NickDG

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content

    5,073

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    1

  • Feedback

    0%

Posts posted by NickDG

  1. · Edited by NickDG

    The Ten Million Dollar Broken Leg . . .

    Judge: Mr. Shyster, you may begin your closing argument.

    Plantiff's Lawyer: Ladies and gentleman of the jury. My client sits before you with a badly broken leg. And we have shown by direct evidence my client's injury can be traced directly to an initial low main canopy deployment on the part of the TI, the ongoing disregard of the DZO to ensure their TIs follow the rules, and the USPA which has a record of being laissez faire when it comes to regulating tandem jumping. We have presented indisputable evidence from the 'Snitch-O-Meter' that shows without a doubt the defendant in this case initiated main parachute deployment at 4,700-feet. And that is a full 300-feet below the prescribed 'safe' altitude. How far, ladies and gentleman, is 300-feet? It's the equivalent length of a football field closer to the ground than permitted by the rules. (The jury gasps.) And we offer this very late main deployment left too little time to set up a proper landing pattern and therefor my client is maimed for life. 

    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Seriously folks, there is no issue with having too much information in this sport. But, that information in the wrong hands, like a sharp lawyer in front of a whuffo jury, may be a can of worms best left unopened. When it's video of a mistake we say the video malfunctioned. Are we going to start saying the AAD failed when it records a mistake? That's not going to fly.

     

     

  3. When Mains started getting smaller in the early nineties I was jumping a Stiletto 135 with a Raven 170 reserve. And the thought struck me we are now building container systems the wrong way around. The smaller main should be in the top pack tray with the larger reserve on the bottom.

    I've always thought your reserve should be big enough to land you (in relative safety) if you're unconscious and the brakes are still stowed, but nobody thinks like that anymore.

    Of course, I'm also the guy who thinks 'gut' gear will someday make a return to the skies. Think about that in terms of modern materials and how much more we know now. Instead of packing two parachutes into a tight package on your back the two canopies could be 'spread out' to the point your rig profile, especially for freeflying, would practically disappear. We also learned, from BASE jumping, that parachutes tend to work better when not packed down to the density of a brick and stuffed into a small container you need a tool to close. 

    Moe Villetto built a stealth BASE rig designed to be worn under your street clothing to get by security guards on high profile jumps. Like if you wanted to, I don't know, day blaze the Empire State Building. I think he called it, "The Blade." And as innovative, slim, and form fitting as that rig was - it's the various ways Moe is coming up with to pack a square that is interesting to me. He found ways to spread them out so it seems like they aren't even there.

    Another advantage to gut gear is you aren't grounded when your reserve needed repacking. You'd just borrow a reserve from somebody else. In fact why even own a reserve parachute at all? They should be hanging on hooks at the drop zone where you just grab one and pay the day rate.

    However, for the new 'Gut Gear' (we'd need a much better name) to work skydivers would have to give up using deployment bags. And that's okay, again BASE jumpers have been doing terminal speed openings for the last 40 years or so without deployment bags. And it works fine. You just need a Tailpocket on the canopy to control things. Also D-bags do cause malfunctions sometimes, so there's that.

    One issue I can see is that BASE jumpers, in general, are very careful packers while, also in general, skydivers are not. But that is somewhat mitigated by the fact skydivers hire professionals to pack their mains and those guys & girls can easily learn a new trick or two.

    yrtyrytrytrytrytry.jpg.5d2f49903afc5f8bf46289e8e153e524.jpg 

     

       




     

  5. None of the below is gospel, just my take on how I remembered things . . .

    It's been a while since I've seen the movie, which I liked a lot, however it wasn't exactly the film it started out to be. I first met Marah Strauch, who created and directed Sunshine Superman, many years earlier. She had come across a carton of old BASE VHS tapes her deceased Uncle had shot. His name was Mike Allen, and he was BASE 163. I'm not certain if she knew her Uncle in life as he was killed in a 1992 automobile accident. However, looking through the box of tapes and photographs she felt a connection to her Uncle, not through parachutes or jumping which she knew nothing about, but through photography which they both shared a love.

