Let's talk about 'no pulls'

[timmyfitz 0]

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Perhaps it still might be a good idea for newer jumpers to stick with the student versions for a while, I would rather see a very few 2 outs.

The student CYPRES cuts the reserve closing loop at the same altitude as the expert CYPRES.

The student version has an additional feature that will cut the reserve closing loop at about 1000 feet if you have a partial malfunction (speed between 29 to 78 mph). Read: not in freefall.

If anyone is considering using a student CYPRES because it would cut the reserve closing loop at a higher altitude while still at freefall speeds (above 78mph) needs to read the manual.

[Amazon 7]

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Perhaps it still might be a good idea for newer jumpers to stick with the student versions for a while, I would rather see a very few 2 outs.

The student CYPRES cuts the reserve closing loop at the same altitude as the expert CYPRES.

The student version has an additional feature that will cut the reserve closing loop at about 1000 feet if you have a partial malfunction (speed between 29 to 78 mph). Read: not in freefall.

If anyone is considering using a student CYPRES because it would cut the reserve closing loop at a higher altitude while still at freefall speeds (above 78mph) needs to read the manual.

I was replying to this post the one from the guy with 11 jumps

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Re: [cbrown1311] Let's talk about 'no pulls' [In reply to] Quote | Reply

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It just seems to me like there are many fewer saves from AAD's and many more malfunctions then you would expect from any other piece of electronic equipment. Also, you guys talk about the things that may effect them, such as body position and imperfect air pressure readings, but I ask why have those things not been accounted for such that the device fires at an altitude that, even with those errors, still fires high enough for a reserve deployment? I don't know about you guys but I would rather have an AAD fire 500 feet higher if it means that it will correctly deploy a reserve 90 percent of the time than 500 feet lower and deploy 50 percent of the time

And I still do not want someone with 11 jumps futzing with the altitude offset and the need to turn off the Cypres and do it over again right on EVERY JUMP

[timmyfitz 0]

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Perhaps it still might be a good idea for newer jumpers to stick with the student versions for a while, I would rather see a very few 2 outs.

The student CYPRES cuts the reserve closing loop at the same altitude as the expert CYPRES.

The student version has an additional feature that will cut the reserve closing loop at about 1000 feet if you have a partial malfunction (speed between 29 to 78 mph). Read: not in freefall.

If anyone is considering using a student CYPRES because it would cut the reserve closing loop at a higher altitude while still at freefall speeds (above 78mph) needs to read the manual.

I was replying to this post the one from the guy with 11 jumps

Post #25

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If you feel the need to have one go off higher, you can get the STUDENT MODEL instead of the EXPERT MODEL. Please talk with your instructors and S & TA about this.

[Amazon 7]

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Perhaps it still might be a good idea for newer jumpers to stick with the student versions for a while, I would rather see a very few 2 outs.

The student CYPRES cuts the reserve closing loop at the same altitude as the expert CYPRES.

The student version has an additional feature that will cut the reserve closing loop at about 1000 feet if you have a partial malfunction (speed between 29 to 78 mph). Read: not in freefall.

If anyone is considering using a student CYPRES because it would cut the reserve closing loop at a higher altitude while still at freefall speeds (above 78mph) needs to read the manual.

I was replying to this post the one from the guy with 11 jumps

Post #25

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If you feel the need to have one go off higher, you can get the STUDENT MODEL instead of the EXPERT MODEL. Please talk with your instructors and S & TA about this.

Yup... It goes off higher Thank you for making my point

[riggerpaul 1]

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Yup... It goes off higher Thank you for making my point

Not if the student is still in freefall.

It will only trigger at the 1000 foot altitude if the student is going slower than freefall speed.

From the CYPRES2 manual (I added the underline):

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It activates the release unit when it detects a rate of descent higher than 29 mph (13 meters per second). The activation altitude is split. In the case of rate of descent being approx. that of free fall, the opening altitude is at approx. 750 feet (the same as with Expert CYPRES). However, should the rate of descent be lower than that of freefall but still above the limit of 29 mph (e.g. with partially opened canopy, or after a cutaway), then Student CYPRES activates the release unit when the altitude falls below approx. 1000 feet (approx. 300 meters) above ground level.

[Amazon 7]

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Yup... It goes off higher Thank you for making my point

Not if the student is still in freefall.

It will only trigger at the 1000 foot altitude if the student is going slower than freefall speed.

From the CYPRES2 manual (I added the underline):

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It activates the release unit when it detects a rate of descent higher than 29 mph (13 meters per second). The activation altitude is split. In the case of rate of descent being approx. that of free fall, the opening altitude is at approx. 750 feet (the same as with Expert CYPRES). However, should the rate of descent be lower than that of freefall but still above the limit of 29 mph (e.g. with partially opened canopy, or after a cutaway), then Student CYPRES activates the release unit when the altitude falls below approx. 1000 feet (approx. 300 meters) above ground level.

