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Avaicom stops production of Argus for sport market

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According to Karel Goorts, Managing Director for Aviacom SA, production of the Argus automatic activation device (AAD) for the sport parachuting market has been discontinued. The current group of service centers will continue to provide service for units currently in use. A limited number of cutters and spare parts will be available. Many container manufacturers rescinded the approval of the Argus to be installed in their containers earlier this year, following questions about the effectiveness of the cutter. Argus owners should check with their container manufacturer to determine whether the Argus may be installed.

http://www.uspa.org/NewsEvents/News/tabid/59/Default.aspx
Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

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One obvious question is whether the Argus is being continued for other than the sport parachute market -- is it a total shut down, or just pulling back from one market?

One of the things done in the 4 year check is this: "Transmission of historical data to the factory to determine if there are any issues with previous performance." I wonder if that will still be part of it.

Presumably service centres will still want to provide 4 year checks to get some income out of whatever equipment they purchased in order to do so.

The Aviacom web site has not yet been updated to reflect this new notice.

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I can't believe no one else has said this yet, but the first thing that I thought was that they are closing down and will reopen in a few months under a new name to get around the ban. Pretty simple really.

Any way, I'm thinking of picking up a cheap Argus to put in my Mirage. Pay your money and take your chances;)

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I can't believe no one else has said this yet, but the first thing that I thought was that they are closing down and will reopen in a few months under a new name to get around the ban. Pretty simple really.



The harness/container manufacturers have a say in what AADs are okay for their rigs. An Aviacom reincarnation would still have to persuade them its AADs were acceptable. If it were as easy as just having a name other than Aviacom, then MarS would already have its AAD (shown by Alti-2 at the PIA Symposium earlier this year) on the market.

Mark

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"The Argus is your problem now, forget about any refunds." It's the containers who decide weather you jump it or not. Isn't that bull?




I'm frusterated with this for a number of reasons. First, I bought a new 2-pin argus in 2008 after seeing enough data to convince me that it was a reliable product. My container manufacturer still approves the argus, but this puts me in a situation where I have an AAD with no replacement parts, and perhaps a service center, if any will be willing to service it when it comes due. Several jumpers at our DZ are in the same boat.
=========Shaun ==========


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That is one of the draw backs to being a test jumper for a new company with no real proven track record as with other mfg's. We've seen this before with other gear, some people are always wanting the newest greatest thing to come along and then once the problems surface to the point the company goes belly up, then all those people who were paying to be test jumpers get screwed.

Buy hey look on the bright side, your not dead from a defective unit, yet.;)

you can't pay for kids schoolin' with love of skydiving! ~ Airtwardo

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Indeed.

So who has more info about that meeting??
The minutes of that meeting would be fascinating! Did other AAD companies attend, and what did they say? One could probably get a good reality TV series out of this all.

=========

Summary of the pdf:

August 25 meeting in St Louis by harness manufacturers, inviting all AAD manufacturers.

Aviacom attends but can't provide good information about their old cutter issues or the new cutters.

Aviacom buys their cutters basically off the shelf. The cutter company doesn't want to change their design, Aviacom doesn't have the capital to buy their time to do so, and now the company doesn't want anything to do with AADs.

Aviacom says it will still try to replace the old style cutters at no charge.

But the stock of new style cutters (post Aug 2007 or whatever) is about 200. [It's not clear if there are many others out there in dealer hands or not.] That doesn't give them much to work with either, if they had wanted to do tests to try to prove the capability of the new cutter.

Taking everything into account, SunPath permanently withdraws approval of the Argus in its rigs.

===========

Wonder what other companies will do...

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Extremly Interesting. VERY good information. I'll put on my Quality Engineering Hat, and lets look at the Quality Management System Aviacom maintained ~

1. Prior to 2007, no hardness specification was given for the cutter blade. Even without understanding reliability engineering, this should have been identified as a safety-critical quality characteristic and stated on the print.

2.Failure to provide a cause and corrective action for the reported customer complaints (failures) show a major breakdown in their quality management system. Even if Aviacom believed that some of those "failures" were due to other circumstances (poor rigging, bad loops, et cetera) a root cause analysis should have been drawn to show all contributing factors and thus provided reasonable points to effectivly manage risk.

