The111

I agree. Gives me a lot of hope. :) 22:18 (4 year layoff) www.WingsuitPhotos.com

I try not to shop in freefall either. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

I think he's said in other threads that he plans on it, but it will take some time and he's not sure how much. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

One MILLION feet!!! www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Which always accompanies wisdom. At least in Lord of the Rings... www.WingsuitPhotos.com

I was thinking the same thing... But I think one of the main factors in my decision is just knowing that Bill Booth has been making gear for decades and has BILLIONS more experience (if experience was measurable in numbers!) than I'll ever have, so I think the wisest thing is just to trust him and his experience, over my 50-jump ass trying to figure out all the variables. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

How exactly does an RSL "fire"? Ignore me, I'm just being an ass... 9/30/2001 Opelika, AL DMAL 48 308 Y/Y Description: Due to a hard opening, this jumper broke one of the D lines on his canopy, a 230 Rascal. it went into a spin, so he cut it away. The rapid deployment of the reserve via the RSL resulted in his capturing the reserve pilot chute on his right arm. One report indicates the reserve lines also entangled with his neck. The reserve never cleared the freebag. He was found dead at the scene. A second report from someone involved with the investigation reports that the RSL had nothing to do with it; I await further details. Lessons:RSL's are a mixed blessing. For novice jumpers, they provide insurance against failure to pull the reserve after a cutaway, a relatively frequent occurrence in the pre-CYPRES past. This incident may illustrate the downside of an RSL. However, you are right. That was the ONLY one I could find. Believe it or not, I think my mind has been changed and I am probably going to change my order tomorrow to incorporate Skyhook... www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Unfortunately I dunno if all those stats are available. :( Do you know how they turned out? www.WingsuitPhotos.com

I'm having a really difficult time deciding whether or not to get a Skyhook on my new rig. Here's the thing... there are at least a few fatalities where "old" RSL's caused a reserve to malfunction due to harsh spins. I have seen the test photos of the Skyhook though, where a spinning main is cutaway, and the reserve opens clean. My concern is that maybe an intentional spiral and one which is due to malfunction may be different. Does anyone know if "regular" RSL's have been put through similar tests? I.e. intentionally putting the main into a spin then cutting it away. Thanks. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Nah I do nothing but work during the week. And post to forums FROM work of course. :) I'm planning on checking it out as soon as I can. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Very well said. I agree with what you said, I'm going to get it ingrained in my head to cut and pull no matter what (since I'm opting out of any form of RSL)... it's too much complication for me to worry about anything else. You're right that I can only have better experiences than my undeserved escape I recently experienced. :) I'm also glad you suggested to arch before going for the handles, not sure if my instructors neglected to tell me that or if I forgot... the latter is more likely. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Thanks. :) Very good points RR, I think that will be my plan. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Thanks, Blahr... it really is a tough choice. I believe it's been tested and all but I might feel slightly better if it had been in use in the field for 5 years. It is a SMALL possibility that in real use, a shortsight may be revealed that wasn't seen in design or testing... I dunno. I also don't know a lot about how it works and being an engineer I like to understand my gear. What if you have a main PC in tow and you choose not to cut away but simply pull your reserve? Would the Skyhook interfere with this situation? I feel stupid asking this since I'm sure the knowledgeable folk at RWS already took this and a million other scenarios into consideration, but "there's no stupid questions"... Mainly I think, with a Skyhook, I would have an extra variable in my rig and be a little more likely to get confused in the event of a malfunction. So maybe my doubt is more in my own ability than in the Skyhook. I still pull pretty high, so I like to think that I'll have time to think in a malfunction (short of another low self-induced one). www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Some of you may have read about my "incident" (reserve fired into main) in the incident forum. Since then safety has been on my mind 24/7, and I keep thinking and thinking about all sorts of possible situations and how I should react to them. I am getting a Vector 3 built and had a hard time deciding whether or not to get Skyhook, but I decided not to since it is so new. Anyway, my question is this. Does anyone here delay after cutting away before pulling reserve? Obviously it would depend on many things, namely the nature of your body position/stability after the malfunction, and the cutaway altitude. Is there a type of malfunction that can put you back to earth? Maybe a sprial where you face the outside, if that's possible? And if you pull reserve immediately after cutting away, could you be dropping your PC below you and risk entanglement? Even in a feet to earth position (say due to a line over or some other non-spinning malfunction), it still seems weird to me to pull the reserve right away, since I'm used to being on my belly, but I feel like if I did take the time to transition to my belly (due to a rough spin and sufficient altitude to regain stability), when I reached for the handle from my belly flight, it would cause me to go slightly head down which doesn't seem like a very good position. But I'm afraid it I reached for it in a feet down position immediately after cutaway I could momentarily tip backwards a little which seems even worse. Obviously I'm hoping for advice from people who have experienced at least a few cutaways in their time... but opinions from anyone are welcome.

