Question about Cypress

[davelepka 4]

OK, I'll repeat myself, be ready to pull all of your own handles. Keep yourself out of situations where you are unable to pull your handles. An AAD is an electrical device that can and will malfunction or not function at all. So is your rig for that matter.

You are responsible for yourself once you leave the plane. An AAD is a useful device, but it's usage is limited to the last possible option. Giving it more authority for your skydive is a mistake. The only time an AAD should be activated is in the case that the jumper is incompacitated in some way. Period.

If you are awake and mobile, be prepared to handle yourself or go home.

Any accidetnal death is sad, regardless of the circumstance. Even a drunk driver killing himself in a car crash is sad, and I feel for friends and relatives who have to suffer through that.

I am, however, also a realist. If you want to jump out of airplanes, there are risks that you are taking and responsibilities that you are assuming. Attempting to pass those responsibilities off to a machine is not the answer. You will encounter situations that will take you to within 99.9% of what the AAD cannot handle, and if you cannot manage them yourself, you need to stop jumping. Trust me on this one.

For the record, I'm not suggesting that you are not cut out for jumping. Your new, and full of ideas and enthusiasm, like we all were. If you still think this is a good idea in 100 jumps, after you have seen how and why things are the way they are, then maybe you shouldn't be jumping.

[kelpdiver 2]

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Has anyone read the latest fatality report on dz.com? Despite my lack of experience in this sport, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with the posters who thought my idea of a combination cutaway and reserve deploy AAD is a bad one.

If you mean the accident in France, it doesn't seem to have the sort of detail that would suggest a solution.

You need to consider all the negatives of a change first. If it saves one life, but kills 20 others due to false positives, it's not an improvement. And the more complex you make it, the greater a chance of a misfire because the jumper didn't recognize the potential. Adrian Nichols's death came out of the simpler model and caused many swoopers to make a change, and this is on the very simple current model.

[jurgencamps 0]

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Has anyone read the latest fatality report on dz.com? Despite my lack of experience in this sport, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with the posters who thought my idea of a combination cutaway and reserve deploy AAD is a bad one.

I have read nothing that says that the AAD (vigil) has fired. So if the AAD has not fired, how can your design cutaway the main and change the outcome of this tragic accident?

Jurgen

[billvon 2,991]

>I understand that this concept was previously abandoned by the
>designer of the Cypres because of technical difficulties.

No technical difficulties. It could be done now, today, with barely a modification to the cypres.

>But I don't think that this suggests there is something wrong with the
>idea itself.

I do. The most important thing an AAD can do is not hurt you or kill you. Its secondary function is to save you when you can't/won't save yourself. Thus giving it additional capability to kill you is a bad thing - even if it will not do so 99.99% of the time.

>Maybe an improved AAD, that could cutaway and fire the reserve,
> and respond not only to altitude and speed but also to G-forces say,
> would have saved this person's life.

Perhaps. But if the cost was that it killed someone else by misfiring at 50 feet (which current AAD's do with some regularity) then it would not be worth it. One of the reasons that AAD's have been as accepted as they are is that a misfire generally does not result in your death.

I have a similar discussion with whuffos about tershes sometimes. "Why don't you carry a third parachute in case the first two fail?" "Because the odds of it causing a problem outweigh the additional safety it provides." They have trouble grasping that, because they can't imagine a fate worse than having both parachutes fail - and they don't understand the odds of both parachutes failing to begin with.

[startingout 0]

Hi,

Well, like I said before, I am new to this sport, so I will have to defer to the opinions of the more experienced skydivers here. I didn't know about AAD misfires, for example.

Just for the record, though, I do want to emphasize that I *am* prepared to work all of my handles myself :-). Even with the current Cypres, knowing from 12,000' above the ground that it is only supposed to fire at 750' does not mitigate the instinctive fear that much :-). So it didn't affect my practice of the dive flow.

Thanks for the input!

[Guest 1010]

>by misfiring at 50 feet (which current AAD's do with some regularity)

Bill, could you expound on this statement?

You can have it good, fast, or cheap: pick two.

[tbrown 26]

I didn't know about AAD misfires, for example.

[startingout 0]

Yeah, like I said before, on my AFF 1 jump, knowing that the Cypres was there didn't alleviate my fear that much. From 12,000', knowing that it's only supposed to fire at 750' is not that comforting.

[startingout 0]

Just to add one more point to my last post: Okay, so I accept the criticism of the "cutaway" Cypres. It would create more problems than solve. I do want to stress, however, that I never intended to suggest that such a device should serve as a replacement for pulling one's own handles. It was simply meant as an improvement to the existing Cypres, but with the same basic purpose: To save a jumper's life at the last possible moment, if he/she either won't or can't save themselves.

[riggerrob 643]

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>by misfiring at 50 feet (which current AAD's do with some regularity)

Bill, could you expound on this statement?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The top one percent of pond swooping competitors go fast enough to scare Cypres at 50 feet.

[riggerrob 643]

It is amusing how the POPULAR definition of "mis-fire" has changed since the introduction of electronic AADs.

Back in the old days, students complained about FXCs "mis-firing at 3,000 while I was reaching for my ripcord!"
In the first place, you were well below 3,000'.
In the second place, how is a mechanical gadget supposed to know where your hand is?
In the third place, what is a junior jumper still doing in freefall below 3,000?

Nowadays, jumpers complain that "My Cypres mis-fired at a thousand feet while my main snivelled!"
Why is ANY jumper still going fast at one thousand feet?

I just find it amusing how definitions change over the years.

[mjosparky 4]

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>by misfiring at 50 feet (which current AAD's do with some regularity)

Bill, could you expound on this statement?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The top one percent of pond swooping competitors go fast enough to scare Cypres at 50 feet.

I would think if they were going fast enough to scare the Cypres at 50 they are already dead. The Cypres reads vertical not horizontal and stops reading at 130 feet.

Sparky

My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals

[billvon 2,991]

>The top one percent of pond swooping competitors go fast enough
>to scare Cypres at 50 feet.

Well, that's closer to 150 feet. I was thinking more along the lines of misfires that occur due to EMI. I saw one such fire at World Team two years ago, when a jumper landed near an airport radar. It would be bad if the cypres had cut away the jumper's canopy at that point.