tfelber

That was my thought after seeing that vid. It looks like a couple hundred feet to impact and a rough flight to a shitty landing area at best.

I take my kids to the DZ and to various exit points. I worry a little about the possibilities of a horrific experience, but then I'll have to deal with that. My son was with me when I did my FJC and he really enjoyed it. He was three. He yelled "Good one daddy" from the time my feet left the bridge until I landed in the main landing area. Walking out on the bridge he couldn't understand why he didn't have a rig on. Miles came out on the bridge to do an unpacked jumps and my son told him he couldn't jump like that. When Miles asked why he said "Because your not packed!" He was at BD with when I broke my leg on the other bridge, but he did not see the jump. He did visit me in the hospital and didn't seem too upset about the whole ordeal. When I asked if he wanted to see where I was hurt he said Yes. When I showed him he turned away and told me "I knew it was going to look like that." I went to the bridge recently for my first jumps back and when I got home he told me that he told mommy I wouldn't break my leg again... I have a friend with cancer that probably won't be around much longer. I don't keep my kids away from him. I encourage them to spend time with him while they can because that may not always be possible. I think you let your kids deal with the world as it is and then help them through situations they have a hard time understanding. I wouldn't take my kids into a situation where I thought they would get hurt, but it doesn't make sense to me to try to protect them from something they are probably going to experience anyway.

Congrats dude! My 3 yr old was on the bridge with me when I did my first jump yelling "Good One Daddy!" until my feet touched the ground... Three weeks after my second was born I was back jumping, so it doesn't have to slow you down too much...

Real life, I'd better hurry up and get this boat turned around situations. Are you in Twin? I'm headed up tomorrow for a week. Skydiving I find if I get an offheading risers get me turned around much quicker, time wise. As for altitude loss and distance traveled, I have no idea. Regarding my incident, the pillar was coming at me quite rapidly, especially when you consider that I didn't think there was any way for me to reach it. Now I know. So next week it's time to tune my DBS and do some riser vs. toggle testing...

That is definitely one of the on-going questions in my head to this day. Risers or toggles??? My instinct is risers turn faster and I don't have a good feeling for altitude loss, this being only my second rear riser avoidance turn. I was surprised with the altitude loss the first time also. Something good for my project this next week.

In another post about background checks prior to selling gear the topic of how should we deal with new jumpers today. While there are accepted ideas about dealing with new jumpers it seems, due to the changing world, that maybe this topic should be re-visited. I've had several friends ask me about getting into BASE, and while I think I could put my five year old son off the potatoe bridge without incident, I generally suggest they not even get into it. Or I tell them to just have fun skydiving. I tell them I'm not interested in getting anyone involved and at the same time I have loaned my gear to three different first time jumpers for BD. So what are your thoughts on this and how should it be done?

That's a worthwhile topic and I'll gladly start another thread for discussion. I tend to agree with Greeny. He's a smart resourceful guy and had some rough beginnings in BASE, but he is definately not a beginner anymore. I don't think people should be protected from themselves. If I want to sit home and snort my brains to mush why should the government have any say in that. If I want to jump off a cliff in the middle of nowhere why does the government feel the need to restrict me from that. It's a bunch of BS if you ask me. I understand that anything can be portrayed as affecting others in some distant way, but in a reasonable world someone sitting around their house doing illegal drugs generally only affects them and their lifestyle. Same goes for jumping off stuff. Tony

I didn't get busted up because of my opinion of the height. I got busted up because of the altitude lost in a rear riser turn avoiding the pillar I would have otherwise smashed into. And a few of the luck factors that didn't play into my favor. After months of reflection, the other factor that played a big part in my injury was trying to get to the only landing area I had evaluated rather than having suitable alternates in the event of whatever might happen. I think another isuue with this object and the perceieved differences in height have to do with the landing area. My 240' measurement, with a laser, was to impact. In the possible landing area there is a hill, train tracks, a river, a path, ditches on the side of the path, etc. With all these things considered it is a pretty challenging object to FF and have to deal with heading performance and deployment hesitations. BTW, I will be headed to potatoe land next week for my first jumps back from the injury. I think my biggest challenge will be hiking out. I still have quite a bit of pain. Tony

You know, I got to give the police a hand on this one. I think they really used their heads for a change. If you're dumb enough to post videos of you doing illegal activities with enough evidence to seek a conviction then you deserve what you get. If you're doing legal/permitted jumps and want to blaze the video accross the world have at it. I don't think these types of jumps have a negative impact on the sport. But as a famous movie line once said, "Stupid is as stupid does..." So if you're out trying to get famous doing illegal jumps that do harm the sport then you get what you get. The sooner the better! One comment in regards to the motorcycle video. I haven't seen the whole video, but I don't see how they could prosecute the guy based on video of his door. Anyone could have been driving the bike. It creates a whole new level of tar 'n feather. Jump off a high profile object and run up to the door of some guy you want to get back at. Just the time and money it would take him to prove it wasn't him would be quite high. That would be pretty f@#$ed up if you ask me!

