Welcome to Exit Point, a podcast about the advancement of base jumping and the exploration of its culture. I'm Matt Blank, producer and co host. If you'd like to support this independent production, please visit our buy me a coffee link in the description and leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts. In this episode, I'm talking with Jacob Gardner, who is one of the rare full service BASE jumpers.
He's an accomplished technical jumper, BASE jumping educator, rigger, and artisan equipment manufacturer. He's spent the better part of the last decade compiling the oral histories, traditions, and techniques of parachute rigging, and we hope that everyone listening will come away with some valuable insight about their gear and an increased level of confidence on the exit point because of it. So without further ado, let's get Jacob on the track. Would you
like me to tell you the story of what got me into rigging?
I would love to hear that story, please. Sick.
It's I don't know, 2011 ish? I'm sitting there trying to hook up a used rig, gargoyle. Couldn't figure it out. Like I'm sitting there with the three rings. I know they're backwards. I got that much so far. I'm trying to flip these rings through, but there's these two flaps with two grommets on it. And I couldn't figure out. Which goes first and which goes second. And so every single time for like a hundred jumps, I'd have to pull the user manual out and remind myself which way it goes.
And at the time, thank God they still had the website. It's down now. So I'd be shit out of luck, but it got to the point where one day I was sitting on the top of an antenna and I'm going to gear check myself. And I said fuck, I questioned it. I can't pull up the manual right here. Fuck. So like I jumped anyway, but it was terrifying. It's like I said, on the drive home, like I'm going to find out why those flaps actually go the way they go and which way they go first.
And instead of trusting some book and some thing and myself to remember some image, I'm going to like concrete, learn how it goes. And So at that point, I just started like shadowing, the rigor in town. And he was this ornery asshole. I loved him to death. Asshole. And but if he broke through his shell, he's super nice guy. And shattered for a long time. And then finally, like I started just enjoying it. It became a fascination for me.
And I had a lot of people around that were willing to show me the little parts that they knew, but nobody had the whole package. And especially in the Southeast, it was tough to learn to patch because. Fuck, we land in like beautiful grass landing areas every single time. So unless you drag it across the tarmac on the way in or something. That never happens. So I had to find that. And so then I started traveling out more and got into doing base repairs because.
There was a lot of them that were needed. You didn't really have to be a master rigger to do it. You just fucking go for it. It's either going to look like it should when you're done or it's not. It's have at it. So it was a huge learning curve to, or learning. method to go out in that route, but over the years and over learning how much I enjoyed rigging, it actually calmed my jumping down in the sense that I was no longer fearful of the gear.
And that opened up a whole new horizon of fun, like replacing fear with fun on the exit point. And now The whole sport changed for me, like I wasn't just shitting myself over some weird fear over my three rings or the links that connected them or any of that other stuff. And so I started to enjoy it more. So instead of doing one jump a week in fear, I'm doing two or three a week. Just because I enjoyed it now.
So like my advice to other people is to like, even that basic knowledge, it's going to change things for you. And it'll help a lot. And I see it all the time around students. One of the biggest thing is gear fear. And I think today it's a result of we just don't teach enough in scout adding anymore. Like it's gotten in this like flow and a license check cards and somebody assembles a three ring once and they get a signature and then I'll never do it again.
My argument to that is if you don't know how to do it, you don't know how to check it. You don't know if it's actually right. And so when people ask you for a gear check, are you just looking at their stuff? Are you actually checking it?
Yeah. Are you understanding what actually is happening in that system?
Yep.
Yeah. That's an interesting thing to bring up. I think. The gear fear is reasonable in a lot of these cases, especially when you don't actually know why that thing is arranged in the way it is. Like I remember being on exit points and people wanting me to check their three ring system, which I was unfamiliar with and them going Hey, I don't know which way this tab goes.
And we're like, literally like about to jump, like, Oh man we're about to be those guys, like taking pictures of this stuff and sending them to our mentors at two in the morning Hey man, is this right? Like, where are you guys? We're about to jump this building, I get those all the time. I know. All the time. All the time. At this point, I tell people like, look, I need at least six hours. I don't, you don't know where I'm going to be, man.
And then I'll pick up this like text message and it's 20 minutes old. And I'm like, Oh God, did they do it already? Or do I have time to respond to this? That kind of touches on a couple of different things I wanted to ask you about. First, it seems to me that people fit into two big categories. Basically broad categories, one where they want to get into every detail of the rigging and every stitch and every fiber and every like little molecule and how it works.
And then other people who are more trending towards the action end of the sport. And they're just happy understanding that like there was some magic. That, came together to make the system and somebody else has done the work and that's fine, and other people are using it and so it works. And so that's that.
Yep.
And I think it's really interesting that you bring up that you were at one point fearful and then moved into trying to erase that fear. Can you talk me through what motivated you to get as deeply into rigging as you did, because certainly you've gone farther than you're like, Basic need to understand how a three ring system works.
It's really just a fascination, like a nerd thing. Like it's one of those things that seems like a little sand pile, but like when you start scooping, it's never ending. And at this point I'm having a bad, I'm terrible with math, but 16, 17 years in, I'm still learning stuff for the first time every single day. And that's what keeps me going with it is it's, it seems no matter how much you dig into it, there's still something you can figure out about any part of this.
Like we've scratched the surface as far as a lot of that goes. The military did. We've done all this testing and all this stuff, but you can still go even farther than that. And we use things in base and skydiving outside of a lot of their normal uses. And so we're getting to experience things that are. Kind of those odds, little details.
And that's one of those things that also keeps me super interested is we see things happen with that particular webbing that no other industry is going to see because of the forces involved or things like that. So it's almost like. And sometimes you get to be a detective and a repairman, and it's a few jobs rolled into one, and so it keeps me super interested all the time.
And I never really had to worry or think about it as learning I was just pretty much Kind of having fun doing my own thing and then you're Oh, now I know how to do that. Yeah. That's useful. Yeah. Yeah. It's I never intended to be a rigger as a job, but people kept coming to get stuff repaired. Okay. I'll just keep doing this. It seems like
a lot of people think that. Fall into this game that way, like they have a personal interest and then it starts to roll into a hobby. And then all of a sudden there are so many people wanting your service that you're like, I just don't have the time to do anything else.
I'll tell you in history the rigors, you want to know, or the ones that are so in and making their own shit on the side, they have a true passion and just building and sewing and rigging on their own stuff. They're gonna, they're going to know more just because they want to, like they're involved in it. I think that's, one of those things like we should keep an eye out for, if you enjoy it. The sad part is we don't have time.
Yeah. Let me ask you this. It seems like a lot of people actually doesn't seem I know a lot of people are interested in getting to know rigging. In fact, I get hit up on a weekly basis for people wanting resources, I'm on the education side. So they're like, Hey, I want to learn how to do this. Where do I go? And I often find myself with my hands in the air for the people who are like, we're all the great videos and books and all of these things that I can do on my own.
And I'm like it's an oral tradition, really. Can you talk to us about that for a moment? And. Where the resources really are for people to learn who have an interest and what your road looked like picking up those pieces.
So the first starting point is there's three very core books that we use. The first two are going to be pointers, manuals pointers, parachute manuals, version one and version two, volume one and two. The problem with those two is they've been out of print for a decade and Dan Pointer since past and they're not available. And so like the two or three you'll see on eBay or Amazon, they're asking 600 bucks for insane.
Exactly. And I bought my set, back in the day, 15 years ago for 30 bucks piece, but now that's a resource that's disappearing and we need to. Bring that back. But there are some PDF copies that are fairly good that we've got floating around to the people that if you need it, you'll find the link. But the other one, the third one is an FAA book and it's just the FAA parachute rigging handbook, and it's a summary. Of those other two manuals. Uh, like the quick guide. The more relevant stuff.
And that's really just a good starting point. It's a dry read. Sure, it's 300 pages. It's got lots of pictures and if you're into that kind of thing, it's pretty interesting. They talk about a lot of unique situations and a lot of like materials that are very relevant today.
So talk to me about that for a second, because when I go through pointers, I feel like it's more of a history book than it is like a manual, they've got like stuff where everything began, and I look at it, half the book is stuff that like, doesn't even exist in modern parachute tech. And then when you look at modern base tech and to your earlier statement, like base tech is on the cutting edge. It's doing things that other parachute sports never even considered and maybe won't ever do.
Yeah. But that's where some of that is. I agree. Like the pointers manual one it's a lot of history. A lot of old stuff, but history never really dies and it always tends to repeat itself in parachutes. And this one, I'm going to catch some crap for this one, but like for example, and I'm not going to dispute marketing, but for example the treed brake lines that we're moving to now,
yeah,
that's not a new thing. That was actually tried and true. Parachute technology in the 80s on a parachute called the Goliath. In fact, it was on Carl Banish's personal canopy. So like it's got the exact same tree like it may have a slight different thing, but like the same concept was around.
It's like we just Potentially dug that back up or they could have come up with the same idea, but it's been there and so like a lot of these harness geometries that we're switching to flip around in that pointers manual. You'll find them. It's like it's we may not be using that whole thing. The guy. But we've took like 1 percent of that and we've carried that on. Cause like they had something good then.
What do you think about a recycled ideas like that? It seems like a lot of ideas in parachute sports come back around and some of them feel like they're brand new, like for instance, like the toroidal design. Pilot shoot,
Or, man, that's in a 1960s, aerospace man, right? And it
was a mind grenade when it came out and base for Holy crap, this thing is so stable. So awesome. Yeah. So what's the deal with that? Like how do ideas get lost? How do ideas get found again? Why does that happen?
A lot of that stuff, like that particular manual that I'm speaking of, it's another one of those things that was published by the same publishing place, so they're out of business now, but it's another 600 book. That was a military funded project, so I don't think that was readily available information back then in the 90s or, Or late eighties to just come across. I had to scour the internet and do some less than ideal things to keep the copy longer than two hours, but yeah.
