We made BaseBeta to provide jumpers with flight analysis tools and structured information about exit points.

At the time of founding, it was easy to be shown to dangerous exits such as Brevent and High Ultimate, while beta on less technical exits with longer approaches was harder to come by.

Common terminology for how to describe a jump was inconsistent. Many referred to ‘big’ rock drops and ‘short’ rock drops. The definition of what constituted a 6 second rock drop varied from one jumper to another. Some even balked at those interested in using lasers or GPS devices to aid in charting performance. The final impetus for starting BaseBeta came from watching video of two friends nearly miss hitting power lines at Grand Chavalard.

The website quietly launched at the end of summer 2015 and slowly accrued beta from a team of international contributors. Today the database has over 500 jumps across over 30 countries. Over 100 of the jumps adhere to an editorial standard for describing long ascents and offer granular laser data for the first 500 horizontal meters of terminal jumps.

In 2017, the first android and iOS apps were launched allowing users to have offline access to the entire database. And in late 2017, BaseBeta launched its first start analysis tools which allow users to keep track of profiles for their worst, best, and average start profiles by suit, and to compare how those profiles are effected by sunlight, wind speed, wind direction, and time of day.

BaseBeta owes a great debt to the French Topo being made open to all; the Spanish Base Association for allowing its topo to be compiled into the database; and Tim Howell for allowing the British Base Book to be compiled into the database.