zennie
May 20th, 2003, 09:42 AM
My mentor and I have had this discussion a few times and I'd like to hear thoughts from those of you that regularly train students.
In our town there appear to be two schools of thought on which is the preferred method for introducing a student to BASE.
The first school of thought is to put the student off high... like in the 1700 foot range, stowed, with about a 9-10 second delay. The thinking is that a first-time is already terrified when doing his/her first BASE jump. So if you keep the first few as straightforward and familiar to skydiving as possible, you reduce the chance of them being overwhelmed. Also by putting the student off high, you have more cushion for them to correct a poor launch. They also have more clearance from the object, so an off-heading opening will not be a very big issue.
The second school of thought is to put the student off hand-held, "lower" (around 900-1100 feet) with about a 2-3 second delay. The thinking here is that BASE is a different sport from skydiving, so the student should learn fundamental BASE techniques, particularly getting a good launch, right off the bat. 1100 feet isn't particularly low. If you go hand-held you keep the deployment issue pretty simple and less prone to off-headings. Also by doing a short delay you still have plenty of sky to fly your canopy but still get a taste of what ground rush is like. You also need to assess wind and landing area issues more closely because you won't get the same amount of object clearance as if you started from higher up.
I tried to keep each methodology as positive as possible so as not to skew thinking. For the same reason I haven't said which one I've trained under.
Thoughts?
In our town there appear to be two schools of thought on which is the preferred method for introducing a student to BASE.
The first school of thought is to put the student off high... like in the 1700 foot range, stowed, with about a 9-10 second delay. The thinking is that a first-time is already terrified when doing his/her first BASE jump. So if you keep the first few as straightforward and familiar to skydiving as possible, you reduce the chance of them being overwhelmed. Also by putting the student off high, you have more cushion for them to correct a poor launch. They also have more clearance from the object, so an off-heading opening will not be a very big issue.
The second school of thought is to put the student off hand-held, "lower" (around 900-1100 feet) with about a 2-3 second delay. The thinking here is that BASE is a different sport from skydiving, so the student should learn fundamental BASE techniques, particularly getting a good launch, right off the bat. 1100 feet isn't particularly low. If you go hand-held you keep the deployment issue pretty simple and less prone to off-headings. Also by doing a short delay you still have plenty of sky to fly your canopy but still get a taste of what ground rush is like. You also need to assess wind and landing area issues more closely because you won't get the same amount of object clearance as if you started from higher up.
I tried to keep each methodology as positive as possible so as not to skew thinking. For the same reason I haven't said which one I've trained under.
Thoughts?