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| quote: | Originally posted by davemolina
I thought you were going BASE jumping in the motherland.
Great to see her still going at it : ) |
I wasn't able to go at that time as I couldn't afford the flight. But even if I went I probably would have only been a spectator as its unfortunately something your cant just up and go do like a tandem skydive.
To put it mildly... the dangers/implications of skydiving as compared to BASE are like.....comparing driving city driving to NASCAR driving. Skydiving you have the extra altitude to deal with a malfunction, cut away if needed, and pull your reserve and still has sufficient altitude to pick a safe landing spot. In base....you have none of those. Now in the video it looks like they are jumping from 3000ft which I would feel more comfortable with, but most BASE jumps made here are anywhere between 400 to 1,800ft depending on the object. It's also illegal unless its a sanctioned event.
BASE is something I plan to get into once I feel confident that I can do such safely (or in other words when I know what the fuck I am doing). To my understanding, BASE jumpers have to be experts at canopy control, gauging wind direction/speeds, and making split-second decisions determing on the situation (safe to jump? safe alternate landing area?) and Im sure there's much more to it than that.
Right now, my main focus is on getting my basic skydiving license going through AFF (accelerated freefall), which is the training skydivers go through. Info on that here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Freefall
Currently I'm on level 4 with 10 skydives. I'd probably elect to have 2 years experience with 300 skydives before getting into BASE. But its in the plan. 
Last edited by Matthias on Aug-30-2006 at 23:01
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