Examining rumor of Cypres failure - Cochstedt 2008 dummy test

[pchapman 279]

There was a description of a possible Cypres failure in the Incidents forum, in the "Double Vigil 2 Fire" thread that got locked after there was no longer any real info about the event coming out.

It sort of came up in the context of the the idea that is sometimes expressed that, "Oh sure, everyone goes on about Vigil problems, but what about those Cypres problems that are kept hidden?" I'm not sure why Cypres problems would be hidden any more than others, except perhaps that their happy customer base is perhaps bigger.

In any case, the described incident seemed to be odd, with no public explanation. In the light of fairness, it is probably best to get the incident talked about, good or bad.

In the first "In Reply To" section below, the "Quote" section is from SSK, while the rest, describing the Cypres incident is from a very experienced jumper. He was the first to bring the incident to light, at least as far as I recall on DZ.com.

I figured it was worth asking more about the incident, so asked Cliff at SSK. His reply is also below. It suggests there was no "failure of a Cypres to fire". Still, there is that element of the old Airtec "just trust us" way of doing things.


I can't tell what the truth is either way. But at least a puzzling incident was brought to light and a comment from the manufacturer received.

(Technically, Cypres is an acronym, so it is CYPRES, but that's a pain to type. A clever marketing scheme in a way, to ensure that one's company product name always stands out. Not like Vigils in their small letters, e.g., "Get the Vigil 16: Because Vigil 17 will be great!" Ok, that was a cheap shot.)


So after all that pre-amble, here's the actual information discussed:

In the Vigil thread a week or two back:

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Concerning the specific situation you are referring to, a number of years ago to help prove the point to skydivers, we placed a CYPRES in the back (near the door) of Mike Mullin's King Air for a the day at the World Freefall Convention in Quincy. Usually the door was opened at altitude, but occasionally cracked at 1000 ft. (meaning: the test demonstrated door opening before and after arming altitude), and on the way down the door was always open - as everyone knows, Mike gets back to the ground fast (meaning lots of turbulence with the open door & a fast rate of descent) - as expected, CYPRES did not activate.

Let me throw this out there for people to chew on that shows the other side of this same scenario. 2008, Boogie in Cochstedt, Germany. As part of a ongoing test to determine what would happen if a static line jumper was towed by the aircraft and had a Cypres in his system, how would the resulting rapidly changing airflow affect the unit as the jumper moved into and out of the airflow around the aircraft. A rig was placed on a metal test drop dummy and attached to the anchor line cable so that it would simulate a towed jumper. The test dummy was pushed out and it began to bounce around into and out of the airflow but what wasn't considered was that the test dummy would start banging off the aircraft. So after a very quick realization that the test dummy was going to cause damage to the aircraft, they cut the test dummy away and it went into freefall.......all the way to the ground, ZERO parachutes out.

So, not to beat the dead horse more than it needs, no system out there is impervious to the complicated scenarios that real world skydiving situations can and do create in some instances, none of them are perfect.

Cliff at SSK wrote in reply to being asked about it:

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just to clarify a couple items, 1) the Cochstedt 2008 test was not
actually a "mis-fire", and 2) it was Airtec personnel there

this was a R&D test involving 1) gathering Military jumper in tow data
off the ramp of the Russian Aircraft, and 2) evaluating / testing some
new technology involving a special design for a new military
application

because of the proprietary nature of the R&D program, we can not go
into any more specifics other than to say that there is no relevance
to any existing Civilian or Military CYPRES on the market

[riggerpaul 1]

Thanks for contacting SSK on this.

Do you think you could get Cliff to tell us if the unit was expected to fire, and if it did or did not?

The report from the experienced jumper essentially says it was expected to fire, and did not.

I would hope that Cliff would be able to confirm or deny that particular point.

[pchapman 279]

Even if Airtec is correct in saying, 'just trust us, there wasn't a Cypres failure', they could have been more clear about the circumstances. With the limited info we have, one wonders about dropping a heavy test dummy from altitude into farmers' fields. Either that is quite unsafe and shows poor planning, or the circumstances were quite different.

