How the Internet affected kiteboarding

Re:How the Internet affected kiteboarding by Retric on Wednesday September 11, 2013 @12:47PM (#6368272)

Unfortunately, I think with the more dangerous sports this progress is associated with a lot of people pushing way beyond there skill level. Skydiving is a fairly dangerious sport, but base jumping + wing suit + near terrain following is practically suicidal. It looks awesome on YouTube, but they don't give any indication of wind which is absolutely critical etc etc.

Edit: youtube.com/watch?v=PPmWOA9cVM4&feature=plpp

PS: Check out birdmen the original dream of flight on netflix and take note of how many times they mention dead people.

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Re:How the Internet affected kiteboarding by base698 on Wednesday September 11, 2013 @03:46PM (#6369516)

Yep, out of 17 BASE accidents this year 15 were in a wing suit. I didn't do a wingsuit BASE jump until I had over 200 BASE jumps and 1400 skydives. Now every new skydiver rushes to do it after a single year of experience, and the numbers show what a great idea that is.

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Re:How the Internet affected kiteboarding by base1018 on Wednesday September 11, 2013 @08:09PM (#6371088)

Didn't think I'd run into a BASE jumper on Hacker News. Certainly wouldn't have thought he or she would have a BASE number as low as yours...

I don't jump anymore, but I was active from 2003 to 2007ish. Curious if we've met elsewhere, online or irl... drop me an email if we did.

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