen any evidence that my logic (that skydivers cutaway to just one reserve) is at fault. with polite respect, I just think you have missed my point completely. g. "Altitude is birthright to any individual who seeks it" .

In response to ACMEskydiver's post in Bonfire Oooohh... I've been waiting for a comment like this. Do I take it from that rationale that you will not be prepared to pull silver again - after all your reserve IS a single parachute system after all. Sorry to repeat myself from previous but I have to emphasise to all ppl who skydive the following; The fact that you are willing to cutaway from a malfunction on every skydive that you do and place yourself in freefall with only one parachute makes you a willing user of a single parachute system on EVERY SKYDIVE. So don't go poo pooing single parachute jumps when you are doing them yourself. If you don't like i then you either need to stop kidding yourself that you have 2 canopies all the time, give up skydiving, or get a tersh. There.... I said it... whew!!! Thx g. "Altitude is birthright to any individual who seeks it" .

He was an Aussie ex pat - and a beautiful man. Some ppl here are very sad. Forever flying in our hearts... will miss you. Next for you. g. "Altitude is birthright to any individual who seeks it" .

Here's my take. I hope the language isn't too involved that I've lost the plot. Pls reply if anything needs to be made clearer. The type of jump determines the exit you take. For a stable, no-tracking delay of 0-4 sec where you wish to deploy in the 45degree head-up attitude then it is desirable to exit with this particular head-high attitude and retain it throughout the freefall to deployment. However, if it's a transition to a track that you desire (i.e. a slightly head down position) then the more head-high your exit the more of a rotation you must go thru to get to the desired track attitude - and it's the inertia of the upper body as it goes thru this rotation that tends to carry you to a more head-down position than desired. Therefore if you are intending to transition to a track then you need to lessen the amount of inertia generated by rotating less, which means starting off in an attitude closer to the horizontal (exiting flatter). With this said, we usually have to go thru this arc anyway as we are usually standing upright on exit and have to transiting to the horizontal anyway. To reduce this I practice an exit where I'm pushing out and slightly up from a crouching position being mindful to have any kinetic energy from my legs be channelled up thru my body in a strait line toward the horizon (slightly higher) and not to let any leg energy contrubute to any rotation. It all comes with being tuned to the kinetic energy transfer thruout the body and what I call "inertial interplay". Also, given that we usually rotate a bit further than we want to it's also helpful to anticipate this overrotation and try to arrest it a bit earlier to compensate. In short - starting head high will end up head-low. Exiting flatter whilst being mindful and present to the rotational forces going on will get you the desired attitude you are after. Hope that helps and I've made sense. g. "Altitude is birthright to any individual who seeks it" .

Jaap - just a thought... Not about the camera but when choosing a mount you may wanna consider the option of being able to mount it backwards. I just LOVE backward-pointing object-rush shit [drool] Have fun. g. "Altitude is birthright to any individual who seeks it" .

Check it out.... Back issues of Jump Magazine g. "Altitude is birthright to any individual who seeks it" .

When I just said it's best for ppl to be thinking for themselves I didn't take the newbie factor into account - of course they need it spelled out for them the right way the first time. They need to know what the benchmark is so that they are aware of what they are digressing from when making mod's or substituting. Nice instructions Chad. - Thx. g. "Altitude is birthright to any individual who seeks it" .

Information is the underlying stand in Tom's post. Palliative information at that - information that assists the situation at hand as it is needed, and that people find useful. It's unrealistic to expect people to apply only textbook BASEjumping. Jumpers will substitute whenever they have to. It's better to have people thinking for themselves "why" a particular substitute works or doesn't work rather than just having ppl parrot one particular doctrine given to them. 4 wraps of electrical tape through the eye of the bridle (in moderate to warm climates) works a treat for me. Place 2 wraps around the "anchor" first before commencing the 4 wraps. Cya g. "Altitude is birthright to any individual who seeks it" .

BASE is not the answer. "BASE???" is the question. "Yes" is the answer. G. "Altitude is birthright to any individual who seeks it" .