The point we're trying to make is that more altitude does not make a BASE jump necessarily safer. Take the cliffs in Norway and Italy. Many, many fatalities have occurred there notwithstanding the fact that those cliffs are 3000+ feet in height. That's because the structure of those objects is such that the risk of object strike exists no matter how high they are. I agree. Wingloading, experience and, ironically enough, altitude, are all factors in swooping. Point taken. Notice in the following sentence I said I was aware that was an over-simplification. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

That's my exact point, at 2000 ft it would work, at 200 it wouldn't (as you pointed out). As it's already been said countless times in this thread, you have one chance on a BASE jump, but two chances (and much more time/margin for error) on a skydive. That's a significant difference (and not simply a factor of 2, regardless of how much attention BASE jumpers pay to their gear). The largest amount of incidents on the fatality page were due to cliff strikes, but pretty close behind were incidents related to the "one chance, time-critical" nature of BASE. Hence my continued belief that it is still a significant risk. Though I do understand it's NOT THE ONLY ONE. Out of curiosity, why? I hope you still don't think I'm trolling you... if we look back far enough we'll see the original point of this thread was the comparison between swooping and BASE, which inherently is going to bring in a skydiver's perspective. I expressed an idea based on the knowledge I had at the time that a BASE jump was only as dangerous as the altitude, and a swoop was only as dangerous as the wing loading. Obviously in both cases that is an over simplification, and I got a lot of replies from experienced BASErs telling me how unimportant low altitude was compared to the other risks... I agree now that there are greater risks but I still feel that based on theoretical and real statistics, the low altitude/time risk still is comparable to them and significant, not to be overlooked entirely. That said, I'm not trying to create an argument about which sport is better. I think BASE is cool as hell and respect the shit out of you guys for jumping off of stuff measured in hundreds instead of thousands of feet. :) Maybe some day I'll join but I probably don't have the balls... www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Yeh, but we were comparing BASE to general skydiving, where altitude varies. The original point was whether or not the low altitude of BASE makes it much more dangerous than regular skydiving. I still think it does (not so much the altitude, but the inability to recover from a single malfunction or late pull or slow opening), in addition to the many other things which make it dangerous. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

I already said the point of my post was NOT to say that BASE jumping = bad... www.WingsuitPhotos.com

