Rigging Innovations Service Bulletin on Argus issued

[chutingstar 1]

See link, but it all boils down to this:

SERVICE BULLETIN: All users of an Aviacom Argus equipped Rigging Innovations harness and container system should remove the Argus AAD from their system, prior to making ANY further jumps with the system.

http://rigginginnovations.com/support/sb/SB-1548.pdf

Mike

ChutingStar.com

[Unstable 8]

Thank you Mike. I have at least two customers of mine who are going to get a phone call tonight which they are not going to like... = (

I'm very curious as to the desposition to this problem. So the cutters manufactured before September 2007 (IIRC) were recalled, Argus issued a statement saying that of the recalled cutters, none were defective, but we keep hearing stories of Argus units not cutting the loops... What gives?

=========Shaun ==========

[samlee 0]

Poor cutter design in the first place? They don't have to be defective to not work if they weren't designed well.

[councilman24 36]

I have documents that I haven't had a chance to look at received from the APF. (Austrailian Parachute Federation) According to conversation, not my own review of the documents, the 'old' cutters and new cutters have the same physical design and tolerences. They believe these tolerences are the basis of the problem. (Again, I haven't had time to review the documents.) If so the recall would have been ineffective. Not to mention I don't think the end date for complying with the recall has passes yet. I honestly don't know because I don't have any customers with an Argus and haven't tried to keep this stuff in my head.

I'm old for my age.
Terry Urban
D-8631
FAA DPRE

[riggerpaul 1]

Quote

I have documents that I haven't had a chance to look at received from the APF. (Austrailian Parachute Federation) According to conversation, not my own review of the documents, the 'old' cutters and new cutters have the same physical design and tolerences. They believe these tolerences are the basis of the problem. (Again, I haven't had time to review the documents.) If so the recall would have been ineffective. Not to mention I don't think the end date for complying with the recall has passes yet. I honestly don't know because I don't have any customers with an Argus and haven't tried to keep this stuff in my head.

(Terry, the following is not really directed at you. But some have implied that this problem has been around long enough for a solution to have been found, were it not for negligent actions of Aviacom.)

If it is literally the tolerances, then that would mean that some may be okay, while others might not. Since the devices are single use, it may be difficult to find another that is demonstrably the same as one that did not operate as planned. Further, it seems to me that the event of firing is sufficiently violent that it might change things enough that figuring out why it did not work as planned is effectively impossible.

Are we sure that the cutter manufacturer was made aware of this information?

Some say that the cutter designs come from the AAD manufacturers. But, I'll hazard that the cutter manufacturer has a big hand in it.

Some seem to say that Aviacom has been negligent on this.

But if they have relied on an expert to verify and approve of their design, well, it might be that they have done all they thought they could.

This doesn't mitigate that we have devices that are not doing the job for which they are intended.

I am not saying that the grounding was wrong.

But some seem to be saying that evil, negligent, intent was involved.

I don't think that is necessarily so.