[billvon 2,991]

>With the limited info we have, one wonders about dropping a heavy
>test dummy from altitude into farmers' fields. Either that is quite unsafe
>and shows poor planning, or the circumstances were quite different.

We dropped a very heavy dummy into local pastures during some rig testing down here in San Diego years ago. Why is that unsafe?

[sundevil777 102]

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>With the limited info we have, one wonders about dropping a heavy
>test dummy from altitude into farmers' fields. Either that is quite unsafe
>and shows poor planning, or the circumstances were quite different.

We dropped a very heavy dummy into local pastures during some rig testing down here in San Diego years ago. Why is that unsafe?

Perhaps he was figuring that it was done from 13k, not realizing that it is usually done from quite low.

People are sick and tired of being told that ordinary and decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I’m certainly not, and I’m sick and tired of being told that I am

[pchapman 279]

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We dropped a very heavy dummy into local pastures during some rig testing down here in San Diego years ago. Why is that unsafe?

This is the old dz.com problem where any general statement is misapplied to a specific case, while any specific statement is misapplied to the general case.

Anyway, I'm obviously talking about the perceived situation where something heavy and fast is dropped accidentally over the normal countryside.

It would clearly be interesting to know whether Airtec had taken precautions -- otherwise it would be dangerous.

Presumably your dummy drop was preplanned with appropriate safeguards -- rather than just hoping a 254 lb dummy going at 200+ mph didn't hit a farmer's house or some new San Diego subdivision.

[timmyfitz 0]

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We dropped a very heavy dummy into local pastures during some rig testing down here in San Diego years ago. Why is that unsafe?

This is the old dz.com problem where any general statement is misapplied to a specific case, while any specific statement is misapplied to the general case.

Anyway, I'm obviously talking about the perceived situation where something heavy and fast is dropped accidentally over the normal countryside.

It would clearly be interesting to know whether Airtec had taken precautions -- otherwise it would be dangerous.

Presumably your dummy drop was preplanned with appropriate safeguards -- rather than just hoping a 254 lb dummy going at 200+ mph didn't hit a farmer's house or some new San Diego subdivision.

Why would you presume his was safe and preplanned but not give the same courtesy to Airtec?

[pchapman 279]

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Why would you presume his was safe and preplanned but not give the same courtesy to Airtec?

Why presume his was safe? Um, because that's what he implied.

Courtesy to Airtec? Um, yes I am giving them the courtesy. I don't know the circumstances either way. The originally posted info about the incident was very limited, so I asked what the real situation was.

Remember that the initial report basically said they were flying at a boogie, they did this towed dummy thing, had a problem, very quickly cut the dummy away, and it impacted without any AAD to open a canopy.

Based on that information alone, it makes it sound pretty dangerous. That's true whether or not I think that was a true, false, incomplete, or misleading description of the actual event.

So maybe there's a lot more to the story.

[hallux 0]

better an AAD not fire and kill someone that put themself in that position, than have an AAD fire in a airplane with the door open and take down the whole load. Bottom line.....If a AAD fails to fire then it simply failed to save you from a already fatal situation. If a AAD fires unexpectantly and crashes a plane..then it KILLED YOU.....big difference than failing to save you.

VIGIL=bad choice

[zxcvb 0]

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testing some
new technology

I think that is key information. Not all tests go as planned in R&D. But it looks like Airtec does extensive testing, unlike some of their competition.

[Andy9o8 2]

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testing some
new technology

I think that is key information. Not all tests go as planned in R&D. But it looks like Airtec does extensive testing, unlike some of their competition.

I'm as concerned about Vigils popping in the plane as the next guy, but why do you presume that "some of Airtec's competitors" do not do extensive testing?

[timmyfitz 0]

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Why would you presume his was safe and preplanned but not give the same courtesy to Airtec?

Why presume his was safe? Um, because that's what he implied.

Where did he imply that?

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We dropped a very heavy dummy into local pastures during some rig testing down here in San Diego years ago. Why is that unsafe?

I know plenty of "pastures" with houses all around them.

[billvon 2,991]

>I know plenty of "pastures" with houses all around them.

Sounds like that would be a bad place to do you rig testing, then.