JaapSuter

Thread in the BonFire Tom, can you consolidate these two threads in some way, maybe lock one of them and refer to the other? I'd hate to see good points get lost because somebody only read one of the two threads.

If you are ready to shed blood, sweat, tears and potentially your life for BASE, welcome to the club! If not, please make a jump at bridge day, come visit the Perrine for a weekend, and then sell your gear. The last thing BASE needs is more tourist-jumpers.

...here's a little tip I received from an experienced jumper; treat your packjob like you would a Bonzai tree. Turn it into a little art project regardless of the actual jump you will do with it. I never hated packing, but I didn't enjoy doing it either. Fortunately, I'm a big believer in the flexibility of perception. Ever since that one jumper told me about his Bonzai tree philosophy, I love packing! I clean up my appartment, get all the tools ready (clamps, weight, pull-up cords), assemble a nice BASE soundtrack in my Winamp playlist, and start packing. I haven't read the book, but I imagine it's something like what Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanance is about. Of course, this only works if you allow your perception of things to change and affect your opinion. Then again, that's a pretty useful skill in general. Damn, I think I just posted the most hippie crap-ass spiritual and useless thread on this board ever. It almost reads like a Marie Claire magazine. But what the heck, it's been quiet on here lately. Too quiet... Cue Skin..

And on the subject of pilotchutes, this post by Bill Booth explains some things you can inspect your pilotchute for when you receive a new one. When you receive a new canopy, crawl into each cell and see if shit is right. Worst case scenario, you'll learn something about your crossports, vents and valves. Best case, you'll find a defect. Check every line attachment point, and the bridle-attachment point. Also check your canopy for symmetry by folding the left and right parts between each line-attachments on top of each other, stretching the fabric and comparing their length. Then check the bridle. Measure it and make sure it's 9 feet. Make sure the loops at the end are secure. Make sure that the pin attachment points are sewn on, and not just glued on. I know of at least one instance in skydiving where somebody received a bridle that had the pin attachment points only glued on, without stitching. On a base jump, that can really ruin your day. There's a lot more to inspecting your gear, but these are a few simple things that even non-riggers can do. The rest can easily be tested by hucking yourself out of a plane. Cheers, Jaap Suter

Weren't those guys all on vacation for a while?

Okay, this is totally inappropriate, women-unfriendly, and plain out gross. But it had me laughing pretty hard (I'm easily amused). Safe for work image-wise, but the text is moderately explicit. Look at own risk. http://www.tuckermax.com/tuckertriesbuttsex.html

Last I heard, Jennejenn isn't single. Then again, neither was Abbie and that changed very quickly.

Not helping yourself here... . It's getting a little too Bonfirey now. Sorry Tom and Jennejenn. Just remove my posts....

Yeah, whatever.

MikeLaunch.jpg That's one of the coolest BASE pictures I have ever seen. Thanks!

I wonder if anybody can say anything useful about pilotchute packing for terminal, fumbling for the pilotchute, hard-pulls, slow throws, and pilotchute hesitations. The safest advice is to make sure we don't end up low. However, in the occasion that we do find ourselves low, intentionally or not, what can we do to minimize the amount of time between thinking oh-crap and line stretch? Even the slightest misreach, tugged-pull or pilotchute hesitation could mean the difference between barely hitting line-stretch and death. At terminal speed, every millisecond covers a lot of distance. Does anybody have anything to say about this?

Bwahuahauhauhauhauhaauha Another European that isn't used to the tiny little potholes they have on this contintent. That's hilarious. North Americans turd smaller.

My eyes, my eyes!

Having found your way onto the forums is a great first step. Now try the search button and the archives and you'll be golden. There is an amazing number of existing posts that give great advice on many things you can do before your course. There is much more to it than just trying some things with your rear risers. Try stalling your canopy to the point where your pilotchute dangles in front of your canopy for a long time. Back up immediately after opening and turn your canopy around. Maintain a log of your heading performance immediately after opening. Find the stall point of your toggles. Play with your front-risers too. Pack intentional toggle releases and linetwist. Try several rear riser only landings. Do a few intentional downwind landings and PLF. Do a few intentional ultra-low approaches and low flat turns and flare-turns. Work on accuracy. Do many high hop-and-pops with large seven cell canopies. Do many coached and contest tracking dives. Some of these you want to clear with a coach and jumpmaster before trying them, especially those that might interfere with landing patterns of others. Its good if you have a big canopy and open high, just jump out last and you can land after everybody else and pretty much do anything you want. Make sure you tell them anyway though, and don't hook yourself in! Know how to do a flat-turn! To learn how to pack better; here are three good tips. Buy several packing videos. Apex will send you one if you book a course with them. Johnny Utah offers one on his website. The Basic Research and Consolidated Rigging websites offer manuals that describe packing. Take these videos and manuals and try each packing method several times, even if it's just with your small nine-cell into your skydiving rig. You'll have to improvise a little, but you'll learn something regardless. Completely dissassemble your rig. Disconnect your RSL, pull the cut-away handle. Seperate the risers from the container. Open up all four connector links and take out all the lines. Take off your slider. Disconnect the pilot chute and the D-bag. Now leave the room and ask a friend to get back in and make a complete and utter mess out of your entire system. Then head back in and reassemble the whole thing. After that, go make a jump on it. It forces you to really think about how your gear works and ask yourself simple questions about things like line-continuity and connector-link orientation. You'd be surprised how many people with more than a hundred jumps have a hard time doing the above. Ask your rigger if you can watch him do some reserve repacks. You'll learn a lot! You can go to the pool and practice exits. Why not get some kick-ass BASE videos and watch them all? And finally, don't hesitate to post questions here, there's a lot of people significantly more experienced and smarter than myself that will gladly give great answers to your questions. Have fun!