    Trying to find out more about her Uncle she found me, and others, who knew and jumped with Mike. And when she phoned it was always, “Hi, Uncle Nick,” as we all became defacto Uncles to her and she a Niece to all of us. She began attending Bridge Days and other BASE events, always with her cameras, and she became a fixture in the BASE community.

    Around this time she starting talking about a film on the history of BASE jumping. And, of course, I was all for that. And she came to my home a few times to interview me, and I passed on all I had learned about the history of the sport. And not just me, she did that with many others who jumped with Mike.

    And like I'm want to do I emphasized the part Carl Boenish played in the development of BASE jumping, and how there had been plenty of parachute jumps from objects made prior to Carl's time that registered on the world only as inconsequential stunts. It took a combination of Carl's talent as a film maker and the majestic scenery El Capitan provided in 1978 to lite the fuse that detonated the bomb that became BASE jumping as we know it today. And Carl did that in something he called a simple film poem using little to no words.

    Of course, you can't make a movie over night (although I haven't seen 'Hex' yet) and at least four years or so went by as Marah sought funding, gathered more materials and footage, and kept interviewing BASE jumpers. Then she met Jean Boenish, who up to that point had been very protective of her late husband's legacy. Maybe a bit overprotective. I interviewed her for my BASE magazine and prizing personal information out of her was difficult, even though I knew her fairly well. She'd even jumped on me (gently) for using one of Carl's photos in a story about him I wrote without her permission. And I told her once, all of Carl's films and other works should be in the public domain or people are going to forget him. And when Marah came along I think Jean saw a way to solve that problem.

    Something between Marah and Jean must've clicked and Marah realized she now had access to all of Carl's films, and that was something no one else had. And I don't fault Marah in the least for it, but that's how the focus of the film morphed from “The History of BASE Jumping” to the “Carl & Jean Boenish Story.”

    I'm actually very happy the movie turned out the way it did. Marah gave Carl Boenish a foothold in history with her movie in a way none of us who knew and revered him ever could. And I know Marah also did a lot of work preserving Carl's films for future generations. But, I will say this - the broader view of BASE jumping history – the nitty gritty nuts and bolts part of it, well, that film hasn't been made yet. And I really hope someone eventually does make that film.

     

    ghhgffhgfhgfhgfhgfhgf.jpg

    • Like 2

  7. What bugs me is even a cursory search of the internet would have showed you the name 'BASELog" is the name of a logbook I designed in 1989. You really should have used another name, or at least asked my permission first. Here is the first BASElog and I've sold around 100 of these over the years. And I know a few people still using them. 

    NickDG :-)

    BASE194

    gffghghfgfgfghfgh.jpg

    lkjldkjlkejljel.jpg

    • Like 1

  9. · Edited by NickDG

    The FAA has, or at least did have, a rule that if you're a certificate holder (pilot, rigger, mechanic, whatever) and you die, you have thirty days to notify them. :$

    • Like 1

  10. The FAA database is hopelessly out of date and chock full of dead riggers with seal symbols that come up as good if anyone checked. My good friend Frank Mott passed away back in the mid-2000s and he's still listed as an active rigger. His seal symbol is MH4. If you use it (Frank wouldn't mind) just anonymously send his widow 20 bucks.

    • Like 1

  13. >>If it is a case of nobody manning the job, I wouldn't mind doing it<<

    cheapNfun,

    I can offer you some insight into what you're suggesting. I started the original BFL in 1989 and I kept it current for its first fifteen years.

    That same year of 1989 I also started a small BASE magazine called, “The Fixed Object Journal.” And for the first three issues, or so, there are no BASE fatality reports included because no BASE fatalities occurred. Worldwide the BASE community at the time is still fairly small and since the 1978 Yosemite jumps that ignited the sport only six “modern” BASE fatalities had previously occurred.

    This is also a time in the sport when BASE jumpers aren't going higher and higher they are going lower and lower. And there are many accidents. And at least in my part of the world any gathering of five BASE jumpers included one on crutches. So I added a section in the magazine called, “Black Box – Anatomy of an Accident” I know dramatic, huh? But I didn't write those reports myself. Either the jumper involved or someone who was there would send in the report and I'd just publish it.