Okay. So if a lot of this stuff is in these manuals, which are somewhat available and also somewhat historic then how do you fill in the gaps? I know that you took a run through a lot of different people who are, notable figures in our community.
Yep. And that's a good point is there are some wise individuals in our parachute community that have been doing this for 40, 50 years that have, Same thing, we're talking about this invaluable in depth information as far as you can dig. And those guys were around when a lot of this stuff was being created. So they didn't need to read it in a book. They were there when they were doing that test or they were there when they were seeing the results or something like that. Yeah,
totally. I was actually, I was yesterday, I was talking to Marty Jones. Yeah, about tail pocket design because I know his dad actually invented the tail pocket. And so there was a dispute about tail pocket and why it was the way it was. And I'm like I'll just call it Marty. He's Matt, actually that, that exact tail pocket was invented in 1978 and then he gives me the whole history. And I'm like, I was like, dude, does this exist anywhere? Can I like, this to print.
Put out in the public and he's Oh no, I've never written it down.
But that's the point is to be around those guys and to just ask those random questions. Anything you could ever come up with that you think could be a a tangent for that guy, just ask him and see where it goes. Cause it could just be a, I don't know. But you could get that whole history lesson that blows your mind. That was a good gap filler. No one has written down.
Yeah. And I'm sure that, somewhere there was some notes that got jotted down, but chances are being a rigger, it got thrown away with the less important stuff.
Yeah. This one is parallel to what you were talking about in the military side. Marty and his dad were working for the Air Force Academy doing their parachute program. And at that point, their deployment systems were having too many malfunctions and they were in jeopardy of getting the program shut down. And so like Marty Jones and his dad had to come up with like, all right, how do we not get shut down? So it was like literally like them just like ripping out ideas. Hey, those are two good
problem solvers.
Coming up with that. But that wasn't published information. That was some like back, room memos that got passed between military officers and eventually arrived at this conclusion.
Yep. And, but he's full of stuff a lot like that. If you ever pack a reserve in front of the man, you'll walk away with a ton of tips that you're like, That just changed my entire packing game.
And you'll be like, mate, in a lot of cases, you're like, I've been putting a lot of people in danger and not even know it, cause he has some little bit of information or that backroom knowledge that in a lot of cases we can't speak publicly about because there are, a service bulletin that says it's this way because it's this way. But the real reasoning was because the riggers were being jackasses, right? So but we can't say that!
Who else was on your list as you gained this knowledge?
Let's see. Down in Alabama, the people that got me started was a guy named Frank Wilson. He's no longer with us, but he was that ornery old asshole man. And he's the one I stole my tradition from. I don't really drink much anymore. And so at the end you get a parachute reserve save. I don't want liquor. Just bring me some Ben and Jerry's, Jerry Garcia or something.
Yeah.
But he liked Chunky Monkey. And then the other guy was named or is named Burt Harwell. He was the guy that would just meet me on the weekdays and do some reserve packing and stuff like that. And then a guy named Kyle Robinson, that was one of those riggers that wasn't afraid to show me what he knew as a new rigger without being worried about his job because we were buddies. And so it was more of a, let's just learn this and have fun with it. So like we had that kind of camaraderie.
But then moving up here and
here's Twin Falls.
Here's Twin Falls from Alabama. I was more introduced to James Yarrow and he was equally on that path. And I can remember a lot of times we challenge each other, to try to do something a little bit better, or you're like proud look at that patch. And then the next one, you're like, Oh, I'm going to outdo that. So it got to the point where. You start following the lines on the patch and it's literally followed the block of the canopy. Perfect. It doesn't wander.
That wasn't a result of us like, yeah, we were trying to get better, but also it was like we were trying to get better, to be better than the other guys last little friendly competition to just see how good you can actually get it. I don't know. What is that pinnacle? That's the job. That's the aim. It wasn't somebody, and I encounter these people a lot. It wasn't somebody that's Oh, that's good enough. Sure. But have a little pride behind it. There's nothing wrong with that. Make it look nice.
So how do you break into those crews? Cause you know, I think a lot of people find that the rigging loft is an intimidating environment. They walk in, people are rushing around, they're doing really important stuff. You don't even want to tap them on the shoulder because like they're in the middle of saving somebody's life, and then you're going to ask them. Them to pull over, while all these bins are stacked up behind you to help you out with some basic question.
So like, how do you remember Paris?
And that's where I came up learning how to raise, but how do you break into that world? What are some of the things that people should understand about rigors or the environment or how to crest that initial barrier,
Yeah. I guess the first advice would to just be aware that, good rigors, which there's lots of, they are busy these days because there are few and far between especially the ones like, cause it's not just knowledge, to get that stuff, you have knowledge, you have equipment, you have space. So not everybody can put all those three together. But if you have the opportunity to have one of those rigors around, you Go in and offer something, not like money or beer, any of that stuff.
Like they always need stitches picked and you can learn to stitch pick in five minutes. They always need the floor vacuumed or the threads picked up or something like that. And the best thing is to be in the loft when that conversation strikes up. So like when, for example, in Paris, when we'd be packing, it'd be me and taught us. And James and we just be talking while we're packing. It's one of those just second nature things, but we're not just talking about whatever.
It's usually about parachutes and rigging and something like that. Cause that's what we were all nerding into. And to just be there when that happened. is one of those examples or to just be there and ask the question when they're actively sitting and doing something. For me, if I'm sewing on the machine, I can talk all day. But if I'm, on the computer or having to do other stuff, that's when it's tough. It's Read the room is the best thing. Yeah,
that's exactly my experience. It was during the shutdowns of the drop zone, like we'd get winded out or end early and I would just go over there knowing that they weren't on a time crunch and I would make closing loops. Yes. Hundreds of them. Oh, yes. And as soon as y'all were talking about something that I didn't know about, then I would ask that question because I wouldn't understand what somebody had just said about a different phrase or a word. And I'm like, what is that? I hope.
And then they'd tangent off and away we'd go.
Telling you, man, dude, that's the best one too. Closing loops. Yeah. Learn to make reserve closing loops. Go make a ton sitting there, make them extra long and they fit everything. Yeah, man.
The bonus was that like, at that time, I remember you every pack job. Yeah, they came to actually start paying me, it wasn't much, they're like, we'll give you 5 cents of closing, I was learning and I was doing something and I was getting paid for it. Hey. All day. All day. Let me ask you this, a lot of people that we came up with and a lot of people that you had mentioned are not around anymore.
They're either, literally, not here or they've gotten old or they've retired or they're just not interacting with the community in the same way that they used to,
yeah, I'd say two of the three people that were in my rigging startup. They're no longer with us. And looking and talking to people after the fact, they were legends. I just got to scratch the surface of it. Yeah. That's a good I don't know.
So are we losing, are we like effectively in a culture of brain drain at this moment, cause none of those people are leaving anything physical behind. It's up to people like you to compile it. And then. Hold on to that oral history for the next generation.
That's a good point. There are companies like, obviously. These larger parachute companies in skydiving, they've got documents of everything that they ever want, but those aren't public information. That's not public information. They're not going to share that with us. And so a lot of the stuff we learn, yeah, it is going to have to be passed down we're in desperate need of a parachute manual for skydiving.
And a lot of these guys, we need their information to write it and we need to get it from them before it's too late, and that's a side mission of mine is not to, I can't, I'm never going to be able to organize myself to write a book, but to try to get some of that information and at least write some of it down. But my challenge to everyone in this game is to do the same because at some point we're going to have to collect and compile.
All of this stuff and kind of reorganize some of it because it is getting lost.
It is. And it seems like the culture's going the opposite direction. Like you mentioned earlier about, a lot of the USPA progression getting really fat, like fast tracked, and the understanding of why we do any of Totally lost. And then people end up on the exit point, with very little understanding of how and why the system is going to save their life. Holy shit, man. You're right. That gets terrifying. I guess my question is like, how do we turn the tide on that?
What's the what's the thing that we're missing? What's the, special sauce that gets people to start engaging a little bit more in their rigging process?
I don't know. My first thing would say try sewing. Honestly, it's pretty fun. I love it. So you really might like it. Before you say anything you might actually find that it's super useful for all kinds of shit.
I feel like there are three basic competencies that really drive. My world at home and they are woodworking, sewing and welding. And if I can do those three, like just to a basic standard, I'm not like
learn to weld.
I'll show you in a day. Seriously. It's one of those things where you can make a functional weld after a day. You're not doing artistic stuff. And man, Harbor Freight's got one for 200 bucks. Exactly.
That
sounds awesome. Yeah, man, I, when I got into sewing, I think the most intimidating thing for me was learning how to set up the different machines. It was always like, Oh my God, I'm going to thread this wrong. And the whole thing's just going to explode. And then it's going to be like a bunch of little parts and components that I don't know where they go. And then, I'm going to be screwed.
I agree with that. That's one of those things like, dude, stay away from industrials until you're ready. Because number one, for me to get that fixed, the closest guy is like Salt Lake, but I don't know much about him. The closest wizard is like Denver. So that's inconvenient. You can do so much. Anything you should be doing, learning and getting into rigging, you can do on a home sewing machine. One of those little plastic sewing machines.
So when you break it, dude, there's tons of people to fix that thing. 75 bucks. You can trash it. 75 bucks. It's ready to go.
Yeah. Yeah. I basically, that's what I've got. I've got this heavy duty home singer machine. Yes. The 4411. Yeah, man, most of the plastic parts are off of it at this point because it's been fixed so many times that it's like, there's no reason to put those things back on. No, man. Yeah, no doubt. That's such
a great machine. It's such a great
machine. It does so many things like, everything from the super thin stuff to actually, I've sewn through Cordura with that. Yeah. Not. I'm not doing 500 pound bar tax with it, but I'm putting it together.
