jalisco

nobody else's pack job looks like that...

Ah, the perennial debate... I'd like to respond to one little corner of the debate that I've been musing about lately; namely, whether general skydiving canopy experience is applicable to BASE. I think those of you who have a lot of experience with different types of canopies miss the forest for the trees. I think most of us experience events as if what we apprehend through our senses is more or less everything there is to sense. But the reality seems to me to be that, when we take up a new discipline, we have to learn to sense things. A couple of examples: When I watched the first Star Wars movie (long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away), I was amazed by how "realistic" it was. Of course, now that I've learned to see movies better, it doesn't look so realistic anymore. When I took up running in earnest a few months ago, I thought my running shoes were fine. I could have run in just about any shoes and only noticed the grossest of differences. I other words, I could not tell a really good shoe (for my foot) from a mediocre one. Now even different really good running shoes feel remarkably different to me. I've learned to feel them. The same is true for canopy experience. Before I started skydiving, I had no idea what being under a canopy was really like. It took me a couple of jumps before I really noticed the difference between the DZ's 200 and their 290. I spent plenty of jumps just learning what that first sabre 170 could do. I was learning to feel it -- and, more importantly for this discussion, learning more generally what a canopy was. The more canopies I have jumped, the more I sense generally about canopies. The difference between my experience of a canopy flight on that first jump, and my experience 200 jumps and several canopies later was really significant. And a huge part of that difference in experience is applicable to canopy flight in general. NOTE: I'm NOT arguing that BASE-specific drills during the posited 200 jumps wouldn't be imensely better than the typical skydiving progression, or that all ingrained responses from skydiving are healthy for BASE, or that different people don't learn disciplines at different rates or in different ways, or ... ...just that simple canopy experience is generally significantly better than none.

Then I wouldn't need the rubber sheets! Now I just need to find some place to buy custard in bulk...

tequila, liquid geometry of passion; tequila, the buzzard god who copulates in midair with the ascending souls of dying virgins; tequila, firebug in the house of good taste; O tequila, savage water of sorcery, what confusion and mischief your sly, rebellious drops do generate! - Tom Robbins

Here it is with a few nouns changed...

A trailerable device might make roof access easier. Of course, you'd have to re-pack on the roof, or go unpacked... ...oh wait -- a perfect use for the Sorcerer!

Thank goodness I read your post before I followed through on that...so, a tattoo is sufficient then?

There's no place like home.

Hmmm...Let's see -- Last I checked, there was still an airport in St. George...

o m g . . .

Anyone used any of the "High Gear" alti watches?

do I smell another nugget?

I've heard that animal prints actually help...

It'd have to be, like, realllly overhung, wouldn't it?

LIFE LETTERS Time & Life Building Rockefeller Center New York, NY 10020.

I agree with the 90 degrees -- ref: this post (crayolas and all) Basically, a) 90 deg puts you as far as possible from the down-wind wires -- 110 seems further from the down-wind wires, but it's really not, since the wind will be carying you past where they start in short order -- so an opening facing directly at the plane of the down-wind wires puts you closer to striking them with a 110 deg exit than with a 90 deg exit. b) the diagram in the above post shows that with the right opening you can hit the up-wind wire even if the wind-speed equals (or even slightly exceeds) your canopy speed.

Wouldn't a 9-1-1 audio recording be public domain?

True. So, it's not electromagnetic radiation we need to be concerned about. It's induced voltages (and thus currents) that we should pay attention to. When you get really close to a wire transmitting a high ac current, the field around that wire induces currents in objects near it, including you. This is different from radiation effects. Think transformer. For example, the current density induced in your body 1/2 meter from a single 60Hz transmission line carrying 1000A would be on the order of 1 mA. Let-go current (at which point ventricular fibrillation may occur) is 9mA for men, 6mA for women.

Sounds like a reasonable rule. If you ever find yourself in a position to serve as a path to ground from several hundred thousand volts, you will no longer be able to find yourself. That's the danger of the voltage levels we're talking about. And these huge voltages (for all practical purposes in this case) don't change. So that's that. Don't provide a path to ground. Most people get that. Now, there is another issue. The current flowing through the wire creates a field around the wire that can induce voltages in other objects nearby (like you). This has nothing to do with the line voltage (in fact, if the transmission-line voltage is higher, then they can transmit the same power with less current). The magnitude of this effect depends how big the current is. And the current varies depending on the load. So, if it's summer early evening and everybody is running their ac and all the arenas are lit up and a bunch of companies are still running 2nd shift and an alternate transmission line is down for some maintenance and the neighboring state's reservoir is low so they're borrowing a bunch of extra power... ...then the voltages induced in you are going to be bigger than a comfortable spring holiday morning. The magnitude of the field also varies (for a wire) roughly with the square of your distance from it. So when you're really close to it, the field differences across your body will much bigger than if you're a little further away from it. Thing to remember: the induced voltages across your body do not require any conductive path between you and the wire, or between you and the ground. ie: ...and stay as far away from the transmission lines themselves as you can.

I'm no expert, but I know of one non-operational tower, anyway. I believe there are several more similar to it. There's another I know of that's long-since been stripped of anything except for a couple of local communications whips. Is this unique to my region of the US?

This worries me. With this setup, it may be difficult to release your brake lines. I say this because I have often had to pull down on the brake lines further (i.e. after pulling the tab out of the loop) in order to pull the loop out of the eye in order to go into full flight. With this set up, I could imagine the 2nd (green) loop lying across the ring after you pull the toggle tab out. Between friction and leverage, you might find it difficult to pull the green loop through the ring just by pulling down on the brake line.

maybe with some illustrative pictures

After that list, I'm trying to imagine what "everything else" might be...

Hmmmm... I wonder if that house from that suv commercial they shot there is available for rent...

You guys are confusing me. I thought each park had to come up with its own "visitor use management plan" that (you'd think) has to address that list of concerns for any activity proposed for the park. I wouldn't think that we were hoping (realistically, anyway) that BASE would somehow get a special exemption from that planning process -- just that BASE be treated like any other possible visitor use of the park. The "may require" and "may have" language that replaces it just clarifies that the individual park "visitor use management plan" can do those things, if it in fact it decides to allow BASE at that particular park. To me, it just looks like they're proposing to strike a blanket statement that effectively removes BASE from any consideration as a possible activity in any park's management plan.