Roflol. Still waiting for your BASE video with the corniest but most applicable song ever...

Fair enough, but Tom's week long course does cover a lot more than what Apex's weekend course is able to offer. If you have a great mentor back home, Tom's extra curriculum items might not be necessary for you. But to equate the three day course with a weeklong one is not entirely fair. That said, Apex does do more than just huck you off the bridge. They spend a fair amount of time discussing various objects and the required skills and analysis that come with them, as well as ethics, gear, etcetera. You'll fit right in. Nice work!

And much more importantly, Jimmy and Niko will sing along some Tenacious D, whereas Tom is a fan of country music. That alone is worth spending 1100 dollars to take Apex and not have to go through Tom's course. Just kidding, both courses complemented each other quite nicely.

I imagine it's the same as why many of use BASE jump. In the words of Carl Boenish: it's a celebration of the human spirit! What's not to like? Which is probably why he is getting into skydiving at the moment. I'd say that's a great decision. But we don't know how his mind works. Perhaps he already has the appropriate mindset, distilled through many days spent climbing, mountaineering, platform diving, non parachute based rigging-work, etcetera. I'm not saying that this is the case. For all we know, he could do ten skydives, decide it's too boring, buy a rig off of Ebay and go kill himself. If he was getting into BASE, we should consider him cautiously, and measure his mindset downward for his own safety. Considering he is getting into skydiving, we ought to give him the benefit of the doubt and commend him for this approach. Mindsets are not developed through skydiving alone. In fact, the general impression that I get is that the less skydives a person has, the more tactful and intelligent he is in his approach to base, both in execution as well as ethics and theory. There are many exceptions to this general observation. I don't think it's the low-timers dedicating themselves to BASE that will become a problem. They are flying seven cells from early on in their career and focus strongly on BASE skills. A much bigger problem is the hardcore freeflyer and swooper who has never spend much time tracking, nor played with a canopy bigger than eighty square feet. After 400 jumps he suddenly realizes that BASE might be cool and thinks he can take a few shortcuts because he already has many (quote unquote) jumps anyway. He'll end up borrowing a rig from a friend and run headlong into BASE. He is the person that start jumps the slider-down cliff without tuning his brake settings. For the record, Thijs and I have talked a little offline. While I am in no position to give any sort of BASE related advice, I would like to argue that he seems an intelligent and heads-up person that, for somebody with a desire to go straight into BASE, approaches the sport in a great way. Just don't poop your pants on your first skydive, ok? Edited to add: with only 220 jumps, I am in no position to write what I did above. Please take my words with a grain of salt. I'd delete the post, but somebody with more than 1000 jumps specifically asked me not to.

Roflol, with a nickname that reads "ericmillionaire" that's pretty funny. I have done both Tom's free course as well as Apex 1100 dollar course. Both are great and worth the money.

Oops, sorry. My reply came out way too serious. I realized you were just teasing. To make sure this post doesn't come out too serious, and to poke fun at VanillaSkyGirl, here's some laughter...

Probably, but as long as I'm a happy person and nobody else suffers, I don't see the harm.

I've tried that, and succeeded for 587 posts. Today I found myself rewording a paragraph to work around the emoticon spacing problem and figured it was time for action!

On my system (XP, IE, default font size), emoticons are a few pixels bigger than the height of a text line. That means that if I include an emoticon (like a smiley

Not your fault. You made the right decision. If people like yourself, several manufacturers and other experienced and well-known BASE jumpers decide to be in the board of directors, that shows a vote of confidence that is big enough that I can see past whatever Robin's past is and join the ABP. Whether or not that may have been a mistake remains to be seen. In the meanwhile, the ABP is still fighting for a good cause and not necessarily harming it. While we would probably be more effective in unison, we just have to accept our differences and keep focused on the finish line, instead of our internal turmoil. Less thinking, more jumping. To think that I of all people would say that some day...

How are we supposed to learn those lessons if the person doesn't come with a manual? When the ABP was formed, I didn't see anybody come up with a post that explained why Robin wouldn't be the right person to head up this venture. Commenting on somebody else's personality traits without substantiating those is poor form. Since I generally trust your opinion, I do consider it. Nonetheless I would like to see some backup. Feel free to PM me. Meanwhile, I would recommend slightly rewording your post in less assertive terms. Perhaps something along the following lines: "My personal experience with said person in the past have led me to believe that he lacks certain traits required to handle the task at hand and live up to expectations. Feel free to PM me for more details, and don't hesitate to contact said person for the other side of the story." Goddamn, I should go in politics.