Fastest way to get jump numbers up?

Hello, everyone.

11 years ago I decided I wanted to base jump (we don't have to use capitals all the time, do we?) and started skydiving as step 1. I got up to about 50 jumps and B licence before lapsing due to a variety of factors but basically it was very hard for me to get to the DZ, and I didn't have very much money, and I didn't really enjoy the whole affair enough to justify the time/money/faff expenditures. After an initial 5-year gap I went back and did a handful of jumps with a friend and I still had it all in my memory, was pretty comfortable with everything. Then I didn't go back, again.

Years pass, life moves on, and in the back of my mind I keep thinking about that base jumping ambition I had when I was younger. Now I find myself in very different financial circumstances, but DZ access is not great where I am now (central London).

If money were no object whatsoever, what would be your strategy in my situation to rack up a few hundred jumps? Weather in the UK doesn't need explaining - are there other places where one could jet off to and smash 50 jumps in a week? My original DZ was pretty relaxed about cloud and wind but even then there'd be many a day with no jumps, or just one, and then you have to try again in a couple of weeks... it's too slow of a process.

At some point, I'd want to jump my base canopy (BJ 260) - I presume that's possible somehow or other, possibly in a rented student rig if I pay a DZ/rigger enough to do the swap?

I have some FJC courses in mind and have established contact with a few people. Some time in the next couple of years would be fine, but for now I want to think of a way to get some jumps done, ideally in a fairly concentrated fashion as that's how I (and most people!) learn and progress the best.

What would you do? Living in central London, lots of free time, and unlimited funds.

Pony up the cash for a plane ride to Skydive Arizona. If you're standing at manifest when they open, you can get as many jumps in a day as you have the energy for.

+1 here. 6-8 is doable but they usually close early in the summer for heat or dust devils. You might still be able to get four jumps in before lunch. When I was there a few weeks ago I could see seven dust devils from manifest. 

Try calling the DZs in the drier parts of Europe, like Portugal or Spain. Ask them how many loads do fly per day. Two dozen loads per day give you the chance to make a dozen or more jumps per day. Ask them which months have the clearest weather. Also ask about bunk houses near the DZ. Go to bed early every evening and consistently stand in front of manifest when the window opens every morning.

Buy or rent two or three rigs and pay packers. You would be wisest to get large 7-cells (e.g. Triathlon) close to the size of you Black Jack 260.

Tell manifest that you want to do as many jumps as possible per day. Bribe manifest with cookies, recreational drugs, sexual favors or whatever it takes to get you back  in the air quickly. 

Keep plenty of snacks and water handy to keep your energy levels up. 

And don't just fling yourself out of an airplane 50 times per week. Hire a local coach to critique your landings. Even better if your coach videos your landings. Aim for stand-up landings with the pea gravel bowl because that is the biggest landing area you will find below many BASE exit points.

Ask manifest if you can do hop-and-pops from 1,000 meters (... er ... 3,000 feet) and focus on perfectly stable exits followed by deployment just behind the airplane.

Get yourself to Seville. Short cheap flights from the UK. Dornier/s up to 15K, jump all year round, although they cut off early in the hot summer months. Nice city to visit. There are BPA (I still can't say BS) instructors on site if you need a check out jump etc. The DZ has a house in Bollulos (sp) where jumpers can stay for a pittance or you could stay at the Domocenter in Bormujos where loads of jumpers stay, quite cheap. Many base jumpers skydive there too so you can get the in's and out's and make good contacts. Don't go to Algarve - last I heard there was a 1000 jump limit at the DZ due to safety concerns for 'inexperienced' jumpers. May have changed by now of course. 

Where ever you end up, doing hop n pops are probably good for prepping for base jumping, and with the advantage that you will be back in the hanger 7-10 minutes before the rest of the load (so quicker turn around for you). If they are running just one plane, you will likely have the LZ to yourself, so a bit more freedom to target practice your landings.

On 6/4/2022 at 2:01 PM, silstabilo said:

Hello, everyone.

11 years ago I decided I wanted to base jump (we don't have to use capitals all the time, do we?) and started skydiving as step 1. I got up to about 50 jumps and B licence before lapsing due to a variety of factors but basically it was very hard for me to get to the DZ, and I didn't have very much money, and I didn't really enjoy the whole affair enough to justify the time/money/faff expenditures. After an initial 5-year gap I went back and did a handful of jumps with a friend and I still had it all in my memory, was pretty comfortable with everything. Then I didn't go back, again.

Years pass, life moves on, and in the back of my mind I keep thinking about that base jumping ambition I had when I was younger. Now I find myself in very different financial circumstances, but DZ access is not great where I am now (central London).