For Example ~ lets cite the Titanic. Boat Sank, lotsa people drowned. You can blame the ice berg, guy with binoculars looking out, the Captain, boat designers, whatever. I'm sure lots of factors contributed. Not all factors contribute to the same failure modes. For example, putting more lifeboats on the Titanic won't make the icebergs go away, nor will choosing a different route save more people if you still only have like 10 lifeboats.


3. Failure to Manage Risk . This goes with the example. I'm sure if they would have drawn up the risk in their product, they would have identified various cutter characteristics to control, or software parameters, et cetera. Again and again, we heard from Aviacom that their quality system was good becaue they inspected X-number of cutters from a lot, fired them, and recorded the results. The truth is you cannot inspect quality into a product.

Another good example is having a critical part of your unit with only one supplier. I don't know how Cypres and Vigil do it, but if you only have one source for a critical component, you need to sit on that egg.

4. Failure to Manage suppliers Enough Said. If your own supplier is not willling to work with you, or is cutting you off because to them, your company is not managing risk at an appropriate level, that's a big red flag. A quick google search of Chemring Energetics shows both plants in the US (ND and IL) to have an AS9100 certificate, which more of less means they should know how to manage risk. I can't find any info on their UK facility, but I can only assume that they also harbor those best practices.


I think Aviacom would have been a fun company to audit for their quality management system. It's sad to see them go down the tubes, I myself am going to buy a new 2-pin AAD from somewhere. I think that these findings show an incredilby unhealthy quality management system which does not inspire confidence in the overall reliability of their product.
=========Shaun ==========


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...

Aviacom buys their cutters basically off the shelf. The cutter company doesn't want to change their design, Aviacom doesn't have the capital to buy their time to do so, and now the company doesn't want anything to do with AADs.

...



Except that it does. Chemring continues to sell the very same 'defective' cutters to the military but somehow that doesn't seem to bother anyone.

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That issue could indeed be clarified. Is Chemring selling cutters in general to the military, or for military jumper AADs? Is Aviacom or its principals still involved in a military market? Cutters are useful for various line cutting uses, that may not directly involve humans, which may not necessarily require the same specifications as for jumper AADs.

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Since Skydive AZ has a concern about the Argus, I spent some time with a container manufacturer who was at the meeting referenced by the Sunpath bulletin. His remarks were pretty much identical to what is revealed in the Sunpath bulletin.

From what I can gather, the cutter manufacturer designed their device for severing reefing lines on cargo parachutes. These would likely be different materials, under different loads and geometries, than a reserve closing loop. Argus bought the cutters as stock items. Why? One reason could be that CYPRES would have patents on all of their proprietary technology, so to avoid a patent infringement Argus probably had to use a different cutter design. They couldn't afford to develop their own cutter and just picked out something they thought would work. The fact that the cutter manufacturer will no longer have anything to do with Argus suggests they have decided that their stock cutter is not appropriate for the Argus application.

The main thing is that the potential failure mode for these cutters is due to the blade not always being able to fully cut the closing loop, depending on the geometry of how the blade hits the loop, tension on the loop, and possibly other variables. That means the loop can be partially cut without the rig owner knowing it. This can have two results: the reserve could fire at any time when the loop eventually fails from being partially cut, or the rig can effectively be locked closed if the cutter is at the top of the loop and seizes on it. Then even pulling the ripcord manually won't deploy the reserve.

Skydive AZ currently bans the Argus whether or not the rig maker OKs it for the simple reason that if the loop has been partially cut, it could open any time, including during the climb-out. That could take down an entire Otter. We view it as no different than having a main closing loop that is too long or worn. The rig might be TSO'd and in date, but it's not safe and it is not right to expose everyone on the plane to an unfortunate purchase decision by an individual skydiver.

Skydive AZ and USPA are going to be considering the implications of SDAZ's ban on the Argus as it affects competitors at the National Championships a few weeks from now. I'll try to keep the community informed.

Bryan Burke
S&TA/Meet Director, SDAZ

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The fact that the cutter manufacturer will no longer have anything to do with Argus suggests they have decided that their stock cutter is not appropriate for the Argus application.