Yeah. Dude, in a pinch, man, you can do just about anything you need to. I've watched a guy replace a BOC in the field on one of those. And I've put a couple of patches and then you pull it out. You can't tell the difference between that machine and the one I've gotten there. That's, specific for patching and all this other stuff. That's, 17 times more expensive. Yeah. It's it's a good trade off.
I'm actually looking through your shop and you've got a fair amount of machines here.
And I still got more that are out. I've got some that are getting some upgrades and whatnot to come back for. Specifics.
Can I ask you this? How much is invested in just machines?
I don't even want to think about that. A lot. A lot. That's one of those things why I'm moving as slow as I am. It's it's a lot of investment to get into the parachute game today. It's like COVID really hurt that. And I'm very fortunate to have acquired most of this before COVID. Because they just. 50 percent more for no reason. Yes, inflation, but on top of the inflation, they just rose the price.
I think that they're seeing that there's more manufacturing coming back to the States and they're going to capitalize on that. But if PD were to try to do their same scale today, I don't think it would happen. I think it's too much. And so, I am fortunate of that was the, this is the first time I'm going to say it out loud, but that's the reason I got involved in the Paris loft.
Like, when I walked in to go for my nationals trial thing, and I saw the working harness machine and all this other stuff I've only heard about some of these things. That machine's from like 1907. Yeah. I gotta get my hands on this. I enjoyed working there as time went. But when the gates locked for 11 months and it was time for me to do what I wanted to do. And that was, I went there for those machines. So it's
interesting to look at those old ones, because, it comes from an era where our country was doing specific manufacturing, and a lot of textile manufacturing. And so they'll have this machine that does this one perfect stitch and that's it. And it does it better than any other machine has ever done. We'll ever do because it was purpose built to do that one thing like a million times.
Everybody says the harness points on a lot of the stuff, dude, that's a machine. Like you just put it in there and hit the clamp and it does this perfect three point. That's literally perfect.
Yeah.
No wonder a rigger can't match that. So in by hand cause that's literally made to do one thing.
So what is the manufacturing layout? Look like in parachutes right now, it seems like there are a few people like you who are upstarting, and grabbing like a lot of cool machines to, make their manufacturing process work. And there are some other folks who are doing the opposite. They're finding places either here or overseas that will do their manufacturing. And they're like just getting into basically the scaling and the design of it.
Yep. I think it's good either way. I think it really comes down to the way you want to see the business or the way you want to run a business. For me personally, the way that I see it is I want to build them in house is because it's my passion, I'm obsessed about it. Yeah. People ask me, how do you sleep at night? One time, like I got that question. How do you sleep at night? Knowing all that stuff's out there.
Because when I leave it, when I give it to you, I'm not saying mistakes can't happen, but when I give it to you, I've seen that thing a hundred times already. It's burned into my memory. I can look at that Bartak in my head on your parachute and give it back to you. I try to remember that stuff, but at the same time you remember it until you forget about it. And then whatever. Yeah. Oh, sorry. I got brain farted on that.
No. Yeah. I get you. It's a, it's this kind of the same mentality that I take when I'm preparing for a jump, you end up at the exit point and somebody is aren't you like terrified of all these things going wrong? And you're like, no, along the way, I certified that thing was correct. Yep. And then I did it again and then like I moved on so confidently from that step that I do not need to like Now consider a hundred things. Yep. I need to consider like one or two things
exactly, but that kind of moved Sorry, I got a little distracted, but that moves me towards like the reason I want to do it in house is I want a thumb on every single step of the process. I don't think quality happens at the end. I think quality happens the entire way through the process, between each one of the steps, and then at the end. And for me, if I'm going to put my name on it, I've got to be there. I've got to be involved in it.
And so I'm not saying that there's a bad way to do the other ones because I'm also looking at a model like tool pouches and stash bags and things like that should not be made by a master rigger. We can outsource that. We can keep the costs down and we can do that and blend the things that aren't important yet. With the things that are important made in house.
But the people that are outsourcing the one that's the, probably the biggest right now, they've done a really good job with it, but they went to a very reputable manufacturer that already had an existing reputation of quality work. They didn't start one from scratch. And the other one didn't. Has attempted to do the same. And we're, it's still new enough. I can't really say anything yet, but we'll see how that goes, but.
Okay. Hang on a second. So we've got some yeah, I understand why you're speaking. About these companies in the way that you are but let's back up for just a second here and see if we can, backdoor our way through this topic.
So I do want to ask you about the quality of different things on the market specifically, but let's start with, biases, which I think a lot of people will discredit your opinion over something because they just assume that you have some sort of bias or competing products or whatever. Yeah. Can you speak to that for a second? Yeah,
I am biased. You're right. I am biased against shitty and bullshit work. That's what I'm biased about. It has nothing to do with who made it. Good gear comes from everybody. I've flown and jumped most everything on the market and that it's all really nice stuff. But to come down to quality. It's not about design anymore, right? It that's irrelevant. We're going to come down to like how it was made how much fret went into each stitch.
And that goes down to the level of like when the needles were changed, all the things that are involved at the small level that are going to make your parachute last much longer down the road. And going with established manufacturers. They've seen the canopy get 2, 000 jumps and come back to them ragged out, and they've made changes over time.
sometimes decades to hash out their final product to where Bartak's aren't just there, they're specific to the millimeter, one direction or the other to that stitch. And that's going to mean the difference between 300 jumps later, that thing's pulling out or a thousand jumps later, it's still strong. It's it's very nuanced stuff that even like a lot of times today, I'm just blown away with, Wow.
I can't believe that didn't last, or I can't believe that they thought that would last like some of that stuff. But a lot of the things we see that aren't super great, they don't usually come from long term manufacturers because they've already done that mistake like 20 years ago. And we've forgotten about it. It's it's not that they didn't do it. It's just, they didn't do it today.
When we're talking about biases, and I think you've pretty well illustrated that, you are, you don't really care about the marketing. You care about the fundamentals. Yep. Is there some sort of Oh, I believe no marketing.
Oh,
none
of it. Yeah, you got to let I don't read any of it, because none of it's true. Like I've seen you read it and then you come back to that same canopy a year later and it's a totally different description of it. It's because we didn't know what it was to begin with. Like you had to get jumps and learn it and all that stuff. Like we don't know, like I'm not saying anything cause you got to sell it.
Like we've got to sell the product to get enough jumps on it to know these things about the parachute.
Gotcha. Okay. So basically stated, since you're not even involved in the marketing, you're not going to be spewing marketing. Like your biases are all about the fundamentals of the system. So let me ask you this. Is there some sort of unwritten ethical code amongst like rigors to talk about equipment in a certain way so that like your credibility, like collectively remains high?
And really where I'm driving with this is I want to know the difference in your head between talking shit and, saying something that is substantial and important. Yeah. And as
far as I know, there isn't there's nobody that's been the hub between all these manufacturers that I'm aware of because back then they were the manufacturers back in those guys, the riggers, the people that were doing my job We're Todd at Apex, we're Martin Tilly at Asylum, but they've split off and they did their own things since history, since then. Now, we're getting more, and I'm also like, I'm not saying I represent them in any way, but I do repairs for every single manufacturer out there.
I don't care who made it. Because I've seen it at the stitch level. And it's all the
same. That's just the fact. It's just the facts. And that's what I'm interested in. Cause that seems to me to really step beyond talking shit. Like you're just talking about your personal experience. And so while somebody could call you out as being biased, that would just be ignorant. It's just look, man, like if you want to sit here in the shop and watch me go through all of these different repairs, then I won't need to tell you anything, like you'll just see exactly what I'm talking about.
So let's talk about those. What are we talking about? What have you seen as far as quality from the different places? What have you seen as far as repairs go? What are some of the things that the consumer who is missing some of the like basic competencies in rigging understand about their gear?
Right now we don't have anything super crazy. The good news is, anytime we've had problems, they get swallowed up pretty fast. In history's sake, as far as we can go, like, early on with some, Bartak tension was tight. And we didn't know that'd be a big problem, but all of a sudden it was. And. Since then we've learned things and we're like, oh that's not really doing anything. So let's just loosen it up and it's fine.
But it's still something that can sneak through the cracks and not from a manufacturer, right? We're not even talking about manufacturing now. You're talking about riggers. We'll take that line off and they'll make a repair. And who's now going to say that their bar tack tension is good, right? So you can't hold the manufacturer responsible for something that happened later down the road. But we do need to share that information from an issue that happened that wasn't necessarily made public.
And, it's not just it might sound like I'm picking on one, but It's literally everybody I'd be bullshitting if I said I have found if I didn't say I have found life altering mistakes from every single manufacturer that's in current production.
That's scary. Yes.
Yes.
Okay. Okay. Hang on. We're going to have to, we're going to have to expand on that one for a second. Are some of these out there? Do people probably have these in their containers? What are we? No,
A lot of them were just mistakes, right? Individual one off mistakes, individual one off mistakes. Some of them make you jaw hit the ground. Like I know they wouldn't have. Wouldn't it didn't get checked if they saw that it would have never gone out.
Yeah, it's
like something happened Don't know what but like when I reach out to that person, it's not me talking shit It's me telling you've got a flaw in the problem or in the process And be aware of it. Try to find it. And we need to make this right for whoever's PC or canopy or container that this is. And sometimes that's a simple fix in house, but it still needs to be shared. So they, Can learn from the process and everybody else
can
check
exactly, this touches on an interesting little tidbit that I think is a great one to highlight at this point, which is that we're all basically test jumpers, 100 percent that label in your tail pocket. It says experimental. Yeah. And that's true. It's true.
It's true.
What do you recommend as far as people getting to know their own equipment and going through it? It seems like we're trending towards, Hey, like if you're not experienced enough to check it stitch by stitch, then even though it's come from a reputable manufacturer, you should still take it in to get it like check. Stitch by stitch.
