Re: [Kirkk0herra] Amateur question: BASE canopy in a skydive rig?
Kirkk0herra wrote:
Hello,
I'm still a long away from purchasing my own skydiving rig but I was wondering if it's possible / even advisable to use a BASE canopy as your main canopy in skydiving? The reason I'm asking is that if I someday get into BASE I'd be familiar with the canopy straight away and if there are no major drawbacks using one in skydiving then why not?
In my opinion it's a great idea. Learning to actually fly a big canopy when people start seems to be a lost skill. people are very quick to go to a smaller skydiving canopy to 'fit in' to the ultra cool skydiving scene. People want to be accepted so they usually do what everybody else is doing around them, which for a while has been to get a small canopy for skydiving. They usually do not have a full grasp of the performance range, limitations and positive attributes of a BASE type canopy and then, when they decide that they want into BASE they try to bring small parachute flying into the BASE environment, which can lead to really shitty flying and missed LZ's.
My first skydiving canopy was a 220. I put 600+ skydives on it, in many, many conditions before doing my first BASE jump with a similar canopy. The comments by Shreddex are common of people that have not put many skydives on larger canopies and are under a false impression larger canopies pose a hazard and are dangerous to others because they typically are the ones who jump small canopies and think they need the entire sky to set up and land and probably have not communicated with the people on the load to know what everyone else is doing on their jumps.
When you are at the DZ, know who's on your load and what they are doing and flying. Let them know what you are flying and doing. If you and they are aware of who will be in the same airspace then you can plan accordingly and avoid any 'hazards'.
Now, the question to you is, what are you goals? How will you get there? How thorough do you want to be? How safe do you want to be? How well rounded of a jumper do you want to become? How much time and money do you have? etc....