Most (nearly all) jumpers are told to pack with the LRM when going slider down/off, yet I've not been witness to much discussion or training over it's actual use. Put another way - I think there's many ppl who jump with this option yet are not really competent or dialled-in to an emergeny procedure or plan for dealing with a line-over with the LRM, for example at around 100' or under. Given that lineovers are now extremely rare with the tailgate being commonplace, most newer jumpers are not given the chance to see it's use in action and I think that if faced with the rare event of a lineover in the SL-down environment, there wouldn't be much altitude to deal with it anyway - especially in the sub-200' environment and with some of the sites Jesse and others regularly frequent. I do use the LRM but I know that there's many times I'm doing a jump that the altitude or obstacles render the LRM pretty useless. Just a thought. g. "Altitude is birthright to any individual who seeks it" .

D-bag jumps were the norm in my early days - here's what we found. The break/cord link between the canopy attachment point was something we started using after a couple of jumps for the exact reason Nick said - we sought to hold the top of the canopy for a moment to the inside of the bag while allowing the bottom of the S-folded pack-job to snake out first rather than it all coming out in the air as one "lump" after the last stow released and having to unfurl in the airflow. Because this break/cord was only used to retain the top of the canopy and not used to support the weight of the entire deployment, it only needed to be a lightweight breaking-strain. We used rubber bands or a single loop of lightweight twine for this purpose. The tailgate had not been invented at the time we were experimenting and we chose not to use the Line-Mod as we thought the use of tight locking stows would negate this need - we were wrong. Upon watching all the videos of these jumps it was pretty consistent that the openings were positively TAIL-FIRST no matter if we packed on the side (factory) or on the nose (pro). With afterthought now I WOULD USE A TAILGATE for all these jumps although I would not wrap it too tight. Also - make sure the safety bridle is not mis-routed anywhere. I happened to fluke survival of this most-basic and fatal error. Canopy bottom-skin inflation seemed to occur after about 25-35 feet after the canopy had left the bag pretty consistently. Openings were always much higher than PCA although this is part due to do with the fact the canopy is deployed from the exit point and not 9' (bridle-length) down. Heading performance was pretty much faultless. I can't remember anything more than say..45degrees off-heading EVER with this setup. Overall - a good choice where off-heading = death or if you are getting off something ultra low. g. "Altitude is birthright to any individual who seeks it" .

I couldn't agree more. Ethics yes - Rules no way. BASE has been a sanctuary from rules for me for nearly two decades now and it will remain that way. If someone has a pet project for changing laws and attitudes in their region then that's fine by me. I truly admire that kind of pro-action and wish them all the best and I think that it's pretty wrong for someone to intentionally try and undermine that attempt BUT there is a difference between an intentional and malicious action & someone just going about their jumping business as normal. As sabre210 mentioned you'll never get 100% of BASErs worldwide on side in any given subject and to think that ppl should change their ways just to suit someone's agenda is just plain ignorant and unrealistic. You don't need to be a MENSA member to know that bandit jumping will always continue. If one does not take this into account as factual when planning their project then they are wasting a valuable opportunity to put forward something workable. It's best to acknowledge this fact and take it into account when lobbying the relevant Govt. bodies rather than blasting people for just doing what they've always been doing. As stated by me elsewhere - as long as someone acts in a way that's not slanderous, site-burning, misrepresentative (a lie), or malicious then it's fine by me - my ethics so to speak. g. "Altitude is birthright to any individual who seeks it" .

It means that you come from a similar gene-pool to Miles D. Seriously though - what's a "good" story and what's a "bad" one is all subjective. Every story and any angle will piss-off someone in the BASE community. And as for ppl who say that the media should not be contacted anytime I say BULLSHIT to that. If someone wants to try and get public opinion changed on the thought that BASE is something other that what it is - a risky and dangerous activity pursued mainly by males - then they are undertaking a pretty hard task, but go-for-it in my opinion. Just don't go labelling others who chose to speak to the media as "bad" or "wrong" just because their views expressed on TV are at odds with your pet agenda or project or beliefs - that IS fascist, selfish and childish. Democracy means free speech and as long as that speech is not malicious, slanderous, site-burning or misrepresentative then it's ok by me. Now saying that I must say that Miles' apperance was an embarrasment to say the least - but I defend his right, as anyone's, to do his story. g. "Altitude is birthright to any individual who seeks it" .