    It was kind of natural I'd follow the USPA format for accident reporting as I'd already been reading those for over 15 years. But it dawned on me there was no reason to make the reports anonymous as everyone knew who had the accident locally, and to a smaller extent, so did everyone else worldwide.

    I had no idea how that decision would play out years later but for then it worked well. There are no rules or regulations concerning BASE jumping as we were faithfully following Carl Boenish's mantra of screw the laws of Man. But too many of us were also trying to screw the laws of gravity. So many of the accidents reports are scathing and brutal. “This Bonehead was an accident waiting to happen,” some would begin or end. And a young BASE community learns the only power they have is the power of peer pressure. And there is nothing altruistic about it for the most part. It was strictly site preservation. Getting carted off in an ambulance makes jumping that site harder for others. So while strictly lowbrow those first BASE accident reports did help others from making similar mistakes and we had a few laughs along the way because why not. Nobody was dead after all.

    Then a BASE fatality did occur. And I received several reports from the field. But I realized I couldn't publish them as is - as you can't call a dead person a bonehead. So I culled out the relative information and wrote the fatality report myself. Then I decided to include the previous six BASE fatalities to add some perspective and I called it the BASE Fatality List.

    I went around a few times on if I should include the names of the dead. The USPA doesn't include a name in its published reports and I knew it was for legal reasons, yet, I always thought it counter-productive and furthered the notion that skydiving fatalities are something that happens to somebody else. But when that somebody else is John Smith it brings home the lesson a bit more and serves as a lasting tribute. Try and name everyone who died skydiving in the year 1966, or 1972, or 1984, and you readily can't. Those names, those people, are gone forever.

    Around the year 2000 BASE jumping exploded in popularity and all of a sudden not everyone knew everyone else anymore. The BFL is accepted in the BASE community as a good thing and is nudging closer to a hundred fatalities. And it was beginning to take a toll on me. I had an excellent information network that spanned the globe and I would receive phone calls and emails just hours after a fatality. And I think that was because people trusted me to write a respectful and factual report. And I always tried to do that. In the beginning it was harder to write the reports especially when it was someone I knew, even if I just saw them at a Bridge Day or somewhere else only occasionally. But in about 2005 or so I no longer readily recognized the names of the dead and thought, oh well, maybe this will make it easier. But it didn't. It just got harder.

    The end for my involvement with the BFL began around 2006. It simply became too much for me personally especially as the rate of BASE fatalities accelerated. And I know now I only imagined it but when I showed up at BASE events I began feeling like the Grim Reaper or at least the Grim Reaper's recording secretary. And I thought maybe I was spooking people. But I was only spooking myself. And I wasn't having fun BASE jumping anymore. And no fun = no sport. The final straw is the death threats I received when someone didn't like what I wrote about their dead best friend. And the Father who called me and asked how much money I wanted to take his son's name off my scummy list. And that was the end for me.

    Just some things to think about if you decide to go ahead.

    NickD :-)
    BASE 194

  17. I went on my Meals on Wheels delivery route yesterday with a first time volunteer and we were chatting when she asked what brought me to California. I told her skydiving and she said, wow, my grandfather was killed skydiving. So thinking I might have known him I asked his name. Turns out she is Bob Buquor's granddaughter!

    Her Mother was just four years old when Bob was killed and neither of them knew much, if anything at all about Bob. The Mom did attend a Starcrest event in Bob's honor but that's all.

    I'm looking to put them in touch with anyone who actually knew (or jumped with) Bob. So please let me know if you can think of anyone.

    NickD :)

  18. Sort of happened to me once. I was JM with a load of static line students in a C-182. We lined up for T/O and a few moments after the pilot put the power to A/C he passed out cold. I pulled the throttle back, pushed the student that was up against the panel to the side, and reached down with my hands to work the rudder and brakes. We ran off the RWY but I managed to get it stopped before we hit anything . . .

    NickD
    :)

  19. Find better Instructors.

    Okay, I won't leave that dangling . . .