And the problem there is like a lot of skydiving riggers won't touch base gear. And it's silly because if you ask me that's your opportunity to just do stuff that has zero repercussion on you, because. You're doing a experimental parachute that is not covered by the FAA. So you're not even exercising your rigors ticket to fix it. So I'm not saying you to just do it, but don't be scared just because it's a base canopy. You're actually like less liable for that than you are.
The skydiving main that you just packed.
That's another like weird thing to highlight right there of we have no standards. None. Yeah. Super low. Yeah. Which allows people to put out anything. Yep. Okay. Okay. What are you? I don't exactly even know how to attack this next part, got to get into the ethics of manufacturing a little bit here.
You've touched on a couple of different elements like, in the past, I know several manufacturers have called recalls, and it's because they've had something that was life threatening that was incorrect. Yep. And they called it back and Yep. Sometimes we didn't know that was even gonna be a thing. I remember.
First canopy I ever bought was the first round of ultra light canopies made by apex and I literally was in Todd's door when he was designing that canopy saying, whenever the first ones of these come out, that's what I want, he's looking at me as like a new chopper. Yeah, fabric and it's still like really experimental. And, he was like grabbing me by the shoulders and like looking me in the eye and going Matt, you need to be more diligent about this equipment than anybody else.
I don't you don't, you haven't been in the game long enough to understand, but this is experimental equipment. I can't imagine being taught to do that. I know. Yeah. And what I'm asking him how many jumps is this going to last? And he's look, man, I'm going to be honest with you. We don't know. We don't know. Welcome to base jumping. And that was great. It was a great process.
And in fact, like it was one of the best things that could have happened to me early on, because I didn't just grab that equipment from him and assume that it was going to be good. Like I literally was going through it. After. Every 10 jumps I would go through it. If I had anything that happened to it, I would look at it, I would take it back in after a hundred jumps for Todd to be like, Hey, like I've done a hundred jumps and these is what they were and like, teach me about the stuff.
How's it holding
up? That's because he wants to see it. Yeah. Keeping an eye on.
So I learned a ton just with that, like one little message up front of you're an experimental test pilot, which I was stoked on. Yeah, man. Let's learn.
It works for some people. Not great marketing for a lot of others. Yeah, but it is across the
board, the truth, which is just
wow. Yeah, it is the truth.
Okay. So again, is there some ethics involved in manufacturing? I remember Todd being very diligent about getting everyone's contact information and if something changed, he would call it all back. Like every one of them from the field,
one of them, it didn't matter. We've seen some painful recalls, man. That thing we're talking about with the strong light, the one the junk shouldn't break it. That was a isolated incident to one jumper that had three rigs, different manufacturers. And it was happening all three of them because the person was like deploying in a head down track, basically, and yo yoing himself every jump,
right? Just to back up a second and fill in the gap on that was a when containers went to integrated risers, like first off. Taken out the three rings and the stitch pattern that was being used was told to the first time I had one of those I was told, look, you have to deploy this in a 45 degree angle, head up position. If you don't, we don't know if it's going to hold together. And so this is not beginner technology. This is expert technology.
You have to make sure that you're going to be in control. And so I took it on going okay, I better be careful. And fast forward, eventually somebody came to the point where they were, just nuking and head down deploying this thing. And there is some. Evidence to support that maybe the harness was donned incorrectly, but be that as it may there was a riser failure which led to another recall.
Yeah. And led to a really awesome trend of. experiments. Squirrel brought us that Y junction thing that's coming in now.
Yeah.
Adrenaline first had the soft L bar thing, and which was basically a slink that held around that main lift web that would keep it from doing that. They've now transitioned to just a piece of Dyneema LUN, and Squirrel's doing a slimmer version of their Y. Like, two very strong, invincible almost, junctions. Came out of that would never have even been considered until some jackass, it was doing something a little outside the window.
I remember that for break lines too. We used to do the break inserts just with those two lines. Two bar tags, sliding it in one side, sliding into the other. And then people started doing, three plus second slider off, delays and just blowing through brake lines, and I remember going back to some of the people I was talking to at the time were Taylor Cole and Annie Helliwell and asking them like what's happening here?
And, they're basically like we didn't consider that people would be doing that. That's crazy. Exactly. Now we've got to redesign the system. Yep. And fast forward, we've got a much better break insert.
Yep. It's. Another one of those cases to where I don't know what happened first or how this happened or any of that other stuff. That break setting has been inside of a UPT Sigma Tandem Main since the existence of Sigma Tandem Mains. Really? The one that's just surround, the same one just got a piece of red Dacron sleeved over it to make it look traditional. But if you peel it at the bottom, you'll see the white Spectra Loop. Huh. It is a. bitch to make because of that sleeve.
The first time I made a copy that's been there the whole time. And then you go I've never seen a tandem brake setting wear out. And it is that way. That makes sense. Like somebody, man. So I don't know who came up with that. Someone smart.
Okay. Brief tangent question.
Is there anything
that's new
in
parachuting?
When we say so. It just, even when I believe it, I pull something out of the bag. And you're like, Whoa, like when I pulled Carl's canopy out and started inspecting it and it had that break line, I just started laughing like. I didn't know that was a thing but that's incredible. This is 1983, like that's wild.
Maybe that's a good tangent into talking about some of the things that are truly modern inventions shuttle weaving, exactly. Dyneema harnesses, new age, ways of, blending those fabrics. Can you talk to us about how that technology has started to infiltrate base?
Yeah. One thing that's super popular right now is that lightweight, trying to save, at this point grams and we've seen the industry move over to Dyneema webbings and. Anytime we get off the path of those traditional webbings that we used we're getting out into that experimental zone again. But we're getting out into materials that aren't made the same fundamental way that we make the traditional stuff. And what I mean by that is the way that it's woven.
We've got two different versions and this is the, as much as I understand, we're not going to get super complex here. So if somebody is like a materials person, they're going to laugh at me, but you've got shuttle woven and you've got needle woven and both those machines are going to exist in the same factory, but the shuttle woven is going to spit out webbing. I don't know, I'm making these numbers up for examples, but like super slowly a foot a minute, it's probably much more than that.
But the needle woven one on the other side of the factory, it's going to shoot out like 20 foot a minute. It's going to be cheaper to purchase that one than it is the slower method. But the slower method is using a one continuous piece to fill in the entire length of webbing. Okay. And the other one is just using little C shaped threads and knotting one of the edges.
And what do you get with the continuous thread? What's the advantage there?
So with that continuous thread that shuttle woven fabric, we're going to get more critical use once we have edge damage to the webbing. If we actually take a knife and we nick that webbing, a quarter of the way through. Once we put that into the pool scale, we're going to see, we're still going to get like a surprisingly large amount of the initial breaking strength still there. Like usually at least 60, 70% with the other, the cheaper webbing that comes out a little bit faster.
If we Nick that one edge, we lose all critical function. And so it's the same strength. undamaged. But if we nick that edge, we lose that, that structural integrity.
What are some of the components on our system that might be shuttle woven or otherwise?
These days, it's going to be super popular with the manufacturers, especially with lightweight stuff. Your main lift web is more than likely needle woven. And it's one of those things If you sat there and oriented the way it was going and you put the woven side versus the knitted side on one side, maybe you can make things better, but they're not inherently bad. It's just something to be aware of. If you damage your heart.
Yeah. That's where I'm curious. Like for all the people listening to that explanation, they're probably thinking okay, what are the components on here that could be this way or that, where I can like, really pay attention to it. So main lift web, I know you've also mentioned or shown me in the loft
Exactly. During COVID we got a material shortage, hardcore, and we're still bringing ourselves out of that. And I've seen a few manufacturers during that time, they did have to resort to, to needle woven just to keep production. And so I saw some bridles show up, not a fan of the bridle being needle woven because of the way it was made. The stuff we do with it.
We're doing static lines, we're tying those links, we're tying things around that, that what we call the salvage edge, it's the actual sides of the webbing, uh, we're just messing with it at that point. So I would tend to say I just don't trust it for that application. But for a harness, dude, if I could go back in history, say how many people have nicked their harnesses while jumping.
Yeah,
not a lot. I can't think of one off the top of my head. That's just not a thing. Now, having the paramedics cut you out of your harness or something. Sure. We get that all the time, but that's irrelevant to what it was made of. But I'd say as far as the needle game, it's actually going to open the doors to a lot cooler. And in a lot of ways, more useful fabrics for us in our industry.
Again, while we need that third pointers manual, it's we're getting into new stuff and we're seeing that like needle has an application in certain places that we can get away with. And the climbing specs honestly are better for our purposes. We're dynamic loading everything. Yeah. And. All of the data we have about the traditional webbings is all static. It doesn't super. Make it easy to translate breaking strengths for what we're using it for.
Yeah. But in kilonewtons and stuff, way easier, like way
easier. Man. You know what blew my mind is the first time I looked at a base rig or a, sorry, a skydiving rig. I had already been a climber for 10 years. And so I look at the chest strap and I'm like, what is this? They're like that's the thing that's holding into your harness. And I'm like, you're kidding me. No way. Like what? That looks so chintzy and terrible. And I don't trust it.
And everyone just seemed totally cool with it, and it wasn't until later when I was sitting in a will kiddos garage doing pull tests, then I really realized how right I was about that. To be like scared, those standard friction adapters, like they break after 20 minutes. Two kilonewtons. It
literally says unrated. Unrated! Yeah, dude! Unrated! Crazy! Because they don't want to put two there.
It like just, it'll just peel right off the tracks at about two kilonewtons, which is about 500 pounds. Yep. Not a lot. And you can definitely generate that if you're just bouncing on a rappel.
Oh yeah.
Versus like the paragliding buckles or the climbing buckles. You'll
see a lot of people do that rappel from their chest strap. Yep. Man.
Okay. Back on point, I do want to talk about that manufacturing thing that you just brought up, during that period, we did have a lot of shortages and a lot of people going to alternatives. Have you ever, have you seen any other. Alternatives being used other than like shuttle, maybe in fabric itself that got incorporated into our equipment during that period.