If money were no object whatsoever, what would be your strategy in my situation to rack up a few hundred jumps? Weather in the UK doesn't need explaining - are there other places where one could jet off to and smash 50 jumps in a week? My original DZ was pretty relaxed about cloud and wind but even then there'd be many a day with no jumps, or just one, and then you have to try again in a couple of weeks... it's too slow of a process.

At some point, I'd want to jump my base canopy (BJ 260) - I presume that's possible somehow or other, possibly in a rented student rig if I pay a DZ/rigger enough to do the swap?

I have some FJC courses in mind and have established contact with a few people. Some time in the next couple of years would be fine, but for now I want to think of a way to get some jumps done, ideally in a fairly concentrated fashion as that's how I (and most people!) learn and progress the best.

What would you do? Living in central London, lots of free time, and unlimited funds.

 

 

 

20 hours of tunnel, pencil the jumps, and get any rating to clean up the books.

11 hours ago, Divalent said:

...doing hop n pops are probably good for prepping for base jumping...

If the hop n pops are from a balloon or hovering helicopter, but BASE launches are completely different than launches from moving aircraft because there is no relative wind.

Go to the DZ, buy tickets, jump. Don’t rush. Learn. Approach your local riggers, learn from them. Approach your local BASE jumpers. Learn from them. Go hiking. Go climbing. Acquire lots of varied skills. Don’t die. Have fun. 

20 hours ago, JoeWeber said:

20 hours of tunnel, pencil the jumps, and get any rating to clean up the books.

Please use the SARCASM font when you give this sort of advice to junior jumpers.

This reminds me of a conversation during a riggers' course. For the equipment selection exercise, I suggested an A licensed jumper was planning to start BASE jumping next year. Our token British rigger candidate was hoping mad at the notion of a BASE jumper anywhere near his DZ!!!!!!!!!!!!

I suggested that a good coach could keep the young jumper busy perfecting accuracy techniques over the next 200 jumps.

51 minutes ago, riggerrob said:

Please use the SARCASM font when you give this sort of advice to junior jumpers.

This reminds me of a conversation during a riggers' course. For the equipment selection exercise, I suggested an A licensed jumper was planning to start BASE jumping next year. Our token British rigger candidate was hoping mad at the notion of a BASE jumper anywhere near his DZ!!!!!!!!!!!!

I suggested that a good coach could keep the young jumper busy perfecting accuracy techniques over the next 200 jumps.

Would you have him pencil the rating, too? I couldn't advise that and maintain my standards. 

Do flat (slick) tracking jumps, a skill often needed in BASE. 

Thanks for all the replies, guys.

Seville looks like a decent place and quite easy to get to - that sounds like it could be the right DZ for a week trip here and there.

Do you think I should avoid talking about base there or would it be OK? When I got my A-licence (ten years ago) it wasn't something you could speak about at the DZ, one of the fun jumpers went and did a bridge jump somewhere or other and "got in trouble" over it. Maybe a large DZ like Seville is more open to it these days, though, right?

You see - as you guys mention - I would need to tailor my jumping towards base-relevant stuff so I'd rather be honest with them. I am also interested in doing FS1 as well while I'm there, probably, just to tick that, but otherwise quite happy to do dozens of hop 'n pops and get great at landings. Tracking, too ^ as just mentioned. I would happily pay for a coach for all of these things, and it sounds like they have coaches available.

WRT to canopies - I will probably hire whilst there, initially. I guess for the first trip (they are open 5 days per week) I might get in a few dozen jumps so maybe any large "student" canopy would suffice and I can work out which base-like canopy to move into in due course.

Should I avoid jumping my BJ for a while yet, i.e. save it for a few dozen plane jumps maybe much later on? Don't want to wear it out, right?

Cheers, guys

Done 400 skydives in the last 12 months, all but 40 of them in the UK, if you get to the DZ you can jump pretty regularly in the UK.

Dear silstabilo,

Avoid talking about BASE for the first few days on any new-to-you DZ. After a few days of quietly listening, you will figure out which instructors are "BASE-friendly" and which staff are "BASE haters."

A simpler answer is telling them a half-truth about wanting to perfect your precision landing skills in hopes of qualifying for an exhibition team. Landing in tight stadiums requires many of the same canopy skills as landing a BASE canopy on a tiny sand bar below your favorite bridge. Aim to stand up most of your landings ... to reduce the risk of injury. IOW, flying final approach in deep brakes may result in more precise landings (ala. classic precision landing technique) increases the risk of hard landings and injury. Take a hint from the organizers of the first BASE precision landing competitions who awarded full scores for stand-up landings, but deducted points for sliding or tumbled landings.