A death caused by rigging error is related to the low altitude single-canopy (one chance only) nature of the BASE jump. Rigging errors are inevitable, no one is perfect. With a chance to pull a second canopy though, you have increased your safety a lot. Poor equipment choice is also related to low altitude... I understand your point that had they chosen better equipment their incident would not have happened... but in that specific case, I see the ultimate killer as low altitude, because with low altitude comes the requirement of more stringent gear selection (hence risk). As far as excessive delay... this is the most obviously related to low altitude... a delay that is 5 seconds too long in a BASE jump can be certain death, a delay that is 5 seconds too long in a skydive is a low deployment probably. I didn't say all my selected cases were definitely malfunctions, I chose them because they were not related to non-altitude variables (cliffs, winds, rivers, etc). All of them would have probably turned out exactly the same from a low plane, but possibly turned out much better from a high plane. Looking at those conditions the deciding factor in my mind is altitude... BUT I can see how it is actually possible to see this issue from two sides. If you take the low altitude as a given, then the gear selection is the deciding factor, which is your perspective. But since I was originally debating whether or not low altitude is a risk, I cannot take that as a given. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Obviously not. I think skydiving and BASE jumping both have attractive elements, probably for the same reasons you or anyone else on this board do. I haven't tried BASE jumping yet and don't plan on it anytime soon, but it certainly does look attractive and maybe one day I will. I'm *not* trying to say "BASE jumpers are teh suck becuz they risk their lives", I'm just saying that the low altitude is a significant risk in the sport, or as you put it (maybe more accurately), it's a "one shot affair", where as with skydiving you get a second shot sometimes. Probably that's actually much more significant, as the 23 events I listed would have been prevented by a reserve AND higher altitude, not just higher altitude. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Sorry, but this is one area where I can respond confidently. I'm not a journalist but I do understand basic probability. If one canopy has a 1/500 chance of failing (this is a dummy value, we could spend forever arguing what the real values of real canopies are), two canopies have a 1/250000 chance of both failing in the same jump. 1/500 * 1/500 OR (1/500)^2. NOT 1/500 + 1/500. If you had read some more would that figure have changed ? I read the whole list. There are 72 numbered fatalities. As far as I can tell, 23 of them had nothing to do with the "BASE-nature" of the jump (i.e. cliffs, winds, wires, rivers, etc). These 23 incidents would have turned out exactly the same had the jumper exited an airplane over an open field at the altitude of his base jump. Their cause is primarily his low altitude and lack of reserve (and lack of time to open one!). They are listed on the page as 2, 10, 15, 17, 21, 22, 30, 31, 33, 36, 37, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 56, 57, 60, 61, 67, 69, 71. Some of these may be open for debate, but it is my opinion based on my limited skydiving knowledge that had these jumpers been placed 3000 feet higher with a reserve canopy when their incident occured, they would have been able to escape alive with proper emergency procedures. I'm ready and waiting to be accused again of trolling, but all I've done is attempted to back up my previous opinions (that altitude, or lack thereof, is a significant BASE risk) with numbers. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Maybe I misread it a little, and maybe you misworded it a little. I'm honestly not trying to troll, and maybe it is due to my skydiving background as you pointed out, but I really did feel like you put too little importance on the danger of gear failure in any freefall activity, specifically at low altitudes or with no reserve. Let's just agree to agree that gear failure may not be the most dangerous part of BASE jumping, but compared to normal skydiving, BASE jumping is significantly more dangerous even if you consider ONLY gear issues (and being a skydiver, these are the issues I would think of first). The other non-gear issues stacked on top of that only make it doubly more dangerous. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

I'm trying to accomplish understanding. I stumbled across a BASE msg board this morning, read a post saying that risk of gear failing was "completely overshadowed" by other dangers in BASE jumping. I found that hard to believe, so I asked why. After finding a fatalities page in which a huge portion of the incidents are due to gear failure, I feel I can slightly more informedly maintain my opinion that gear failure is a significant risk that is not completely overshadowed by anything, though there may very well be many more risks in parallel. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

You're right about the other dangers, but in my mind, and based on the portion of the BASE deaths page I read (I didn't read the whole list), it doesn't seem like they significantly overshadow the risk of gear failure. I still noticed MANY incidents due to gear failure at a few hundred feet. Had that been 3000 feet with a reserve canopy, the jumper would have presumably been fine. The ONLY point I'm trying to make is that low altitude is a significant risk, and much more unforgiving of rigging errors. You could then blame those deaths on "rigging error", but the rigging error is so much more dangerous at low altitudes! Someone made a statement that low altitude was not significant compared to the other risks, but in the portion of the list I read it accounted for 30-40%. If normal skydivers had no reserves, packed BASE rigs, and always opened low, the fatality rate would go up exponentially, regardless of how much care is put into packing mains, because malfunctions are bound to happen, and a double canopy system can increase your chances of survival exponentially (excluding entanglement issues, etc). www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Thank you Blair, obviously I didn't take into account the fact the different deployment delays will create different deployment speeds. I still feel like all this attention to gear though, simply reinforces the fact the low altitude jumps are dangerous. www.WingsuitPhotos.com