I thought I saw a thread a while back saying there's nothing jumpable in Florida???

Wow!!!

A lot of insight there... I have been thinking the same thing, but as you, I have no empirical data to support my thoughts. The ratio of survived incidents to deaths tells us one thing, but not everything. As does the number of jumps to incidents. I think the safety has gone way up exponentially in comparison to the number of incidents. In correlation to this I believe the number of jumps and probably jumpers have gone way up in relative respect. I relaize we had a record number of deaths last year, I feel for each and every one, but we probably had a recor number of jumps last year at a very disproportionate rate. I accept this is only a feeling I haver and may not be the feeling of the majority, but that is what I think.

Tom, Didn't you have a similar talus impact? How mch of a canopy did you have out? What were your injuries? Tony

Yes, that is my video...what a mess, eh?

The high speed exits I've done, and I've done quite a few, the Casa or Skyvan was taken to 16k and then put into shallow dive to gain the necessary airspeed prior to the jumpers exiting. The WS weren't actually gaining altitude, they just weren't falling as fast as the plane. The first high speed pass at the WFFC, two years ago, there were like 9 ws and I was the first non-ws jumper out. They were trying to exit together and tripped over each other and went rolling out the door. There were two premies, one blown up canopy that resulted in a reserve ride, two or three blown ws's a few stiches. I don't think there was another ws on any other high speed passes that year. BTW, I was wearing a camera and it was a real mess. People were yelling GO! and I was standing in the door pointing and yelling F@#K!!!

It's been done a few times with no incidents so why isn't it done more often. BTW, has there been a incident where the person died practicing for such a jump?

I can't understand why BASE isn't used more for these types of events... I was recently at a monster truck show looking at the open roof thinking that would sure be a SWEET jump.

Hey Jason, So it sounds like either you have nothing specific in mind or you have an object in mind that can only be exited in one direction. It seems to me that this "safety pond" would have to be quite large to account for off-heading tracking, people who are more or less aggressive trackers, different types of clothing/suits, opening heading, etc. And then there are the people who are of the flat and stable mindset or aerialists. With this in mind the "safety pond" should extend from the base of the object in a "V" shape extending to a distance equivalent to the distance the best tracker could fly until impact. Also, the depth should be about 2 feet with a clay base as was demonstrated by 736's Potato Incident; any deeper and he may have drowned before we could get to him, shallower and damage may have been much greater. If someone impacts vertically all bets are off anyway. Given all this, you could look at the probabilities of the different types of accidents and adjust the pond proportionately. If the possibility of a full flight wingsuit to impact is extremely low and the cost of extending the pond that far is high you might consider making the pond shorter, however this happened at BD and the guy probably wouldn't be around had he landed on hard ground. Good luck. It sounds like you may have something in mind that could be quite fun. Tony

Sad news indeed...

The steering wheel is definitely on the wrong side of that car. AND you're making the guest drive???

I agree with your SL decision of this object given the current conditions. As Mike (if Mike is who I think) and Adam well know I have a pretty busted up leg, still not walking right, off a similar elevation object. It wasn't that may canopy didn't open soon enough, it's that you have very little time to deal with issues from that altitude. All I had to do was a hard 90 right and I still ran out of altitude before I ran out of speed. I think all your decisions sound very reasonable except the side you chose to exit from. I think it is a much better choice to exit as Adam did and land straight in as a plan. Then if you need to turn for whatever reason you are setup with a higher likelyhood of success. You guys need to head south in a couple of months and I should be jumping again. maybe TF March 11-17th, eh?

I've been off 110' a few times and regularly jump a 70 footer. These were measured using a competition ski rope that has the different length markers, not a laser. I've taken about 4-5 people off the 70 footer and all of them have been hurt to one extreme or another. The worst being a buddy that hit the water in a perfect sit position. When we got back in the boat he was trying to be cool and say he was OK, buit it only took a couple of minutes before the bottoms of his arms and the backs of his legs turned a nice purple color and he could no longer act cool. In about another 20 minutes he was ready to go home. He didin't go to the hospital and had no long term damage, but it was quite painful. Hit feet first, feet together, and put your hands over your head. Stay vertical.

My thought when that happens is always "Is this what it feels like when it's not going to open." So far that thought has been followed by a nice CRACK! It feels like a near panic, but as yet I have never changed my body position or anything else to deal with the possiblility of the situation.

Hi Ingrid, So sad. He'll will be missed. He was great to be around. See you when I can. Tony

Using a canopy to drop your gear instead of carryin it down is "Air Delivery". From what I've heard, you don't even have to jump to be charged with arial delivery. An open canopy on the ground is enough of reason. Tony