While I agree with 99% of your post, I see no information to support this assumption. There are many reasons a company such as Chemring would choose not to continue to supply product. If Aviacom was returning a significant number of cutters for replacement as part of a contractual agreement, then they may have decided to 'cut them off' as part of a business decision. Companies do that all the time ~ Chemring is owned by the HiShear Group, a MAJOR supplier to the big dawgs in Aerospace and Defence - so they're not going to spend time, money, or engineering hours working with a company like Aviacom. Back to my risk analysis, why WOULD a compnay like Chemring/HiShear supply to the parachuting (or really any civilian...) market?

I am not playing devils advocate, and I am not standing up for Aviacom. I certainly feel they made major mistakes in the design, development, and risk management of their product. However, do not feel that we have enough information to assume that just because Chemring discontinued supplying Aviacom, it was reasonable evidence that their stock cutter is not appropriate for the application..

*Edited for punctuation and verbage.
=========Shaun ==========


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Nice to see a Bryan Burke post! (Memories of good stuff in rec.skydiving back in the 90s).

We are indeed seeing that there's more involved in a good skydiving cutter than just taking an off-the-shelf line cutter.

I personally still see more of a safety benefit to having an Argus turned on, than banned and turned off or removed.

And the "partially cut loop" hazard should be manageable -- no different than people making sure their pins aren't dislodged in the plane. But it would require Argus owners to have at least a minimal self awareness of their pull altitude and whether they might have popped their AAD. (Even if the Argus fires, the loop is cut much more often than not cut, and those stats should improve with the newer cutter, although we don't have complete proof of that.)

Yes that wingsuiter in the "San Marcos Argus incident" wasn't aware of firing his Argus after a deliberate low pull.

It still comes down to educating the jumper to do the right thing: such as getting a proper sized closing loop, packing their BOC right, protecting their handles, .... or check that they didn't pop their Argus on the last jump by looking at the display.

But that's just personal opinion and I'm not responsible for safety at any DZ.

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check that they didn't pop their Argus on the last jump by looking at the display.



Are they all like a cypres, where it takes turning it off and on again to make it run through the initial self check is required to test the cutter continuity (test for a fired cutter)? Doing that every jump is perhaps a good idea with no downside.
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

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check that they didn't pop their Argus on the last jump by looking at the display.



Are they all like a cypres, where it takes turning it off and on again to make it run through the initial self check is required to test the cutter continuity (test for a fired cutter)? Doing that every jump is perhaps a good idea with no downside.



well, isnt the whole idea of an AAD to "turn it on and forget"!? might be a naive question, and maybe a bit of a biased one, since i jump a different product and feel quite safe in doing so; one of the reasons being it's mandatory 4yrs check.
“Some may never live, but the crazy never die.”
-Hunter S. Thompson
"No. Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try."
-Yoda

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Skydive AZ currently bans the Argus whether or not the rig maker OKs it for the simple reason that if the loop has been partially cut, it could open any time, including during the climb-out. That could take down an entire Otter. We view it as no different than having a main closing loop that is too long or worn. The rig might be TSO'd and in date, but it's not safe and it is not right to expose everyone on the plane to an unfortunate purchase decision by an individual skydiver.

Skydive AZ and USPA are going to be considering the implications of SDAZ's ban on the Argus as it affects competitors at the National Championships a few weeks from now. I'll try to keep the community informed.

Bryan Burke
S&TA/Meet Director, SDAZ



With safety in mind, what is the DZ stance on the random multiple Vigil firings and do you plan to affect a ban on these AAD's as well?

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check that they didn't pop their Argus on the last jump by looking at the display.



Are they all like a cypres, where it takes turning it off and on again to make it run through the initial self check is required to test the cutter continuity (test for a fired cutter)? Doing that every jump is perhaps a good idea with no downside.



well, isnt the whole idea of an AAD to "turn it on and forget"!? might be a naive question, and maybe a bit of a biased one, since i jump a different product and feel quite safe in doing so; one of the reasons being it's mandatory 4yrs check.



turn it on and forget it would be ideal, but since we know that if the cable leading to the cutter gets damaged there isn't any indication of a problem on the display, then turning it on/off checks it again. At least a person won't be jumping an AAD that can't work, or that has unknowningly fired for more than one jump.
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

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