Calvin19

agreed, i have used some yellow cutaway cable for some pretty serious (non-parachute) release applications, and never had a problem with it getting nicked/bent. if you have extra cable and swedges/tool, its very easy and inexpensive to replace.

WHAT is up with VELCRO? seriously...WTF?

here is the rope side of the deal... What you see is... 2- 220meter x 16mm HTN ropes 5- 100meter 11.6mm nylon static ropes 6- 9.3-10.5mm dynamic lines plus 300kg of random biners, pulleys, anchors, plates, belays, and everything else it takes to build frasca. there is a BASE rig in one of those bags... cheers! goodnight BASE world... or should i say, goodmorning my local A, its been awile. wish me luck! I read in my BASE handbook we are supposed to use a 42 for this...- JH

I think he means the toggle cant get sucked throught the ring and become "blown" and your right, nicknitro, that is what im trying desperatly to do here, keep the toggle in place, re invent the wheel. of course, i was never a big fan of wheels.

Dude, You've been having some bad luck with brake lines------------------------ tell me about it. these two weird brake line things have been the only two jumps i ever did slider down. All other jumps i have made have been either slider off, or slider up. not that that is the cause, but i hate sliders.

I think i might try that... After tacking my new risers, i remembered why cutaway cable is such a pain, it has no stiffness. I would need a smaller ring to keep the loop from bending the cable and folding then pulling it through the ring, creating a wonderfull toggle lock or just losing the toggle for good... again. I cant make the ring smaller, because i dont have a bar tach machine and if the ring is smaller it limits the brake line freedom when sliding through it when one would route the brake line through it(sliderup) I like your idea of minimising the forces on the actual toggle tab, but i cant sew a new loop into my risers, i have a -kinda-bar tach machine an hour away i can use, but i am going to try to put a gromet tab (like on a cutaway) on the riser at the toggle stow, to fold over the ring, so one can route the loop through the ring, then through the gromet, then stow the 4 or 5" of cutaway cable in a curved loop (because it runs into the end of the riser an 3" and i want more toggle travel before it unstows)

YES! on my first base jump, the potato in january, 2003. bank sign read 14 degrees F. it took me the whole ride to get the line out! by the time i had a good brake line, i was 100 feet from the north side of the river and crash landed into that tiny scree line, 50' up from the snake. I thought about hitting the water, but it looked cold.

" toggle fires that were not the result of poor rigging. In every single one of these cases the toggle was a metal pin style (not a cloth stub)" Yes... my toggles are short metal pins. I have, since starting this collum, decided to male my own toggle/riser setup. using cutaway cable AND a cloth stub, and i will test at the bridge. The risers are already made... Thabk you all for all the input. this is the first technical collum i have ever started, it turned out well.

Thats awsome! thank you. i assume it works about the same speed as WLOs, so i might just try those at the potato for awhile.

forgive the sarcasm, i apologise. i got kicked out of my english classes for talking smack to the teachers. some things wont change. I dont plan on jumping with the lines in the rings, there are a lot of things a lot of brothers died figuring out, and i dont want that to be pushed aside. i just want some ideas, I see the advantages of leaving them out, but that really scared me. (didnt stop me from jumping it again 4 hours later) ((but i did spend an extra minute or two stowing brake lines, nicknitro, i do concede that) i will work on my spelling, again, sorry. i never was to good at being put in my place.

"I'd rather drop the remaining toggle and "jedi" myself to landing rather than spin in with a line over. The only thing in BASE that can claim more saves than the line over modification are John Dragan's boats at Bridge Day . . . " I agree, but again as i said, OTHER than line overs. i would think that using WLO toggles would be ok, even though they are harder and slower to clear than just throwing a toggle.

I completly agree that i may have stowed it wrong, (however, i dont think i did) that said, i disagree on that being the only way could happen. line twists? risers sliding against each other? riser slap, the toggle is caught on a camera or a lip ring as it brushes by and blows the line? a reach and -almost-miss? and hell, poor rigging? if one screws up stowing, the toggle will be there even if it blows. My question was what are the other reasons for leaving them out of the rings. i was not looking for a spelling lesson or a lecture. but thanks. ps-i understand you are a senior rigger, and i say this with all the respect it comands.