I was thinking more about the very low timers that are trying to deal with malfunctions like a tension knot or a spin for too long that it would fire if they have enough speed to activate it. I would rather see them get a 2 out at that point than to keep trying to clear stuff and chop low and not get anything out or ride the malfunction all the way in( that has happened more than once. He was talking about malfunctions where the Cypres does not fire at a low altitude. Most of those I have heard about where someone goes in are from people dealing with in air rigging for too long and then chop too low for the Cypres to even know its supposed to do anything. That happens because the jumper does not reach a high enough speed to activate... but certainly enough to kill the jumper.

[kelpdiver 2]

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And I still do not want someone with 11 jumps futzing with the altitude offset and the need to turn off the Cypres and do it over again right on EVERY JUMP

I believe the C2 has a mod (implemented at servicing) that helps here slightly - defaults to the prior setting. This may also work to lower the chance of setting the offset low instead of high. But you're right that reliance on this approach is likely to pose as many risks as it attempts to fix. I dare say most Hollister jumpers have forgotten to reset on at least a few occasions.

[Amazon 7]

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And I still do not want someone with 11 jumps futzing with the altitude offset and the need to turn off the Cypres and do it over again right on EVERY JUMP

I believe the C2 has a mod (implemented at servicing) that helps here slightly - defaults to the prior setting. This may also work to lower the chance of setting the offset low instead of high. But you're right that reliance on this approach is likely to pose as many risks as it attempts to fix. I dare say most Hollister jumpers have forgotten to reset on at least a few occasions.

I have not tried it on my new Cypres. I did use it and futz with it on every jump I did there ( not that many). I know one of the people who was travelling up to Washington with me on that road trip DID set his to the wrong offset, but we did catch it. If it would not have been caught it would make his Cypres pretty much useless to himshould something have gone wrong. It was just far too easy to miss if it was an up arrow or a down arrow when your eyesight is not so good.

I know I got jammed into the door on the King Air on one exit so hard that it dislocated my ring finger. When it swelled up I noticed I could not grasp my reserve pillow. I now have a low profile Metal D ring because even now when my hand gets cold its hard to move that finger into a fist to grasp something small. At least with my D ring I can hook in a thumb or other fingers when it gets cold.

I only added that to show that even a minor injury could affect your ability to pull your reserve, I do have an RSL so that it should pull the reserve pin if I do chop, but like the Cypres I am not going to bet my life on it to deploy my reserve for me.

[jumpwally 0]

Distraction and awareness almost did me in,,,,,,in the 70's had about 50 jumps, just got my first rig, a piggyback with a red-white-blue PC. I thought i knew it all. Was jumping a 180 from 7,500 with 2 other guys, similar jump numbers. I had the bright idea to duct tape a super 8 movie camera to my student helmet, i think we used the whole role cuz we didn't want to lose the camera, you can imagine what that looked like. LOL....It was a wed afternoon on a nice fall day, the smell, the colors, puffies all around,,it was glorious. We had no oversight.The DZO was running into town for supplies and told the pilot to take us up and give us us seperate passes. While he was fueling i came up with the camera idea , the other guys were pumped up now and it didn't take much to get the pilot to go along with the idea. He was new, first month on the job. he knew everything too,,,,

The ride to atitude was normal, we were high fiving it all the way up. We were going to get the shot, develop the film and project it at our college bar. We would be stars,,hero's and oh, the girls...why hadn't anyone thought of this before ?

From 7 five you have 30 seconds or so to work with...we jumped ...as you can imagine three guys with 50 jumps trying to find each other was nothing short of pure comedy. That large mound of duct tape around the camera acted like a rudder and spun me around and up and down like it was controling me,,well it was, i had no idea how to control those kind of inputs,,,i remember seeing some one wiz past me,,i was sure i got the shot ,,,the camera was being pulled to one side which twisted the cheap hockey helmet so it covered half my eye...no matter and could see with the other.

At some point i remember feeling weird,,,like i wasn't supposed to be where i was at. So i thought it best to pull...the sight picture scared me shitless...instead of having a little blue sky and a lot of ground in my view, i had all ground and the runway/peas seemed to be in front of me instead of below me...i pulled and closed my eyes....that PC slammed open perfect ! I was shakin', stuffed my ripcord in my suit, looked up again, grabbed risers, put my feet and knee's together and PLF'd......

DZO told me it was about a 10-12 second ride, then i got a talking to and a grounding.

Two weeks later one of our regulars was out west on a jumping trip. He was on a three way sunset dive, 2 out of the three went in watching the sunset,,,he was one of them.

