JaapSuter

Those are all valid points you bring up, and perhaps I'm just over-analyzing. The reason I am a little confused is because the canopy behaviour was so dramatically different on my two PCAs compared to my other slider-down jumps. I'll jump more, talk less, and then come back...

And if there is a transcript, or summary, I'd like it PMed or posted here, whatever is more appropriate.

Comments like this shortly after a post about another guy having his tongue up my ass are going to make people wonder what the hell we were up to. Great... Yeah, Friday will be good.

Thanks for the heads up. I'll give them a call, but it looks like they may lose some business. I'm assuming that during the day people are packing outside on the grass? Considering it's April...

Rest assured I'm a total ass in real life. It's a shame that posting whore-dom doesn't translate into base-jumping skills.

I just looked that thread up again, and I saw a lot of positive replies. I'd post a link here, but don't want to make it too easy for the media (they're on here). I highly doubt anybody thought you did it to get attention. The number of people that thought your accident report was useful doesn't matter. It's the number of accidents it helped avoid. If there is only one base-jumper that slowed down because of your write-up, isn't it already worth it then?

Hello, I'm going to book a trip to Twin Falls, and I'm probably going to end up with a two bed hotel-room in the Shilo. If anybody is going to be in town then and looking for a place to stay, drop me a note and you can crash. I haven't booked yet though, so alternatively, if you have a bed available, drop me a PM. We'll split costs of course. Cheers, Jaap Edit: changed dates

I think that non-fatal incidents are often overlooked in this sport. We only see the major screwups, but I think there are lessons to be learned even if you do so much as bruise your pinky toe on landing. Occasionally people point out that Nick's list proves there is no correlation between experience and accident-rates, because there are many experienced jumpers on the list. Aside from the fact that these experienced jumpers are pushing it more, I think the conclusion falls short anyway simply because it excludes all non-fatal accidents. I would not be surprised at all if there was a strong correlation between experience and non-fatal accidents, and would love to see more analysis in this direction. Unfortunately, there is little bookkeeping in this area, and few people post on the forum when they "merely" break a leg. I recall one extensive accident report from BASE813, which was very impressive! Rest assured that as long as my body is still capable of moving my fingers over a keyboard, I will bore you all to death with my accident report. When that time comes... Cheers, Jaap

Okay, we have a theory that is related to the PCA technique. We'll be trying this out shortly and I'll report back here. I'd also like to point out that in no way is this backsurge phenomenon related to the fact that I'm jumping a Rock Dragon. I've seen PCA's on Rockdragons that worked brilliantly, and all my other non PCA jumps had great openings. If anything, this is related to the PCA technique, and we'll be testing this out shortly. Cheers, Jaap

For what it's worth, on a very recent 270ft static-line jump, I had perfect bang-on opening. This was using the same brake-settings as on my most recent 180ft PCA, but there was significantly less wind (zero vs a strong headwind). We have this opening on video, and there was zero backsurge, and I might even go as far as to say it was a perfect opening with a minimal amount of forward speed, yet no stall. Maybe I'm making a mountain of a mole-hill, but until I get some video of my PCA jumps, I guess we'll have to wait for a real explanation.

Funny you mention that, I felt the exact same way. To me C1 showed a higher fun factor. It was a "let's have fun jumping, and if we somehow manage to get great footage too, that's just a nice side-effect" movie, whereas C2 seemed made for the footage. Both are highly recommended though! "Method to Madness" is still one of my favourite base-soundtrack songs.

If anything there was a slight headwind. We did it again yesterday, now in a noticable headwind. The backsurge was even stronger now. People on top of the S where guessing that I flew backwards close to twenty feet, and saying that my canopy halfway dissappeared underneath the S. This was on a one inch shallower brake setting than the one I previously used, but I'm guessing the stronger headwind pushed me back more than before. We didn't get footage on this jump, but we're considering to go back soon and get some video solely to analyse the opening. I will use my shallowest setting on the next try though. I'm a clueless, because my longer-delay openings have been great, on deeper DBSses. I can't imagine the airspeed and wind having that much more of an effect on opening, compared to my other jumps. Right now though, there's no chance of doing a PCA from a solid object, because a perfect onheading opening would smash me backwards into the object. Not that I should be doing those anyway... I'll follow-up once I have video that I can analyse.

Hi, How many times can you change brake-settings before the steering line integrity is hurt beyond repair? I just changed my brake-settings for the second time, and of course this is no problem. Obviously one is careful to only unravel the bartacks and not touch the line itself. However, there must be a limit to how often you can re-bartack your lines before it starts damaging them. Has this ever been an issue for anybody? I'm guessing it shouldn't take more than two or three tries to get a DBS right, and that this is no problem. Any thoughts? Cheers, Jaap p.s. I really hope somebody will post another message in between this and my last one, otherwise I'm going to own three threads at the top of the screen and officially become a post whore.