This is an old video but a classic one where some kids drive up to another kid on a bike and one reaches out and slaps him - the rest is justice served. http://www.big-boys.com/articles/bumperhit.html g. "Altitude is birthright to any individual who seeks it" .

Actually, it does make a BIG difference which way you place the pins. The tuck-flap does favour a bridle & pin placement in a particular direction but it is the way the pins have been sewn to the bridle that determines the way the pins should be inserted into the loops, regardless of the tuck-flap positioning. Ideally the pins should be sewn to the bridle that favours (compliments) the opening of the tuck-flap but I've seen bridles on 2-pin rigs that have the pins sewn in the opposite direction to the norm. It's important to orient the pins & bridle so that it pulls at the "eye" of the pin in a way that it does not force the end of the pin down into the flap and cause a pin-lock. This problem is with fixed, sewn pins as they are usually attached to the bridle with a loop of sewn webbing that rotates around the "eye" of the pin to pull on either one side or the other. Check out the attached drawing - pls excuse my lack of artistic flair. It should (hopefully) explain my point a bit better than all this verbal diaorrhea. Check your bridles. Hope this helps

Gear fear sucks!! Cutting corners (like you're suggesting) is fine providing you are 100% sure of what you are doing. If you need to ask then you don't know....... so just repack. g. "Altitude is birthright to any individual who seeks it" .

When I talke to that farmer a couple years ago (not sure it's still the same farmer), he asked us to walk along the very edges of his fields (closest to the edge of the cliff). Do you know if this is still what he wants? It's been two years myself - yes, walk straight to the edge of the field closest to the cliff. single file helpsand shows we care. I'm not sure if it's the same farmer as two years ago but he watched us walk along his property a couple of times in the same day and didn't seem to mind. We did leave him a bottle of wine at his front door first load. It's pretty inexpensive for a group of jumpers to chip in and get one bottle. This is a pretty sweet jump and worth the drive. I don't suggest ever paying money to any farmers though as it would start a bad precedent (except the 5 franc landing fee at the 800' jump at the end of That Valley accessed by the cable car)

There's another popular site in another valley North of this one - 700' wall with a waterfall next to it and the military air-base near the landing area 1500' down in the valley below. Protocol with the air-base is to jump only very early in the morning and between 12:00noon and 1pm (this is when the air-force is off to lunch ). Otherwise it ticks off the military dudes BIG-TIME as we found out. The exit point is on the farmer's property and so walk single file along trodden paths and leave a bottle of wine at his door for the 1st load. How would you feel if a constant stream of back-pack carrying foreigners beat a path across crops you've toiled over and tended to by hand for months?? Enjoy

What looks like "pushing the envelope" to you may not really be so. 250' is regularly freefallen and a one second delay or even aerial from this height is not extreme at all, and at 500 jumps should be well within his capabilities. Ground whuffo: "What for you jump from that thar plane???" Skydiving whuffo: "What for you jump off that thar cliff???" So here's the choices you have available to you: Be encouraging and he'll share his passion and his life with you. Be disapproving and he'll hide his passion and his life from you. My advice - support him or your relationship will suffer as a result. If you have a particular concern then by all means tell him of it and then let him have a chance to show you or educate you why you should not be concerned. This would: * ..give him a chance to talk BASE with you and share his passion. * ..show him you respect his right to BASE and make choices for himself. * ..show him you have particular concerns at times and intend to voice them. * ..'put the ball in his court' (even compell him) to show why he thinks his choices are sound. * ..hopefully allay your concerns and give you peace of mind. * ..show him you care for his well-being. * ..show him you support his BASE jumping. Hope this helps

Ditto to what DexterBase said. The dude will just bring heat that the next load has to deal with. We have a fairly busy bridge nearby that everyone jumps but nobody really claims it to be in their back yard - so it's sometimes the case that you'll arrive just after someone else has gone off. That's just the nature sometimes of a busy site and sometimes you just have to play it that way. But in your case - he knew another load was on it's way. He also deceived you as to where he was intending to go. He didn't wait. He didn't call. He didn't care. Sounds like he was suffering from "World's Most Important BASE Jumper Syndrome" g. "Altitude is birthright to any individual who seeks it" .