Ok... so... OTHER than being able to clear a line over, and feeling nice and pretty when your flying with toggles in hand, is there any other reasons to leave brake lines out of the rings for slider off? I ask because i blew a toggle on a "black diamond" jump the other day and if it wasnt for some serious -pull it out of my arse- jedi canopy flying, (and a little water) i would not be walking, for sure. It was the most technical jump i had ever done, and i blew a toggle. its just, on a slider off jump, if your in a canyon almost as tall as the Royal Gorge, half as wide, with a landing area the size of a parking space, NO outs, its REALLY F***** NICE TO HAVE TOGGLES! ps-my wing loading is pretty high, im 155lbs under a 220, (im ordering a 260, this week) so, please, i would love to hear the other reasons, because im very close to just leaving the lines in there for a few slider off jumps and putting the WLO toggles on. or quit base entirly and rope jump for the duration. noooo, i couldnt do that... cheers

"How is that skydiving, which is way more regulated, seems more out of control to me than BASE jumping does?" I agree... and i think it may be because with learning BASE, we dont have a 'For Hire" AFF instructor standing on the exit point with us, checking our gear doing the count, telling us everything is going to be just fine. Instead we have a mentor-Maybe- and he spent the last 2 days telling us we are probably going to die doing this. and thats the only way we should learn.

Jesus dude, I understand your situation and jumping style, and in no way do i want to be offensive. that said. Line twists and off headin openings are pretty F'n bad jumping off a cliff. but i agree with Jaap, our little magic backpacks are pretty warm fuzzy to me. But i have said before: "Its amazing what we can get away with in this sport, but its incredible what little of a mistake can kill you so quickly" cheers -SPACE-

The backpack holds an extra 70' of line from the endof the jump line. One unties the reserve line, and rappels down the remainder of the jumpline after the swing is stopped (or while still swinging, wich is really fun once you get a hundred jumps off the same rig, like spotting a bomb drop, but its your meat!) The rope is hauled back up to the Exit by a thin line that is thrown down AFTER the jumper Exits, the thin retrieval line is kept at the TOP while a jumper is jumping. The turnaround time with the 4 of us who know the system well can get down to about 5 minutes, the hike out takes about 18minutes.

The anchors are a mix of Cable-slung boulders, and static rope slung boulders. The tyroleans are custom made 220meter by 16mm High tenacity Nylon lines. (read:ULTRA low stretch, about 9% at failure) the jump lines are off the shelf 10.3mm dynamic lines. There is no shock absorbers other than the lines themselves and the "inertia redirection" (read "swing") We have used the same tyrolean lines for upwards of 1000 jumps before retiring. The wear comes from handling and transport, not jumping. we replace jump lines (dynamic lines) about every 200 jumps. After testing a used jump line on our own test rig, they lost no strength after 200 jumps. What we found that ruins the lines is rapping on them after a jump, not the jump itself. The forces we put on them are very small compared to a lead fall. as for the UIAA, they are great for climbers and rescuers, but of course we are not climbing or rescuing. I learned my initial rigging from an alpine SAR team, and then quickly chose to ignore it. They are so locked into some very conservative rules that serve an OSHA governed body very well, but they dont need to progress, and progress is what we are trying to do. We are here pushing gear to what we have found it can do, not what it was designed to do.

2000' E. /2000' A, tallest 190'A freefall over ground, 170'E over water 140' Other. PCA

The gri gri works great... simple, fast, and designed to take much harder hits than we are putting on it. just started using a cinch... seems to work even better on our new thinner line.

THANK YOU DEX... I agree with everything dex said... Dex, we have met only breifly, but i hope we can jump on a system together soon, your experience will be very usefull... If anybody has any questions about our system, please ask. But SERIOUSLY, Do not try this stuff, It took us years and hundreds of systems to get to this point.

I have actualy been rope jumping for 7 years, and only base for 2. Switching to the parachute was the weirdest thing ever. After 2000 rope falls, doing a gainer without weight to the side is strange... We started out climbing, and have been progressing ever since, this is a smaller, very reliable system.

Yo everybody... Im Calvin, the song i used in this was a Rob D remix of moby porceliine... and thanks for all the input, It took me about 9 Economics classes to make this film. And thanks to the skull man for posting it... i have no idea how to do that... see you all over thanksgiving... -SPACE-

Nick- I actually have made a harness like that, with fabric "3 ring" cutaways on the lift webs. it is for my rope work, getting out of a harness quickly, not exactly to "cut away" while suspended. and i used it with a round canopy, with a single attachment point for all lines on one riser.

no way! never making fun! bridge day IS a circus, i had only seen it on film before last week... then i got to add to the carnage with some crazy diving board stuff. damn that was fun...

never could spell, and your right, the NRG bridge is as controlled as its going to get...