I think medical and suicide events are rare. Distractions and altitude awareness happen every weekend. Its easy....look how easy it was to pull you into this post....

It happened 31 years ago and i remember it like yesterday. Be safe

smile, be nice, enjoy life
FB # - 1083

[Hvance 0]

Great anecdote. Thanks for sharing.

I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option.

[mjosparky 3]

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Get to know what the ground looks like at any given altitude.

Excellent advice. For my first solo dive off AFF was dedicated to doing nothing more than watching my altimeter and the ground. I've done a few jumps like this and it's really helped. Sure, it may not be cool or exciting... but it's an essential skill to learn.

Play a game on the ride up. Look out the window, estimate the altitude, then check your alti to see how close you are. You may not be able to tell the difference between 4,000 and 5,000 feet but you should be able to tell the difference between 4,000 and 9,000. The more you do that the more your visual instincts will improve.

Great idea, I started doing just that in about 1977.

Sparky

My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals

[tbrown 26]

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It just seems to me like there are many fewer saves from AAD's and many more malfunctions then you would expect from any other piece of electronic equipment. Also, you guys talk about the things that may effect them, such as body position and imperfect air pressure readings, but I ask why have those things not been accounted for such that the device fires at an altitude that, even with those errors, still fires high enough for a reserve deployment? I don't know about you guys but I would rather have an AAD fire 500 feet higher if it means that it will correctly deploy a reserve 90 percent of the time than 500 feet lower and deploy 50 percent of the time

I'd like to know where you get these figures from. To be perfectly honest, they sound like you made them up. And all this after one year in the sport with 11 jumps.

Please don't think I'm flaming you though. I AM questioning your stats and your limited experience to make such a statement as if it were fact. But read on.

In the old days, many dropzones used AADs like the Sentinel for student rigs. They required recalibration before EVERY jump and would sometimes fire high anyway. Regular jumpers did not consider them reliable enough to use for relative work, so we jumped without them. We used to say "they're a great idea, and I'd use one if they were more reliable". Well, beginning in the 1990's the Cypres kicked off the next generation of much more reliable AADs. Since then, most of us now use them and "low pull/no pull" fatalities are no longer the leading cause of death in our sport.

But you suggest that modern AADs have a "failure rate" of 50% and I have to call that patently absurd. There are a number of factors that can "fool" an AAD and sometimes any device will just plain fail, but I know of no statistic that even documents a 1% failure rate of these devices. Your next stat suggests that raising the firing altitude by 500 ft. will increase the success rate to 90%. Again, I am confidant that statistics will show a successful deployment rate more like 99+%.

I know six people who have personally had AAD fires. Two of them were injured in such a way that neither of them could use their arms to reach or pull any of their handles. Two of them simply lost altitude awareness and their AADs fired as they were deploying their mains well below 2000 ft. It is worth mentioning that both of them, as low as they were, reflexively went for their main pilot chutes - which seems to be a human failing, as there often IS a difference between what we're trained to do and what we WILL do out of ingrained habit, even if it's the wrong move to make. The fifth person had a pilot chute in tow. I'm not clear as to whether or not she pulled her reserve ripcord herself or not, but her Cypres2 fired. The sixth person had a Cypres fire as she was struggling with a pilot chute that wouldn't come out of its pouch. She was so severely injured on landing that she doesn't remember any details of the accident. But without her AAD she would have simply died on impact.

We've also had two fatalities where an AAD "fired too low". In one case the victim turned the device on at her sea level home, then drove to the dropzone, which is at a field elevation of 1450 ft, effectively "fooling" her Cypres into giving her no protection at all. In the other case, the reserve pilot chute was seen leaving the victim's back at 100 or so ft above ground level. Her mother is now suing Airtech, SSK, and Square 1 for the "failure" of the AAD. A number of questions suggest that the design of the container, the fit of the reserve canopy in its container, possible pilot chute hesitation, and finally the victim's apparent distraction in trying to remove a glove from her hand may all have contributed to her very public and ghastly death. But the mother's lawsuit could make the manufacture and sale of AADs too risky for the manufacturers and thus restore us to the good old days where too many good jumpers died for reasons known only to themselves.

I will say one last thing, which is that ripcord deployment is a lost art in our sport. I started jumping just two years before the first hand deploy rig came out. But in those days, ALL jumpers understood pilot chute hesitations - because we'd all had A LOT of them. It was a fact of life we lived with. We learned how to make a good p/c launch and how to get a hesitant p/c off our backs. It was just a part of our sport that had to be mastered if we wanted to survive. But hand deploy worked so well it replaced ripcord deployment almost overnight and we've never looked back, and that's mostly a good thing. But the downside is that we've produced two generations of skydivers who have never pulled a ripcord - until they're already in trouble and trying to launch their reserve to save their life. Even so, it still almost always works. But sometimes it just doesn't.

