Re: [Moline] First Skydiving Rig for Aspiring B.A.S.E. Jumper/Wingsuiter
Moline wrote:
Skydiving = skydiving canopy. Base jumping = base jumping canopy.
if this is your first rig for skydiving, it might be a bit of time before you begin base jumping. Buy something that will be fun for skydiving. You can still practice accuracy with a 9 cell canopy or a 7 cell canopy. Accuracy is accuracy no matter what's above your head.
Having watched a well-known skydiver with 10,000+ jumps over shoot a generous 50' long BASE landing area I disagree.
While knowing about winds and how to fly a consistent pattern carries over, contemporary skydiving canopy behavior in brakes is nothing like a classic accuracy or BASE canopy's. Modern skydiving canopies flatten out with brake application until just short of the stall point. Classic accuracy friendly designs get steeper and can be brought straight down in a stable sink.
This disregards the effects of size. You can get a gentle tip-toe landing coming in from 3/4 brakes under an appropriately sized main for accuracy (about .7 pounds/square foot in wing loading). Doing that with a size that an experienced skydiver would like is unlikely to be pleasant.
Getting a handle on that before you need to BASE jumping into a tight landing area is a fine idea and will happen a lot sooner if you can crank out 5 or 10 jumps in a weekend which you're unlikely to do BASE jumping. Doing it at the drop zone also means you'll be sinking it in to a soft pea gravel pit; so if you get a little over enthusiastic you're less likely to hurt yourself.
That said, skydiving parachutes are a lot more exciting to fly. You want to enjoy everything skydiving has to offer, including the ride down and can deal with BASE later.