Not specifically. I'd say the one thing that we need to be aware of soon is like Dacron. It's dude, nobody can get ahold of the people that make Dacron. It's I don't know where anybody's going to get it. Like the last time I talked to a tear, they were buying it from some gear store, and they're out now. It's dude, I don't know what's going to happen. And what we find for that might be tricky. As far as what happened so far, I wouldn't say anything forced us to do that.
If anything, the only real thing we've ventured out on is the hardware. I'm, we're seeing people I'm speculating now because I don't know, but like the new hardware that's on squirrel and adrenaline rigs. I don't know where they get that. So if that's been custom made by some place or any of that stuff, it's that's kind of those things that I wish that manufacturers would be open about, like, where did that source from?
And not even specifics, but like, Where does it break at any of that detail even if you engraved it on the buckle? So in the future when you're inspecting this stuff, you don't have a question mark in your head like you actually know
that'd be a nice update. I mean climbing world does that all over the place? There's not one single piece of equipment that doesn't have either a stamp on it or a tag on what you
serial numbers and stuff Yeah, I got a pair of hip rings that I'm just playing with and yeah pencil heads each serial number on them
Okay. Maybe I can ask you more directly. There was a recent parachute failure of a parachute that was designed during the pandemic period. Yeah. It was I think a center line, a center a line blowout. On the right hand side. Okay. Was that a manufacturing issue or was that a materials thing? I'd
actually call it a blend of both. Mainly because it was the raw materials choice so I would blame, manufacturing at that point, but it was also, one of those things that's what I call them as Babe Ruth moments, like when he points the bat out of the outfield, he's here it comes I'm just telling you it's going to happen. And it's one of those things, it's one of those like. If anyone of knowledge saw it, they'd be like, Bro, this was gonna happen every single time.
Because polyester and nylon are like poison to each other. They hate each other. Oil and vinegar, and You can't place a polyester tape and then put nylon stitching through it. Because the nylon stitching, nylon as a fiber is so much stronger than polyester. Polyester is just a fancy plastic and it's very rough and it peels away from the nylon. And when that happens, what we'll see is the Bartak will stay in the canopy, but the bottom of the Bartak from there, the fabric just pulls away.
And that's what we saw in that example of this canopy failure we're seeing is we saw the Bartak still there, but the tab ripped away. So it was coming down to, they used an underweighted But it was also the wrong material type and not to say that we can't use polyester. We use polyester all over the place, but it's never, it's rarely ever in a load bearing capacity. And the only load bearing capacity I can think of off the top of my head is the reserve bridle on your free bag pilot chute.
And even then it's not seeing that much load. It's carrying a canopy and stuff. So I think that's pretty insignificant. But as a general rule, since nylon and polyester were invented ages ago, you don't mix them in load bearing capacities because they'll tear each other. And if you put polyester thread into nylon, it cuts through the fabric and you pull away. And the BARTAC would be gone, kinda, it'd be frayed out. So it's not like a, once again, it's not an opinion.
It's actually like a detective thing. This is an example, but we have examples of this already to compare it to. So you can see that it was just wrong material sourcing. It just didn't get it from the right place. And I think that's going to come down to, what we're talking about ethics a little bit. It's Building parachutes historically have always come from people that had a long history of parachute rigging down to the core levels.
We talked about taught at Apex has been taught at Apex, but before that was taught at basic research and taught at vertigo and taught at TNT rigging, that book that we're talking about, that's ages old, the flip to the back of that thing in that is a list of. Manufacturers and riggers and stuff, he's in there in the TNT rigging. Like he's been in this game a long time and same with Tilly. You go back down his track record. Same with the guys in a tear. At this point it's second generation.
And I can say I've got speculation on some some squirrel stuff.
Yeah, please speculate. I like that speculation. Can you speculate there? This
is just my speculation, and I'll compare it to that manufacturer. The Seven. A lot of people give Tilly the credit for designing that parachute. This is my speculation.
And we can bring on some people later if if they need to train you. This is just my speculation. Yeah, exactly. I love it. I love it. I love
it. I think Gertie's had a lot more to do with that parachute than the general public knew. But he, and I don't mean this disrespectfully, it's just the best way to say it, he was a nobody at that time. His reputation goes who was this person? He had the book coming out. He knew to make his parachute successful, he's going to have somebody to sell it for him a name to back him and to say it is good. And I don't know how that partnership or any of that went, but I think he brought it to Tilly.
Tilly gave it that this is a good build or gave him, some advice and some fixes and they produce that parachute. And I think that company has been like, Building a relationship for ages. Now they're partnered. Exactly. It's I think that was just super strategic because it was in that same situation we're talking about now with this one that blew up.
It could have been a situation where they could have gone and found that person, had that same thing, had them sort out any issues that they were ignorant of. It's I like ignorant. You don't know what you don't know. And you can in this game. Of parachutes.
You can and will be held liable for what you don't know you don't know, but So that's where I'm always scared to push out stuff It's like Marty Jones is one of my favorite people on this planet Because when I'm just like think I've got something awesome He's usually the one like be able to poke the hole in it Show me the flaw, give me that advice that I'm just not seeing. You've got that history, that experience to fall back on.
And I think, it's getting historically that's always been the case is having someone involved, had that knowledge whether they had it themselves or they partnered with somebody that had that knowledge. I'm not sure that I like the other route, like going at it with, trial and error. It does
seem like you should have a foundation somewhere in the history. Obviously, the intention for all of us in the modern age is to move beyond. Yeah. And so like we could look at the history and be like we're not trying to be you. So like we're out of here, but also. And I get
that. But there's also so many ways to do it.
And so many mistakes and landmines to step on that those folks could, get you to step around just for a couple of looks into what you're doing.
And that's where. I get upset is I take this such seriously, like so serious of work because I've dedicated my life to it at this point, like I enjoy it that much and I'm that involved. But to me, when you see something like that happen and there's no other explanation for it, other than I'll say negligence, just the sheer lack of knowledge it. Makes me fearful as far as liability stuff goes. Because you're setting a bad example.
For someone else to put a thumb on later in a courtroom setting or something like that. But you're also shitting all over 50, 60 years of dead bodies and incidences and broke people that did that to teach us something that we now firmly know is truth. And to just go around that is super disrespectful. To the history of what's already happened. And I hate repeating history. Yeah. It's. It's dumb to have someone else get hurt from the same exact thing. Fucking thing. That's my goal.
Never should happen. That should never happen.
Yeah, it's tough when the rules need to be written in blood twice. And that's
the guy that was jumping that parachute is perfectly fine. Yeah, perfectly fine. Lucky. Totally
lucky.
And this is one example. But it's not the only, it's happened so many times. My buddy,
Dave Benetti nearly went in on one of the first bad seed wings and it was a full a line blowout. He was terminal jumping in Europe, full a line blowout. He ended up in the trees and so just bumps and bruises and stuff. And the explanation there was that they back to your point about Dacron that they got a bad batch of Dacron which was questionable. Like a lot of people looked at it and they're like, no, this is actually just thinner Dacron. Like it's mislabeled Dacron.
Like they said that they gave you a 500 pounds, but this is clearly 250 or something like that.
Yeah.
But what they said in public was it was a bad batch of Dacron either way. It definitely happens in other realms. Yeah.
A lot of times, like you said. Not at fault. It could come back to not even the manufacturer's fault, right? You're still getting burned. You still got to do something.
If at the end of this, like people just realize that they really need to know their specific equipment, like not just the brand and the type, but their actual parachute, then I think we're winning.
Yeah. And my, my, My goal is to not like scare people either. Like it's not a fear thing.
So let's talk about that for a second. What happened to both of these situations? Cause like we've thrown some fear out there. What was the result of both of those failures?
The. One line failure that we're discussing, he landed fine. I do think as far as I'm was told, he didn't pop the brakes and he just flew it in and landed. And as far as I know, he was brushing it off. And the people that were more concerned were all of his buddies in the landing area, shitting themselves, watching a, I can't imagine what that shape looked like such a weird, like a sombrero, from the front
so both of these people were fine, Dave Bonetti and whomever was flying that Grifis. But what was the results manufacturing from that? Did both of those canopies change? Did those manufacturers learn something? Are there more canopies out there like that, or has that problem been solved? I
know that moving forward, he has, He's been told the right information. He's absorbed it. He's found replacement things. As far as I know that he's gone to the factory and he's, personally been there while they changed some things. So I think he does have the right idea and he's moving forward in the right direction. But, there's still so many Nuance things that we were talking about. Like it's not just about failure, it's about maintenance and longevity as well.
Like some of those things are going to take time to learn and break in and figure out, and that's the responsibilities of the rigors in the world is
Man, to look at stuff after a hundred jumps and say Hey, they thought this was great and it would have been, but turns out
it's wearing out real fast or something. Nothing's perfect. I love my OSP, but it seems to be fucking shredding itself on the tail, but I'm, I don't care. It's part of the parachute. It's what it does. That's an interesting
point to bring up where a lot of people are looking for silver bullets in The rigging process, and wondering and questioning why we don't protect against certain things, why don't you protect against the tail wearing out? What are the compromises that it would put in? Can you speak to that for a minute?
Yeah, it's we'll see different. What I call them was like features on the parachute. It's like different things are going to make it do different things. Like slats are going to make it, have better deep break approaches. The vents are going to make it inflate just a little bit better and pressurize a little bit faster. Stay in pressurized against the wall, blah, blah, blah. But the thing about the OSP is OSP one is.
To this day, as far as I've been able to see, it's the hardest and fastest pressurizing parachute for a slider down. And that can sometimes be really good, and it can sometimes not be that great. When you look at that, no wonder. the tail has a lot of abrasion because it's getting slammed open at a very high rate of speed. Yeah. When everything is perfect.
