Free BASE First Jump Course: Oct 29-31

[Tom Aiello]

I will hold a BASE First Jump Course on October 29th, 30th and 31st (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) in Twin Falls, Idaho. Course will begin at 8am Friday and conclude at 6pm Sunday.

There will be no charge for this instruction. The course will focus on basic BASE skills, with an additional emphasis on the history and ethics of BASE, and the teamwork necessary to many BASE jumps.

I will also allow a maximum of two non-jumping auditors in the course. If you want to audit the packing and discussion segments, I will also ask you to help out with some of the other parts of the course (such as ferrying cars). Auditors should be people interested in BASE who have not yet sufficient skydiving experience.

Course requirements:

1) Gear: I have some spare gear I can loan out, but it’s best if you can come with your own. Contact me for help finding gear, if you do not own it.
2) Mentoring: You must make a reasonable effort to find an experienced jumper local to you, who can help you with your jumping when you return home. You must provide me with contact information for this jumper, so that I can talk with them. If you cannot locate someone, I will assist you in doing so. This requirement will be waived for jumpers in an area where I am unable to locate a suitable mentor.
3) Skydiving prerequisites: You must have appropriate skydiving experience, as evaluated by me. I will ask for details of your experience when you contact me, as well as contact information for jumpers able to verify your experience.


Course Syllabus:

Day 1: Packing

Discussion: The risks of BASE
Exercise: Letter to family
Packing
Discussion: Differences between skydiving and BASE cultures

Day 2: Exits

Exit Training
Discussion: Logging jumps
Landing Area Preview
Discussion: Jumps, landing, flight patterns
PCA BASE jumps
Discussion: BASE History

Day 3: Deployment

Discussion: BASE ethics
BASE jumps: Hand held, delay nomination
Discussion: BASE community
BASE jumps: Delay nomination, stowed

Space is limited, so I will accept the best prepared applicants. If you want to come, you must contact me via PM here or via email (tbaiello@mac.com). If you have any questions, post here, or PM or email me.

[Tom Aiello]

Also, if anyone would be interested in a "refresher" course, for those with limited BASE experience, email me or post here. After talking with several people, I'm considering offering such a course.

[Tom Aiello]

I have sent some invitations for this course, and have one slot left. If you have already contacted me and not heard back, I'll let you know either way by Tuesday of next week. If you want to come but have not contacted me, please do so by Monday to be considered.

[Raymond Losli]

Course Syllabus:

Exercise: Letter to Family

I have been wondering since I saw this.
Just curious.
What is the letter to the family about ?

[Mac]

Not sure if it’s the same thing, but when I first got into BASE I wrote a letter to my family and friends should I get killed on a BASE jump. I have sent this to several friends who are keeping a hard copy and will release it should I go in. In this letter I explain my reasons for BASE jumping, I explain to them not to focus any blame on the community or the people with me, I point them to places where they may find more technical explanations of the incident, I explain what I want at my funeral, and have a few personal messages and explanations that hopefully will make my death easier to handle (although this is something hard to actually do I guess). I have been told this is a morbid thing to do, but for my family and friends I feel I need to do this - I don’t want to have any of my family showing any negativity towards any of my friends or towards the sport that I love and do. The reason I wrote this letter is due to the family / friends fall out I had at the start of my BASE journey, my mother refused to speak to me about it and was upset, my aunt refused to talk to me for about a year because of it and even a few skydiver friends showed negativity toward me because of it. I broke up with my long term GF because of it, my employers took me into meetings and questioned my new found activity and generally I had a rough time, so much so I even questioned whether it was all worth it.

One of the things I found necessary, was to sit down with people close to you and explaining your new found love. I sat down with my Aunt and showed her some video of some jumps from a nice day time large A with a “X” in Belgium and explained to her the way we make jumps, she then changed her opinion as she saw that we were not the “yeeeehaaa Pepsi max Xtreme risk takers” she had thought of in the sport, I sat with my mother and spoke at lengths at what I get from the sport and from the videos I showed she also saw that we were sensible and this changed her opinion of the sport and realised that this is now something I need to do. I did this with most members of my close family, and think that doing this has ensured they will not be negative toward my friends and sport should the Black Death aspect come and bite me. So much so infact, that even getting injured and having problems in getting through recovery my close family have not once questioned me in whether I am going back to jumping, or when I speak to them about the jumps I want to do on my return back to the sport they not once question why………….. Without the explanations at the start I would have had a harder time of it I am sure.

I am curious as to whether the “letter” and explanations are something other people have done when entering BASE? – I think that if this is what Tom is talking about on his course then I think it very necessary, but that’s just because it works for me.

[Tom Aiello]

What is the letter to the family about ?

Mac is correct. I require my students to write a letter to their family which expresses, at a minimum, that (a) they understand that BASE is dangerous, and they could be hurt or killed, and (b) that they are participating in it of their own free will. I also encourage them to include things like what they hope to get out of the sport, and positive feelings about their family.

The purpose of the exercise is 3 fold.

1) To get the students to really confront the idea that they can be hurt or killed doing this.
2) To cover my ass legally if they are hurt and the family decides I look like a good target for a law suit.
3) To have something explanatory and positive to give the family in the event of accident.

[QuickDraw]

Hey Tom, would it be anything like "Brian's Paper" ?
or would it be too legally binding ? I've never seen a draught the final one... is there one about ?