You are still going to need to review Parachute Landing Falls - with an instructor - since you will inevitably tumble a BASE landing or two. But still plan for fully flared landings.

Tracking is another skill you will want to perfect from airplanes before trying it off a cliff.

Good point about avoiding wearing out your Black Jack prematurely. You can develop most of the same canopy control skills on a large (say 260) student canopy. A few weeks in advance, phone ahead to reserve 2 or 3 student rigs. The school rigger may need a few days to collect parts from various corners of the hangar and another day to assemble and pack your rental rig(s). If they have a busy student program, they may ask you to pay up front for rig rental.

Some of this talk about how dzo's treat base jumpers reminds me of some years ago when I was teaching at a particular dz. A local jumper asked me about renting a student rig so he could try out a new base canopy. When we approached the school manager and dzo about it, they heard the word 'base' and immediately said NO! As much as we tried to explain that he did not want to use a slider down pack job and stress their harness, and he did not want to pull at 200', he just wanted to get a feel for how the canopy flew, they just didn't want to hear it.

However...

23 hours ago, riggerrob said:

Please use the SARCASM font when you give this sort of advice to junior jumpers.

I think I'm with Joe on this one. It seems that every so often some one post wonder comes in here with some version of the same scenario. They want to get into base without bothering to learn how to skydive. I suspect it's the same troll.

On 6/7/2022 at 10:34 AM, silstabilo said:

Do you think I should avoid talking about base there or would it be OK? When I got my A-licence (ten years ago) it wasn't something you could speak about at the DZ, one of the fun jumpers went and did a bridge jump somewhere or other and "got in trouble" over it. Maybe a large DZ like Seville is more open to it these days, though, right?

That’s weird. I started Base in the UK nearly 15 years ago and there were no issues talking about it at any DZ I went to. I can’t think of a single place that didn’t have active base jumpers on staff, let alone among their regulars. IIRC there was one DZ in Kent where the owner had a real grudge against ever seeing a base canopy on his packing mat but that was it. 
 

What I wonder is if you’ve got plenty of time and plenty of money but regularly getting to a DZ from central London is too hard for you (it really isn’t) - what is your plan when it comes to dedicating the time and effort to stay current with BASE jumping once you get there? Accessing urban jumps on your doorstep will take as much investment as getting to a DZ outside the city.

Though hop and pops are a good way of getting the 'numbers' up.
Doing actual full altitude skydives, getting coached in various disciplines, will also give you the freefall skills and all round body awareness/skills needed when you go towards terminal jumps, and/or onepiece tracking and/or wingsuit later on. If you're already skydiving, might as well actually learn something.

Even when doing hop and pops, don't do it all 'with advice from the internet' but get some actual coaching on flying, landing etc. as there is a lot to learn, and just banging out 'numbers' is not the best way of actually doing so. Having access to people who can actually maximize the learning in the (intended) small amount of jumps you're planning to do before a BASE course, for sure find those with knowledge and experience to help you out.

Going abroad, to somewhere with good weather. Be it one of the bigger USA dropzones, or places like Empuria Brava, Skydive Spain you'll def. get most jumps in, in a shorter amount of time.

On 6/24/2022 at 2:36 AM, jakee said:

That’s weird. I started Base in the UK nearly 15 years ago and there were no issues talking about it at any DZ I went to. I can’t think of a single place that didn’t have active base jumpers on staff, let alone among their regulars. IIRC there was one DZ in Kent where the owner had a real grudge against ever seeing a base canopy on his packing mat but that was it. 
 

What I wonder is if you’ve got plenty of time and plenty of money but regularly getting to a DZ from central London is too hard for you (it really isn’t) - what is your plan when it comes to dedicating the time and effort to stay current with BASE jumping once you get there? Accessing urban jumps on your doorstep will take as much investment as getting to a DZ outside the city.

Yeah. 
 

I can’t think of many DZs in the UK that were super hostile to BASE jumping in itself.

There WERE people at DZs who were hostile to new jumpers if they turned up with an attitude, saying skydiving is for pussies or the like.

For the OP - Any time you want to do something different on a DZ, such as jumping base gear in rented harnesses you need to respect that you’re asking them to alter their procedures to make life easy specifically for YOU. 
Those alterations mean an increase in risk for the dz, however slight, so you have to EARN the right to ask that type of favor by not being a dick about it and showing that you’ve thought everything through from their point of view as well as your own.