It's as the canopy ages and the ultralight gets at this point, six, 700 jumps on it, it's getting a little brittle, so it's just not going to be able to take that same abuse that it used to. So that little piece of Dacron that's now a little fuzzy from just use flakes across that ZP for a moment. Man, you've got line burn. You're like, that was a lot of heat generated real quick. It's you're always going to have, a little trade off with a lot of these things.
And for example, that's it's Achilles heel, but it's not a bad one.
What
is it? Six, 700 jumps in, you're going to put four or five patches and call it
a
day. You're good for
more. I think sometimes it's hard to weigh those little things in the balance and say even though we've made a compromise here it's going to be okay because our performance increase is great, and I think a lot of times the next generation reinvents some wheel because of that. Because they're trying to protect against negative consequence, but then they make something worse, and it's tough to tell, like when you're doing that I'm trying to come up with an example of,
did you solve the one in a billion,
right?
But did you introduce a one in a hundred thousand, right? Exactly.
I remember one that came after this was 2016. And the first time that somebody went in with a misrouted bridal, like a misclosed bridal, like they were their pin got popped, they reclosed it without the pilot chute on or a pilot chute out, and then created a container lock. And went in and one of the solutions that was brought to the table was done by the guy that did watch thy bridal that website. I can't remember his name off the top of my head, but great website.
If you go to watch thy bridal, he came up with a system with cutaway closing loops, basically like behind the back pad, there was a cutaway cable that would run the length of the bridal. Of the container and then terminated a handle that you could cut away both of your closing loops in the event that you had a pilot shoot in tow or a container lock or a pin lock or anything.
Yeah, the Jesus handle. The Jesus handle,
yeah, I remember a lot of us looking at that going Oh man, like that's definitely a solution to this, but how many other problems could potentially be caused by having this in the system? No one knows. Let me know if you agree with this statement. This is something that I tell most, every student, I say the early bird gets the worm, but the first worm gets eaten. When you're looking at innovation, you should understand that the second person to the draw really has the advantage.
Yep. A hundred percent. 100%. Man, that's so true. It's like, all I'm thinking of right now is like Tesla, for example. People love them and stuff, but cool, Toyota's going to eat their lunch at some point. And I'm not
saying that's true, but come on. Like when something like catastrophically fails across all of them and they're like, damn, we didn't see that coming at like 50, 000 miles and all of a sudden. Yeah, because Toyota is sitting over here like with a collective, like trillions of miles, driven on their systems. Yeah,
Man, they've got the experience,
man. Yeah. There's really no no substitute for tried and true. And it is an interesting balance to take as a jumper wanting to be at the forefront of the sport.
Yeah.
Can you talk to me about those differences for a second? I know we've had a discussion before. Yeah. About the pros and cons of ultralight equipment versus the standard weight equipment. And I think a lot of people look at the standard weight equipment as quote unquote old, though, going back to our compromises, I know that you have a, an opinion on what both of them are good for. Can you,
yeah. So my first thing was like. With F 11, I would definitely not state that it's old, because it's still good technology for certain places for example, these smaller parachutes, these things that are in the 240s, 220s, Ultranight's not really giving you a benefit at this point in time in fact, it's actually going to Put you in a weird box of, we don't know what pilot shoes size you need anymore.
I was just having that problem. Oh man, I had a student that was literally, and I'm not kidding you literally 85 pounds. Yeah. And we had to change so many different things. And it was an experiment the entire way through.
Entire way through. And so once the canopy is open and in flight, you're seeing zero difference between the two fabrics especially. Short term, longer term, the F 111 is going to last a little bit longer, but realistically, man, I've seen a canopy with ultra light with 1200 jumps on it. It had a ZP nose and it was still fine. It looked old. If you got inside of it, it looked terrifying, but the F 111 is going to stay a little sturdier, but packing wise.
If we're having so much better, easier to pack it's stiffer as less I guess in a lot of ways when ultra light gets old, it's easy to pack, but yeah, when it's new, it's slick. It's slick. Yeah. If you were one of those small weight jumpers and you're not trying to get into a new box.
You live in a high environment or high abrasion environment like SoCal or Arizona or something like that Do your ultralights likely gonna spend more time here in my shop than it is on your back Like because especially as a new jumper because as a new jumper you're focusing on I need to land I need to make sure that I'm okay and in a good LZ But with Ultralight, it's that, plus I need to now land my canopy in a good spot.
Because Ultralight you put that in a bush, chances are you're getting a patch. Or you're pulling a thread, yeah. F 111, man, I remember my old blackjack man. I
was just about to say the blackjack, yeah.
I've nuked it into so many trees and all kind of stuff, and I think I had one patch
I've, one of my favorite stories is I saw Taz land in the trees out in KL and she was flying a blackjack. She takes it, she crumbles it up. She brings it back up to the top. She literally shakes the branches out of it and then starts packing it
again. And
it was, yeah, There's
no damage to his bulletproof. Yeah, that is the most bulletproof parachute ever made. Ever made. Yeah. So one is sport tape. It's
awesome. That's an interesting one to bring back. It's like the Toyota Hilux, it's like that, that you drop it off of the rooftop. It's still going to function.
Great static line canopy, man, I had good glide, everything about it, good canopy.
And no one has recreated that type of durability in a new parachute. And I guess that's illustrating the point. Like it's all compromise here.
Yep.
Like that parachute was solid as a rock. And as we got into lighter stuff, now all of a sudden there's so many things else to worry about.
And in a lot of ways, it's good and bad, but The blackjack, the way it was built. Most of the people they'll say like the weight savings, that's why they like ultralight. But in general, you're saving like maybe a couple of pounds and where are you jumping at? If you lived in Europe and you're doing some serious hikes, heck yeah.
Yeah.
If I was doing some long hikes here, sure, but if I'm like, jumping the bridge or Camelback or anything local around here that's not missions, you don't really need that. Cause after two hikes, you're not going to notice it anyway. Yeah. Build the muscle up.
How about the differences in harness construction and I know you've talked to me about this before, the Dyneema blends versus the true not nylons. Yeah. True nylons. Yeah.
I'm that old school fan is like when we do pull tests on them, dude, nobody's ever going to argue the strength of Dyneema. That stuff is steel cables. It's insane. But it's just that it's a steel cable. You put it under tension and you pull doesn't really change. It sits there and it'll stretch a little, but it doesn't really stretch until it just explosively explodes in one area. Usually it's stitch lines and stuff, but the nylon, you throw a classic riser.
test and you'll get five, six inches out of a 21, 22 inch riser before it fails. And you'll literally be just jaw on the ground at how much stretch this is under thousands of pounds that, I'm not seeing as a jumper slider down. So I'm not a fan of it for slider down rigs because you're just transferring all that, right? extra
energy,
yeah, energy to your body, which slider down. We want to be on our toes. We want to be quick. We want to have reactions. And that to me slows me down a little bit. That stars and those, cuckoo birds for a second to try to make some kind of reaction time during that stage, I'm going to be much slower. That good old traditional nylon it's absorbing a lot. And I think for a long time, it was one of those things we took for granted. We didn't really know what it was doing as far as that goes.
Yeah. We're thinking that it was totally insignificant
and it's one of those things that it was changed likely for marketing cause it's cooler and it's lighter and all that stuff, but there was nothing wrong with the old stuff. It wasn't like it was breaking because we're using too much force or anything like that. That was never the case. It's just. Getting hard to get. It's got somewhat limited functionality. You're not going to get fancy new custom buckles for it and stuff like that. That'd be a little harder route to go down.
It's one of those things I wouldn't say we should let go of it yet. I'm not sold that the two inch webbing is awesome. Like I'd love a one inch and we don't necessarily have that. I think nylon is one of those things that's actually like super important for slider down base jumping. It's actually something we need to keep in mind.
We don't have a replacement for it. No. That's an interesting thing to, to mention. Even though we've updated so many times and different blends and Tech and all this stuff, we still have not come to something that is both lightweight and gets the advantage of strong as we go to that, lighter weight fabric, we are losing elasticity, and that's a strange compromise that, yeah, we didn't see coming. Yeah. And it's lighter up. Doesn't really matter. Doesn't really matter.
Yeah.
But
slider
down,
it does.
And I remember you also talking about the mixture of different components squirrel container, apex canopy. And I was jumping that set up. So like this one hits home for me, but can you tell me what your opinion was and why that was the thing?
Yep. So at the time, uh, when we bought, we touched on it earlier with Dacron, but when we buy Dacron, man, it's available. Every way you think you could want it like you just name a number and tell them and they'll make it for that In any color and size and shape, but also the finishes they'll stretch it They'll double stretch it. They'll heat set it.
They'll double heat set it they'll UV spray it all kind of crazy stuff and Across the board we have no standard Other than the side, like Dacron 900 or Dacron 600. But how we get that treated is up to the manufacturer and you'll get different benefits. Like with the kind of the standard, it's the unofficial standard, but the standard that I've seen during repairs comparing, it's like a single heat set and a single stretched Dacron.
You're going to have to measure that under tension on a line table and actually have even tension under weights. But if you get it double heat set and double stretched, You can pull them by hand. And so my line set speed just cut in half because I don't have to jig up these weights every time and unhook them and all this other stuff I can just pull and mark. So like it makes the cost come down which it can be helpful especially I think if you've got your, uh, the overhead that you do in SoCal.
Yeah. And But the flip side to that is basically what they've done by heat set and stretching it is we've got a rubber band that we've taken all the stretch out of. We've turned it into a more static line instead of dynamic. Not a great call for slider down canopies. I don't think where his argument for it is the performance goes up a lot higher. You're going to get better glide. All that is stuff. It's a little more aerodynamic, but it's not stretching.
And you're going to get that shock load every single opening. When you pull Dacron, same thing in the pull test scale, man, it'll almost double in size before it breaks. It's impressive stuff. And the combination of a. Double heat set, double stretch line with a dyneema harness. You've taken all of the shock out of your shock absorber. Like just for all of the absorption out of your shock absorber, you're just gonna hit the end of your steel cables and feel that.
