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nzdan

Vigil 2 fire during swoop

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So last weekend my Vigil 2 fired as I was rolling out of my landing turn, luckily I was in level flight when I felt the reserve begin to inflate and landed safely.

2008 Vigil 2 set to PRO, Velo 103 @ 2.1, 270 degree turn from 750 feet. The DZ is at sea level and the Vigil was turned on there that morning. I made 4 jumps earlier in the day using that same turn for landing without issues.

I know there's other cases where AAD's have fired while swooping but always thought they were caused by big turns. Has anyone heard of issues with 270's before? Is a speed Cypress the only option?

I'll see what Vigil says when they inspect the unit.
Children in the dark cause accidents, accidents in the dark cause children.

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glad it worked out for you... Let us know what AAD says about it.

Had a Vigil 1 go off in 2010 with a Katana 135. The unit somehow magically got itself into student mode with a 150' offset. Mine happened at 800'. Sent the unit back to Deland. Their take was that it was tampered with. My take is that the unit glitched after being unused for 6 months, then was woken up by a rigger who went thru every menu the night prior when he was repacking the rig. Either way-they were cool about it and helped cover the cost of the cutter. Irregardless it did 10 jumps in my pocket before I was confident enough to put it back in my rig.
Still have it, probably has over 1200 jumps on it now...

-Harry
"Sometimes you eat the bar,
and well-sometimes the bar eats you..."

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nzdan

I know there's other cases where AAD's have fired while swooping but always thought they were caused by big turns. Has anyone heard of issues with 270's before? Is a speed Cypress the only option?



There is also a seperate version of Vigil 2+, for swooping. 'Vigil 2+ Extreme', I believe.

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I find it hard to believe that the 78 MPH could be generated with your description. Is it possible the setting was changed to Student? Almost every case I've heard of involved pro or swooping mode that was accidentally changed.

Student mode is around 45 mph, so I could easily see that.

I finally changed my 'expert' cypress to speed after I started doing 450's. I never had a problem with 270's on the expert, but maybe I just suck at swooping.

Hope you get this figured out and I'm glad you are OK. That is some scary shit.
Losers make excuses, Winners make it happen
God is Good
Beer is Great
Swoopers are crazy.

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jacketsdb23

I find it hard to believe that the 78 MPH could be generated with your description. Is it possible the setting was changed to Student? Almost every case I've heard of involved pro or swooping mode that was accidentally changed.

Student mode is around 45 mph, so I could easily see that.

I finally changed my 'expert' cypress to speed after I started doing 450's. I never had a problem with 270's on the expert, but maybe I just suck at swooping.

Hope you get this figured out and I'm glad you are OK. That is some scary shit.

Quote



Hi Marcel. I was beside Ego once when his reserve came out just as he planed out. Luckily he shut it down quickly. I believe he was inadvertently set to Student. Got it all on video.

Life is short ... jump often.

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It was set to pro, the unit still confirmed the pro setting after activation.

It will be interesting to see what Vigil comes back with, I'm suspecting a faulty unit as oppose to actually reaching activation speeds with that setup. I'll post the data once received from Vigil.
Children in the dark cause accidents, accidents in the dark cause children.

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I'm guessing you don't have a digital altimeter that records your descent profile? Would be interesting to compare that with what the Vigil recorded.

What I'd like to know is whether the burble generated at a lower speed (e.g. 50 mph) would be sufficient to trick the Vigil into reading a faster rate of descent as you transition from a mostly horizontal to a mostly vertical orientation.

For example, in freefall at 120 mph Vigil says that the difference in altitude readings between belly-to-earth and upright/back-to-earth orientations is 260 ft. Let's say you take 3 seconds to make that transition, so as far as the Vigil is concerned you're traveling an extra 260 ft in addition to your actual loss of altitude of 528 ft over 3 seconds. Vigil will calculate your average speed as 179 mph during that transition. Something similar may be happening under the canopy if the AADs are firing as you exit the turn.

The reason I'm picking 3 seconds as the transition time is that Vigil almost certainly has logic in its software that would filter out an instantaneous speed of 475 mph if the transition happens over 0.5 seconds. However, if the transition takes longer, Vigil can no longer be sure whether the speed increase is real or a result of leaving the burble.

[edit]
Darn, billvon beat me to this theory by a few years: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4359425#4359425 :P

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mxk

The reason I'm picking 3 seconds as the transition time is that Vigil almost certainly has logic in its software that would filter out an instantaneous speed of 475 mph if the transition happens over 0.5 seconds. However, if the transition takes longer, Vigil can no longer be sure whether the speed increase is real or a result of leaving the burble.



I don't think it's "almost certain" at all. Multiple real-life misfires suggest the Vigil does not have such logic. For example, the two Vigils that misfired in a C206 when the door opened at 400 feet measured a brief pressure spike of less than a second duration that corresponded to about a 5g acceleration (according to the graphs released by AAD). Another one misfired in a Beech 18 when the pilot's window was opened at around 900 feet. Vigils have fired on the ground when the aircraft was pressurized. I recall reports of Vigils firing when car trunks were closed. We have plenty of examples that indicate that Vigils do *not* filter out brief rapid pressure changes.

Comments made directly by AAD suggest that a measured speed greater than the firing speed for 5/8 of a second is sufficient to fire, which agrees with the above.
"It's amazing what you can learn while you're not talking." - Skydivesg

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BrianM


I don't think it's "almost certain" at all. Multiple real-life misfires suggest the Vigil does not have such logic. For example, the two Vigils that misfired in a C206 when the door opened at 400 feet measured a brief pressure spike of less than a second duration that corresponded to about a 5g acceleration (according to the graphs released by AAD). Another one misfired in a Beech 18 when the pilot's window was opened at around 900 feet. Vigils have fired on the ground when the aircraft was pressurized. I recall reports of Vigils firing when car trunks were closed. We have plenty of examples that indicate that Vigils do *not* filter out brief rapid pressure changes.

Comments made directly by AAD suggest that a measured speed greater than the firing speed for 5/8 of a second is sufficient to fire, which agrees with the above.



Did those fires not happen with older Vigils, not Vigil II/2s?
Assumptions on logic controls for the Vigil I may not be valid assumptions for the Vigil II.
Sky Switches - Affordable stills camera tongue switches and conversion adaptors, supporting various brands of camera (Canon, Sony, Nikon, Panasonic).

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degeneration

***
I don't think it's "almost certain" at all. Multiple real-life misfires suggest the Vigil does not have such logic. For example, the two Vigils that misfired in a C206 when the door opened at 400 feet measured a brief pressure spike of less than a second duration that corresponded to about a 5g acceleration (according to the graphs released by AAD). Another one misfired in a Beech 18 when the pilot's window was opened at around 900 feet. Vigils have fired on the ground when the aircraft was pressurized. I recall reports of Vigils firing when car trunks were closed. We have plenty of examples that indicate that Vigils do *not* filter out brief rapid pressure changes.

Comments made directly by AAD suggest that a measured speed greater than the firing speed for 5/8 of a second is sufficient to fire, which agrees with the above.



Did those fires not happen with older Vigils, not Vigil II/2s?
Assumptions on logic controls for the Vigil I may not be valid assumptions for the Vigil II.

The two in the C206 door opening incident and the one in the Beech 18 window opening incident were all Vigil II's.
"It's amazing what you can learn while you're not talking." - Skydivesg

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