Our sport is mostly as safe as we choose to make it. But it will NEVER be completely safe. That's just the nature of the game we choose to play. Nobody's making us do this.

Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

[mjosparky 3]

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I would rather have an AAD fire 500 feet higher if it means that it will correctly deploy a reserve 90 percent of the time than 500 feet lower and deploy 50 percent of the time

First off a modern AAD does not deploy your reserve; it is designed to do one thing and one thing only. And that is to cut the closing loop of the reserve container... If you are going to come up with ways to fix the wheel you should at least know how the wheel works.

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I would rather have an AAD fire 500 feet higher if it means that it will correctly deploy a reserve 90 percent of the time than 500 feet lower and deploy 50 percent of the time

You throw percentages and figures around as if you have access to some major study on the effectiveness of AAD’s. As Tom said, I think you are making things up to support what you are saying. There are several cases where the AAD fired and the jumper still went in. But I challenge you name one incident where the AAD failed to do what it was designed to do and the jumper died.
This is how bull shit becomes fact.

Sparky

My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals

[airdvr 200]

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I would rather have an AAD fire 500 feet higher if it means that it will correctly deploy a reserve 90 percent of the time than 500 feet lower and deploy 50 percent of the time

First off a modern AAD does not deploy your reserve; it is designed to do one thing and one thing only. And that is to cut the closing loop of the reserve container... If you are going to come up with ways to fix the wheel you should at least know how the wheel works.

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I would rather have an AAD fire 500 feet higher if it means that it will correctly deploy a reserve 90 percent of the time than 500 feet lower and deploy 50 percent of the time

You throw percentages and figures around as if you have access to some major study on the effectiveness of AAD’s. As Tom said, I think you are making things up to support what you are saying. There are several cases where the AAD fired and the jumper still went in. But I challenge you name one incident where the AAD failed to do what it was designed to do and the jumper died.
This is how bull shit becomes fact.

Sparky

Ahem...isn't there currently a study on a Polish female which claims the cutter did not cut the loop?

I'm just sayin'.

My original point in this thread was how it had become almost impossible to have a true 'no pull'. Yet, from time to time it still happens where someone goes in with neither canopy out and no apparent attempt to deploy.

Please don't dent the planet.

Destinations by Roxanne

[dks13827 3]

I am convinced that some number of no pulls are 'fixation', 'zone out', 'spaced out', whatever term you like. Have not we all snapped to attention while driving ?? And saying to oneself.. gee.. I was out of it for a few moments !!! Some folks break away on a 10 way and track until impact. Suicide ? sure, maybe ..... zone out ??? very possible.

[fasted3 0]

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First off a modern AAD does not deploy your reserve

Pulling the reserve handle does not deploy the reserve either - it just pulls the pin.

But what do I know?

[mjosparky 3]

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First off a modern AAD does not deploy your reserve

Pulling the reserve handle does not deploy the reserve either - it just pulls the pin.

Now you got it. But at least that is a proactive act by the jumper. If you have an AAD fire and are not unconscious, you fucked up.
I used to live by the rule, “pull all your handles and let the riggers figure it out”.

Sparky

My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals

[NovaTTT 1]

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Pulling the reserve handle does not deploy the reserve either - it just pulls the pin.

Technically true, but the extraction of the pin from the loop is the first step in the designed reserve deployment sequence.

It is just as easy, and fallacious, to say, "The pilot chute launch doesn't deploy the reserve, it just pulls the bridle."

Making the first positive step in the deployment sequence translates into "deploying the reserve". It's a direct and certain action.

The AAD loop cutter acts outside the designed deployment sequence. It's function is misunderstood, and perhaps mis-marketed, as being "to deploy the reserve".

Were the CYPRES, for example, designed like old-school AADs to pull the pin, it would be very difficult to argue that it's function is not to deploy the reserve, as it's sole active function would be to make the first step in the designed reserve deployment sequence.

In any case, IMO, for Joe Jumper, if he uses an AAD, it should be treated like Ronco's Rotissierie: Set it and forget it.

"Even in a world where perfection is unattainable, there's still a difference between excellence and mediocrity." Gary73

[kingbunky 3]

...that's why it's called and AAD (automatic activation device) and not an ADD (automatic deployment device). an aad fire or pulling the silver handle both initiate deployment, that's all. after that it's up to the equipment design, equipment maintenance, pack job and body position (and probably some voodoo as well) as to how the canopy deploys.

"Hang on a sec, the young'uns are throwin' beer cans at a golf cart."
MB4252 TDS699
killing threads since 2001

[NovaTTT 1]

Your reply should be to fasted3.

"Even in a world where perfection is unattainable, there's still a difference between excellence and mediocrity." Gary73