And it's going to knock you silly, man. I remember that.
Yeah. I was jumping a flick to with a stream. And this was something that Jamie Flynn and I got, we got these matching streams because we started wing suiting as a team, but I was still using apex canopies and so that was my setup. And for wing suiting, no problem at all. Totally great. Until Jamie was like, Hey man, we got to do this Moab trip and get some pictures. And so we need to use these wings and these rigs for Moab. And I'm like, okay.
And the first handheld off of tombstone, I got absolutely. It's so rocked that I landed on the road. I was like, Oh my God. Okay. This is dizziness. No. We're just going to go to the road, baby. This is fine. And it wasn't until much later that I, I realized that it was a combination of those two things that was really like screwing me.
Yep. Yeah. The first time I noticed to even look at that, like I'd been jumping mojo and a blackjack over and over. I came out here and I borrowed a rig and I, it was in like a vertex in a fox, man. I took that same, two, three second delay, whack, whoa, man. I never had an opening that hard. You're like, why? And that's when I started like seeing these don't stretch. You're like, huh? Like it's got its trade offs.
Most people in base, especially if you go out here at the bridge and look, they're not taking three second delays. So it's irrelevant at that point. It's if you're not at one of those jumpers, it's not something to worry about, but if you are, and you are noticing you're getting wrecked, that's probably why you've got something in there. That's not doing what it should as far as stretch.
So people don't get that.
I hate the term slider up and slider down. They is as far as our equipment goes, they really do have two different criterias and we can't make hybrids and they blend and they do right. And I know that you can take your OSP slider up and they say it's fine. But why would you take the hardest pressurizing parachute slider down? Why do you think that's okay to take slider up? I don't care if they gave you a new slider for it or not. Like it's like golf, man.
You don't go to the putting range with your iron, like a driver.
If I can only afford one club though, and that's, I think most people are in that boat.
Yeah, man, when I had to go to Yosemite last minute and just super quick, like all I got is the OSP, man. Like I had to put a BOC on the rig real quick, but I was terrified. So yeah, I took the two outer vents, four of them and I just sewed them down. No shit. Just closed them.
Fuck it. That's probably something that most people would not be comfortable doing. But yeah, that's an interesting thing to note because I think a lot of people are trying to thread the needle, so to speak, between all the things that they want to get into and find that perfect piece of equipment for them. But sadly,
yeah, sadly unlike the Lord of the Rings, man, there's no one ring to rule them all.
That just doesn't exist.
What,
And
some of them are really good at most. Yeah.
So what do you think as far as all round considerations, what are the considerations that you like would. Recommend to somebody looking for their first piece of equipment.
The core I'd say like right now, my core parts is the first thing I want to say is I want people to be more aware. It's I hear it all the time. The OSP one is still in production. It's just not marketed. And I'll say this. I think it was a mistake for them to name the OSP2 because when you compare the canopies and the wings and you chart those line trims and you look at it diagram next to each other they're very different parachutes.
And in fact, if you had like that scale of zero to 10, you've got an OSP1 at zero and you've got the vision at 10, the OSP2. Sits at a seven, seven and a half on that scale.
Yeah.
It favors the other. It's I think it's a super good canopy. I just hate the name. Like they should have named it something else and had it in the branch of the three. That said, I'm a big fan of Hey Duke two. What was that? Hey, Duke one was a little fast. It was a little sporty. So he did two OSP one and two, even though they're different canopies, they're both really nice.
And at the moment that's my core thing, but I'm also factoring in like longevity of your equipment the actual like quality that it's made with. And I do keep in mind like resale value. So I don't consider smaller manufacturers right off the bat, even being one because dude, who knows if we're going to be here next week. And so like you buy your rig today and you need a line set for it six months from now. I might be here to provide it or not, or vice like whoever that is.
That's my only consideration with new manufacturers is. They haven't been there long enough to prove that they're going to keep being there. And so like more important for skydiving stuff, it's like right now, vortexes, you can't get free bags and pilot shoots for them anymore. Yeah. So you burned that rig, huh? You better search real hard for that cutaway, man.
The way I look at it when I walk into a shop like yours. I'm not buying a piece of equipment. I'm buying a piece of art, and yeah there are several small manufacturers that have, just done things for a couple of seasons and they disappear or they go up and down, in their waves, but, at the end of the day, I'm not looking to have customer service for this thing for the rest of my life. Like I walk into your shop, I want something that's unique.
Yep.
Can you talk to us about being that? Smaller manufacturer, what that lifestyle is like, what, and what you're currently making, what are you passionate about right now?
So the current lifestyle is hectic is being one person I'm starting to learn I'm trying to get things a little easier, set up the websites and get like automated phone numbers and stuff like that, but trying to shuffle and like juggle that, which is, cause I'm not a professional at any of that. So that's more than a full time job for me to try to figure out.
Yeah.
Then I got all the repairs from people that are coming in because over the years I've collected quite the reputation for repair work, especially being in twin when people are. Oh, they say money don't grow on trees, but man, in that canyon down there below that bridge, it damn sure does. Those students just burning in every day. That's stuff I don't actually want most of the time.
But it's fun because I get to pick and choose some of the Like ultra custom stuff that I'll do is it's not something that you can pay for. It's me having fun. And that's the only way you're going to get it is like just me nerding out. Like in a way it's my art. So you are in that you're buying my piece of art. So as far as. The creativity side, I like the freedom of that. It's I don't like the boring, mundane, one thing after the other.
Yeah. Manufacturing.
Yeah. So that's what I'm struggling with is that's part of the manufacturing is becoming a full time job and I'm dropping the balls on so many other things because just trying to do too much as one person. But it is what it is. So when you
get the time, what are some of the artistic projects that you're putting your freedom into?
Oh, dude, right now, man I've got the pilot shoots that I'm printing on now,
those custom ones, but they're, yeah, man, and
I've been like. Jaw on the ground, man. When I first started that, it was just like just pressing one in a little thing and playing with it, but moving in now, I've tried to find the limitations. Like how detailed can I get? And as long as the artwork will support it, it's you've got to have 4k, images for a 42 or a 48 inch PC, but man, like newspaper print. Like ants. You can get,
Could you do my face with a thumbs up?
Dude, I can see your pores, On the ZP. It's crazy,
man. Is it hard to line those panels up when you get the full pictures? Yes. That seems like a lot of the
work. For now, I'm doing it a very, inefficient method. It's a flatbed heat press transfer. So like I do have to line those up. But in an ideal world, if everything went awesome and things are scaling and years down the road, that could be done much more efficiently with a different type of heat press. But basically at that point I need to be in like a warehouse with three phase power and, much more serious than my apartment shop.
This is pretty. We like a fair amount of space here. And what I also like about it is that it's a true loft. Yes. We're up off the ground.
It's actually above ground.
I think there's a little more magic that happens when you're above ground a little bit.
It's the first time I, my loft is actually been off the ground. In Paris, we were like two feet off. Two feet. Yeah. Raised trailer. Yeah.
Can you talk to us about the containers that you're starting to build?
Yeah. Uh, going back to what we're saying about the one in a million thing. And are we eliminating that or are we causing a new one? But one of the things that I've not won the goal sitting down at this container, and this has been, I had the first vision of it eight years ago. And I've been trying to put one together since, and there was limitations of manufacturing. Go through the machine folder or that doesn't work. It's you just hit walls.
I finally got one out this last winter and it worked awesome. I'm getting ready to spool them up, hopefully for August, September. The idea was to go into it and design a very specific base jumping container that takes into consideration a lot of the problems that exist that we've never actually dealt with. And the times that we've tried to deal with them. They flop for marketing reasons. And one off the bat is like the two pin rig, the two pin rig.
It's like a, it exists as a convenience to history, like it just happened. It wasn't a thing that like two is better. That's never been like the argument. Two is not better. Two just complicates things. No, it
was just easier to manufacture. Easier to
manufacture, easier to close, easier to make it look decent. But like the prism was an awesome rig, but it was a one pin and people freaked out like the pin tensions high. Bill Booth would have freaked out on a man like pen tension too high. It's a curved pen. Like it's going to come out. That's an
interesting one to mention real quick. And I highly suggest that anyone that has the question about pin tension, try this test just close the rig as hard as you possibly can. And then take a little fishing weight and see how much force it is to pull the pin out. If anyone out there can do. More than ten pounds.
Eight. I'll say eight. If you can hit more than eight and a half, game on, man. I'll be shocked.
I've got a special prize for you. You can't use tools to close it. You can't like, you can't use a pry bar or wrench to close it. And no ratchets. You gotta have, it's gotta be done by hand. But if you can shorten up the closing loop and close it To the point where a fishing scale shows more than eight pounds pulling the pin. Then I got something for you.
Yep. I say, man, like in his, if you can close the rig, it's fine. Yeah, it's fine.
So back to your container what what else are you working on with it?
So I've wanted to try to To attack that bridal routings and pin locks and rotations and things like that, that are locking containers closed in the last, decade or two. One of the things that's I'm pretty excited about, I've still got a lot of testing to do in house but it's a three way hybrid, meaning you can close it with the top loop in the top flat. You can close it with that top loop in that through loop position, or it's going to have a new loop that's going to, it's.
I don't know what I'll call it, the safety loop. I don't know. But it's got a new loop that's going to come in that's along the lines of the Jesus loop. But it's a self contained system that you wouldn't have to do any additional work. That if one pin on the system hangs up, that's okay, as long as the other pin pops, which I've got a way for that to happen. And essentially it's a way that As long as you don't wrap yourself in the bridle, it should open the container.
Things I'm not sure yet, how often you're going to replace closing loops and stuff like that. Still waiting? Cause it could be failed right there. If you're going to lose a closing loop every single jump, that's out of the question, man. People don't like that. We got people still tying tailgate rubber bands on cause they don't want to lose them. Tenth of a penny, something like that. Yeah. So closing loops, definitely out of the question.
