Re: [SkyDaemon] Stats on fatalities for base jumping?
>>In reply to: a while ago it was up to you if you were ready. but BASE is kinda turning into skydiving.<<
>>>I'm not sure what you mean by "awhlie ago". Can you please explain?<<<
This wasn't directed to me, but let me take a shot at it . . .
Having a certain amount of skydives prior to BASE was never meant to become a BASE community standard, it was meant to be a BASE industry standard.
Personally, I agree with -=Raistlin, and think, while some amount of skydiving is required, basically people are ready when they feel ready.
In 1978 when Carl Boenish got us all interested in doing El Cap there was no BASE community. The people who BASE jumped at the time just naturally tended to be very experienced skydivers. The first time anyone wrote down a certain number of jumps and called it a rule, was when the cut-short three week legal season happened at El Cap in 1981. One of the rules in order to get a NPS permit was holding a USPA "D" license, and at that time that meant at least 200 skydives.
Prior to 1981 Phil Smith, who later became BASE number one, started jumping other objects besides El Cap simply because he lived in Texas and California was just too far away. He and Phil Mayfield, BASE 2, were scouting urban areas seeing what was jumpable, much like the BASE crews of today. Together, it can be argued, they formed the core beginnings the BASE community.
For the kind of jumping the two Phil's were doing, jumps that were the first to usually forgo the altitude for a reserve canopy, there was no talk of a pre-set number of jumps other than it was assumed you'd be an experienced jumper. The world, at large, wasn't beating down the BASE door like today so it wasn't much of an issue. Pure wuffos had no access to knowledge, gear, or any kind of assistance. Most, at the time, didn’t even know BASE jumping existed (ah, the good ol' days.) And in the skydiving community you were either ambivalent towards BASE, thought it was sort of cool, or you hated everything about it.
About this time Carl put his wife Jean Boenish off a building when she had something like 46 skydives. I believe she had just one prior bridge jump (New River.) There was no uproar in the still tiny BASE community, but there was some grumblings on the DZ. Carl got away with it because he was the Father of fixed object jumping, and on the DZ, he was still the current king of skydiving photographers.
After 1981 when Carl first introduced the BASE number award (and named the sport BASE jumping) everybody who BASE jumped wanted a number so we have a good record of early BASE progress. If you look at the graph over at http://www.basenumbers.org/ui.asp you can see the numbers issued stayed fairly constant from 1981 to about the year 2000. That's when the spike in BASE participation began. This co-insides with an acceptance of BASE in the skydiving community to where today most skydivers will say they want to someday make a BASE jump. Basically we were victims of our own success.
The origin of a set number of skydives prior to BASE jumping started with the first legitimate BASE manufacturers in the early 90s. Prior to this, there were a few people selling homemade BASE gear out of P.O. Boxes like Rich Stein and J.D. Walker, but then cam actual firms like Adam Filipino's Consolidated Rigging and Todd Shoebotham's T&T Rigging (which later became Basic Research and still later Apex BASE.) These are genuine, albeit small, companies with real assets to lose.
I was with Todd the night he decided to implement a certain number of skydives prior to selling someone BASE gear. Up until then Todd sold Velcro closed BASE rigs only to people he knew. Not because he was snobby, but because the BASE rig was just catching on and most BASE jumpers, at the time, were still using the same skydiving rig they used on the DZ. That night a fellow came to Todd's shop and bought a BASE rig, and after he'd gone, Todd said to me, "that was weird, other than his name, I don’t really know who the hell that was."
I soon started running the Todd's front office and doing all the phone sales. Todd had just bought a home, he had a couple kids, a long lease on a building, employees, and money invested in tooling and sewing machines. He quickly realized an angry set of parent's morning the death of a son or daughter on a BASE jump could easily wipe him out.
So he did two things, he set the number for purchasing BASE gear at 150 skydivers (in lieu of BASE experience) and he started the very first rudimentary BASE jump courses. These courses were more about how to operate the gear, and not full blown BASE courses like are available today, but Todd always explained, how to pack, how to inspect, and what to look out for.
So I was probably the first voice on the phone to ask people, "All right kid, so how many skydives ya got?" I had over 600 skydives before making my first BASE jump so I had no heartburn insisting others have at least 150. But times change and I don't hustle BASE gear anymore, so I take it on a case by case basis.
I also think, with unfettered access to the potato bridge, it would be possible to teach BASE from scratch. I taught first jump courses for over 25 years at the DZ and realistically speaking BASE jumping (at the potato bridge) is a whole lot simpler than a level one AFF. Of course not everyone could teach at that level, but it's certainly possible.
The larger and more important question is this - is it a responsible thing to do? I don't have the answer to that one . . .
Anyway, that's what I think he meant by "awhlie ago."
NickD
BASE 194