    There are some Instructors that shy away from problem students and some that welcome them. The ones that welcome them make it their business to see that you succeed.

    They don't get wrote up in PARACHUTIST, get gold medals hung around their necks, don't get called athletes, or cop big endorsements from beverage companies. But they put their heads down at night re-winding the fact you finally turned and burned on your AFF Level 5. And that makes them sleep like babies . . .

    So like I said, find better Instructors . . .

    NickD :)

  22. >>Anyone serious about the sport and about instruction in the sport has to accept that 100 jumps is a drop in the bucket
    There is a well founded historical reference for the "coach" rating. When the USPA jumpmaster rating disappeared so did the training ground for new instructors. To remedy that problem USPA first tried the BIC course which later morphed into the coach rating. The original jumpmaster rating allowed for assisting in the FJC, gearing up and pin checking students, and facilitating student static line exits. Jumpmasters could indeed actually jump with students. This occurred (in the S/L program) after a student demonstrated they could do stable 20-decond delays. On their next series of jumps, 30 second delays, a jumpmaster could follow them out and dock on them for the student’s first RW jump. These were known as cherry dives. The important distinction between then and now however is these basic two-way jumps were conducted when the student was ready not when the jumpmaster was ready. So in a way, we are thinking about all this backwards.

    What’s worrying about the coach rating is the slop in the program. A coach with just a hundred jumps is normally held to a more limited role while coaches with more jumps are allowed to do more. But who’s making those decisions? Is it DZOs with a monetary stake in the answer?

    As for jump numbers for camera, that’s a tough one. Back when only a relatively few people jumped with cameras at all, our parachute gear was clunky and way more complicated then it is now. Cameras were also bulky, heavy, had wires to deal with it, and you had to be smart and handy enough to go out into your garage and actually build yourself a camera helmet. I know Norm Kent jumped with a camera for the very first time on his 80-something jump. I myself started at just over a hundred jumps. When the first consumer video cameras appeared in the early 1980s they required a whole separate video recorder you strapped to your chest.

    The point is the difficulty of early camera jumping just naturally weeded out people who couldn’t handle it no matter how many jumps they had. Today’s video cameras have taken the “handle it” out of the equation. But not the dangers of distractions, snags, and whatnot that goes along with it. Other than instituting a “camera rating” I’m not sure what do that about that. As an aside its always bothered me that an AFF rating is required to simply follow out a tandem or AFF dive, but the person flying outside camera for you can be just about anybody.

    NickD :)

  23. If you use Firefox there's a plugin for D/L, converting, and saving YouTube videos, or any other videos on the net. It's called downloadhelper. There's also stand alone programs that do the same thing.

    And I hope the rest of you guys aren't Coaches or Instructors, the poor guy asked a simple question and no one seemed to understand it, lol.

    NickD :)

  24. In past years I've asked my skydiving friends to get involved with "Letters to Santa." This was helping young children when they ask Santa for clothing, school supplies, a warm winter coat for Mom, etc, However, due to the U.S. Postal Service being in financial trouble they have scaled back the program except for in some major cities. Another factor, if you can believe it, is some not very nice people were using the program to stalk the kids!

    So this year I'm asking for monetary donations to "Meals on Wheels." I started volunteering with the Los Angeles MOW program (the largest MOW program in the country) and they really do a tremendous amount of good. We prepare and distribute 3600 meals per day to the elderly, the seriously ill, shut-ins, and others who for any reason can't shop or prepare meals for themselves. One very important thing it does for the elderly is gives them a few more years in their own homes before moving into and becoming dependent on a senior care facility.

    MOW depends almost entirely on private donations to fund the program so I'm asking for the price of one jump ticket even if it's just a hop & pop. We are a non-profit so all contributions are tax deductible.

    You can do it online here:

    http://donate.stvincentmow.org/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=donate-1

    Or directly to us at:

    St. Vincent Meals on Wheels
    2131 West Third Street
    Los Angeles, CA 90057

    In either case indicate the word "Skydiver" somewhere with your donation and maybe we can become a yearly force MOW can count on.

    Thanks! And have a wonderful Christmas everyone!

    NickD :)