I'm one of those people. I pitch my my bands that I keep them on there.
Dude, I made them. I've got the, I call it tailgate too, but like I'll offset the tails by a quarter of an inch. So my rubber band always stays and it's just so I could throw it away. It's I never reuse it.
At least you're not littering. Never.
Yeah. That's the reason I wanted it. I didn't want the buttholes to be together, cause they flare, so you just separate those. And then as a by product, you keep your rubber band.
So you're just going to have to take my word for this because you're listening, but looking at his containers, they are beautiful.
And it is a, I've gone to the. The extremes of shaping. So like I've taken advantage of the human body, the back and the way that you are shaped as a human. So it's got a lot of lumbar pressure, but it's got aerialists in mind is keeping that BOC tight against their back and never shifts around. And it's a real smooth over the shoulders, like no more gaps going through there. It is, there ain't a wrinkle on it.
It looks terrible when it's laying on the ground 2D, but like you got to put some 3D into it. It looks nice. But yeah, it's where I'll say like the second bird gets or the first one gets eaten. I don't necessarily think that I've got the advantage, but where I do have a wide open advantage is I've been working on these people's products, everyone's and people that are no longer in manufacturing. Old stuff, Neo's and stuff that's garage stuff for 16 years now.
I've seen what I think wears out quick or doesn't wear out quick. And if you just take those like one, two, three, four, 5%, just like we've been doing in pointers, manuals, same thing, and you put it together with your own piece, obviously I am biased and since I think it's something cool, do I think it's like this next new thing? Maybe I hope so. But do I think it's a move that might spark something else in innovation? Yes. I'm excited for someone else to play with it. That's what I want.
I want feedback that's not my own at this point. And whether that's good or bad, it's like I'm invested a lot at this point where it's going to be devastating if you show me the problem. But when it's ready, My idea is to go out to the bridge with a stack of cash and say if you can lock this in a traditional method, that's not wrapping the bridle around. If you can do something legit that has done it before. Man, you've taught me something. I'm going back to the drawing board. Here's the cash.
Thank you. Like worth every penny.
Let's get into what we call you here. Cause we've been talking about your products. I want to make sure that people are able to find you.
What
are they called?
That is going to be called the journey.
And your company?
Magic Backpacks.
Nice. And centered here in Twin Falls for the foreseeable future?
Yep. I'd like to stay here. The reason that really pulled me to Twin wasn't just the jumping activity here. It's the long history. in sewing generationally here. And it's not just parachutes, it's all clothes and stuff like that. But seamstresses and seamstress, like working on clothes is way harder than parachute stuff.
We're working with squares that have like blocks and straight lines and grids and folders, and it's super easy, man, the shape around your shoulder here that connects the sleeve. I don't know what that's called, but that's skill. I can't do that. I think when I start to try to scale, this is a good hub for me to find, talented sewers that are hopefully to start off, in their later, later years. of working that I can have, more direct control over the training and the job creation.
I want to scale it and keep it local to employ people here. It's I not just twin for the jumping. I actually like. Twin Falls. I like the city. I like the stuff that they do downtown. They're always active with trying to do stuff for the community. We keep our parks in really good shape. I always wanted to be an active member of that society. I also want to be a taxpayer.
So when we have problems at the bridge, we can actually show up and bitch about them instead of just being people that are scraping the cream off the top of the cup.
Tough to, it's got its advantages and freedom to be an outsider of society, but it also has its disadvantages and that nobody cares to listen to you. So I know that you're not only looking for, this expansion and employees, but you're also looking for students you started teaching rigging because as we've noticed, there is a very big need for it. Yes.
And That's where I'm trying to scale the business is to get me away from the sewing machine to do what I want to do, which is educate people, train people, because at this point, when I try to find somebody to help take over some of these repair work, I know that there's tons of people. skilled enough to do it, but they're either not willing to do it because it's base or they don't have the facility or the machines or any of that capacity.
If I can offer something to some people, like there's a local guy I'm training that uses the shop to do repairs that helps me out. It's actually benefits me to not worry about that patch. And if I had, Could build an army that is the entire base community to take care of their own stuff. That's my mission is like to try to share any of that comfort that I got from it, to try to give it to someone else and help them along their journey is super rewarding.
But at the same time, knowing I'm giving out information that was very difficult to gather. Really important to me. It's like you're saying with some of those old guys, they're wonderful dudes If you can crack through the outside shell, like they're rough, man. They tough sometimes
come from a different era. They
do. Yeah, man. And that's where I'll say is my best advice is stick to talking about parachutes. It's if we're going to talk about politics with some of my ex girlfriends, 30 years older than me. Odds are we're not going to get along.
You're unlikely to see somebody that was, rigging parachutes for WW2 be sensitive about something that is, consideration of the modern era, but the only ones that are going to have that one unique piece of information. So let's just
not talk about, yeah, let's just not talk about any of the other stuff, because, it won't end well, and that's not what you're there for. Yeah,
that is a, it's a common thing across the board in parachuting where we have to set some of the personal differences that we have aside, because the important part is to get that information. There's so
many of us and I have so many different. So it would be tough.
And we're going to fill in some gaps on this later, but right now, how do people find you
right now? I've had to take the website off cause it was like in between and it was doing some weird stuff, but right now the best way to get me is either email. If it's non important, like if it's non emergent that's just Jacob at magicbackpacks. com. The other, if it's something, if you're in town and you're looking for something quick, or you need something turned around quick in the mail the other way is my phone. And that's going to be 208 308 5337.
And we'll post these things. So don't worry about it. Keep in
mind also guys Be patient with me, because dude, I get blown up, and I will get back to you as soon as I can, but if it's a little time and you haven't heard back, don't feel bad to just shoot me another message, man, because riggers, we forget stuff like that, so it's okay to hound us, just not too much.
I think that you're one of the jewels of our community at the moment. You're an incredible resource on so many levels. And this conversation has given me a new mission, which is to help you with the admin so that you can get into the community.
I have hired someone for that.
While we're wrapping this up, I've asked you a ton of questions about rigging and your personal personal projects and all of this. Is there anything that I've left out? That you want to add on to the back end of this piece before we call it a day.
Yeah.
The invitation's always there here at the shop. Obviously I like appointments, like just heads up. I don't like surprises, but if you're ever in town and you just have a simple question or you want something looked at your gear or anything like that, the door is always open and I'm always happy to help. With any kind of question that you've got, either jumping related or gear related or any of that stuff it's actually stuff I love nerding out about and I could talk about parachutes.
Yeah, you know what? I totally forgot about this. We've been talking about parachutes much during this interview that I didn't even ask you why you got into base jumping in the first place. And that's something that we do ask everybody. So I feel like we need to at least touch on this one. Yeah, man. Why did you get into base jumping?
Heck yeah. I was just a packer at the drop zone like 16, 17. And There was a fun jumper out there. His name was Pete certain. He's no longer with us, but epic human. And he would paid me to pack for him. It's a year in, he told me he's going to go jump off this antenna South of town. And I just looked at him like this guy's full of shit. Like he's insane. I had no idea about base jumping. I'd never seen a YouTube video about it. Like I'd been at the drop zone for a couple of years.
Had no. Even knew that was a thing. And this guy's yeah, you want to come watch? You're like, yeah. So I rolled out there with him and this dude pops the trunk to his Corvette, his old Corvette and had seven rigs in the back and huh. And this dude, there's 340 foot antenna and they call him Tarzan. Cause he could do that in 10, in seven minutes. And he'd just be up there and jump. And he lapped this thing like five times. And then we'd like. We're done.
I was just sitting below this thing with my jaw on the ground. This is insane. This has got to be the coolest thing I've ever seen. And fast forward, I just followed him around for the last, for that next couple of years. Anytime I was at the drop zone on the weekend, Thursday through or Friday through Sunday, I just go with him, be his ground crew, figure out how he's getting into this stuff. And I was just blown away with it.
And had planned to go base jumping here and do like an official first jump thing and do a course thing. But he went to Europe and then he came out here for a week and he ended up passing away doing gainers and he got a wrap on his GoPro and it didn't clear. And Ever since then it I was in that hole of I have enough information to fuck myself up, but not enough to feel good about this, So that's when I just started I've got to learn.
And so I went to a bridge day, three day course, and like, like I learned something, but not a lot. I was like, I knew a lot of that from following him around. It was pretty basic. I was like, I need more than that. And so I started beating the bush and I started coming out here. I did some courses with Tom. I've done a lot of private coaching with random people because I've always thought some people had gold. Everybody's got something good to teach. And I want to try to get all of it.
inform my own opinion. It's like a pack job in skydiving. My pack jobs of a blend of 12 people showing different things. You all put them together. Same kind of concept. It's like just get as much info as you can and find out what's right yourself. And the info you're getting is just pointing you in the right direction of where to look next. And that kind of just spawned a whole thing of because I like the rigging so much, I really like the single parachute component.
It's really responsibility is all on your shoulders. That's what I like about it. It's rigging to its core raw. And that's what I enjoy about bass is And it's gone even further. Like now I don't jump anything. That's not my own containers because I don't get the same satisfaction out of it. And I do knowing that I'm actually the one responsible for every part of this. And that's what draws me to base is like actually embracing that self responsibility of. Fucking your own self up.
That's a powerful statement. That's a powerful feeling, the empowerment. I can feel it from here. And with that we're going to call it a day on this interview. We could talk to you forever and I hope that you come back. But in the meantime, we'll post all the stuff where people can find you. And I really appreciate you taking the time.
Dude. Thank you.
We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you have any thoughts about what you've just heard, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. Big shout out to Mark Stockwell, our sound engineer and co producer. We love you. And we couldn't do this without you. If you'd like to learn more about this podcast, visit our website, exitpointpodcast. com. And if you're jumping out there, remember that when it comes to equipment, we're all test jumpers, no matter where we got our gear or how new it
is.