Hello, The following has been mentioned before by experienced jumpers. But often only in passing conversation in the middle of other threads. I just screwed this up myself, I figured I might as well dedicate a thread to it, so somebody else can skip this step of his DBS tuning process. Anyway, upon getting my brand new canopy, I quickly set out to do several skydives with it, and tune my brake settings. I used the method as described by Consolidated Rigging over here: http://www.crmojo.com/adobepdf/dbsinsert.pdf I did skydives on the shallow-brake settings, and several skydives with the LRM installed using the deep brake settings. I had my rigger install an extra brake setting that corresponded with what the Consolidated Rigging manual gave me. The result was a brake setting that was too deep, because: The traditional way of DBS tuning results in a brake-setting that is too deep if used on a vented canopy.. That means that if you're jumping a vented canopy, you'll have to find a different way of tuning. What the best approach is, I don't know. I think finding a relatively safe object like the potato span combined with reasonable guesses and video-analysis is your best bet. I'm guessing Tom Aiello and other people will chime in here with other good suggestions. I never actually did a base-jump with this brake-setting, because my skydives already told me it was too deep. I have since gone to a brake-setting that is only an inch deeper than what the factory-setting was. My skydives tell me this is pretty good, but it's hard to judge. I'll have to wait until visiting the Potato span to really tell if it's good. Anyway, just a shout-out. While carefully unravelling eight bartacks can be a very meditative experience, it hurts your lines and it's better to get them right the first time. Cheers, Jaap

Thanks for the information Faber and Crwper. I also got some very helpfull PMs, thanks guys! I had a significant backsurge on opening. It wasn't he accordeon style ripple going through the canopy, but I was actually flying backwards for at least two feet, maybe more. Following that I popped my toggles gently (like you're talking about), and I had an unussually steep flight. My other 4 base-jumps with this canopy and brake-setting were one second hand-held jumps, and the brake-setting was great, with a minimal amount of forward speed but no stall. I also had a great glide angle and glide-range. The only thing different on the PCA that I can think of, are that the opening speed is different, and that I was in a more head-high position. The pull-direction compared to a pilotchute was not significantly different. I think my DBS was just too deep for this kind of jump, but that's guessing at this point. Then again, I only jumped this particular 180 footer once, so it doesn't make a good sample. I'll be going back to it soon, and hope to get some better video footage to see what is happening. I think I know what you are talking about. You basically want to avoid swinging underneath your canopy like on a swinging-chair. Thanks for bringing this up, because it's not something I often think about consciously, but more something I do natural. I'll discuss it with Dave too. I think it's better to err on the slower side of letting up the toggles. That will avoid creating the forward surge you mention. That way, in the worst case scenario, you'll get a sinked-in landing with a less-than-powerful flare. Not ideal, but something any accuracy jumper should be more than comfortable with. Thanks! Jaap

And while were at it, what do people consider ultra-low in this context? E.g. in what context do you use this third setting? I recently noticed that my DBS worked great from a 500fter and in LRM skydives, but worked less than ideal from a 180ft PCA. Hence my asking. Admittedly, my opinions are not based on a statistically relevant sampling.

Hi, some people have a third brake setting for ultra-low jumps where they need glide faster than what their DBS would give them. This brake setting is between your DBS and the shallow brake setting, correct? If your current brake-settings are close together, there might not be a lot of room in between, do you just overlap the bartacks? Time to talk to a rigger...

Only his girlfriend was there at the time of the accident, and she certainly has other things on her mind right now. To find out what really happened, I'm afraid we'll have to wait until we hear the story from the guy himself, which could take a while.

Roflol! That ain't nothing! You should ask about the experimental contraption that a Twin Falls local put me in one day. Imagine a vertical-only pendulator and having all air pushed out of your lungs in less than a nanosecond and the girly sound that might make. And then I was stupid enough to volunteer and do it again. Talk about fear. We had a great laugh though. My first rope-jumps....

Confirmed. I got a call from the locals this morning. The person involved is busted up, but according to the latest information he will recover. I'm assuming that the locals will chime in here with more details once they become available. Best wishes and love to my friend in Alberta. Hope for a speedy recovery!

From an earlier post on blinc: I used something very similar to a pendulator when I was doing trampoline training at a gymnastics club a few years back. We called it the bungy-support system. I highly recommmend going to your local gymnastics or circus-training facility, and asking them about it. There are differences, because trampoline guys go mostly straight up and down, whereas the basejumpers want to move forward as well. However, even in gymnastics we have used them to jump from an obstacle on one side of the trampoline, to the middle of the trampoline, to an obstacle on the other side, so they can easily be used for the same purpose. The pendulators I've hung in on the trampoline had ball-joints at the hips, so you can do front and backloops. Some more advanced bungies even have a hip-ring with bearings in it, so you can do twists in your aerials. I've never been in one of those. Here's more information: http://www.coachesinfo.com/category/gymnastics/71/ Cheers, Jaap

Hence the "" after my comment about going back to pre-tailgated skydiving gear. Which will lul some people into a false sense of security, as JesseP pointed out. Totally!

If brakes would fail every 50 kilometres, a lot less people would drive, possibly making driving safer from a statistical point of view. I am wondering if the influx of new base-jumpers is partially caused by the fact that the tailgate has brought line-overs into the "I'll take my chances..." camp, from a statistically point of view, for some. It's like being on top of the cliff and wondering: "I have a .3 percent chance of an offheading. I'll take my chances." If the chance was closer to 50 percent, a lot less people would be on the edge, and those that would be, would be much better prepared to deal with it. Hopefully that makes more sense... Cheers, Jaap

Amazon has it on their middle-man system. I actually did , although I type about 90 WPM so it didn't take that long. I was going to scan it in and then OCR it, but I didn't have a scanner at hand. The shit you do when it rains... Edited to add: 90 WPM with errors, hence all the edits in each episode.

Which brings up an interesting question. Massive improvements in gear have greatly reduced the chances of offheadings and line-overs. What if this is actually making the sport more dangerous, because people (myself included) are less exposed to the risks. I wonder if I would already be base-jumping if one in every three jumps would be an offheading and one in every eight jumps would be a line-over. If the answer is no, then I actually shouldn't be base-jumping yet. After all, the statistical law-of-great-numbers doesn't apply on the one jump that shit actually hits the fan. Let's go back to pre-tailgated skydiving gear, just to make the sport safer!