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bodypilot90

Will you send you Cypres in for a 4/8 year check

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bodypilot90

new civilian CYPRES and those manufactured
since January 1, 2016* from “mandatory“ to “highly recommended“.

what will you do? I think most will skip it.



It's funny because the same press release says how units that are sent in for maintenance are brought upto the 'latest' standards and yet it doesn't say that older units have the same relaxed requirement after a service.

Most will skip it.
Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.

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nigel99

units that are sent in for maintenance are brought upto the 'latest' standards



Now knowing about upgrades and standards becomes more important rather than just accepting that "I'll automatically get whatever they are doing" at the 4/8 year check.

Occasionally specific features have been advertised, that you would get added at the check -- eg, permanent opening altitude offset. But there's no version list as one might get for software.

Vigil can be vague about their improvements too, but at least one has version numbers for reference -- a Vigil II from 2008 might be v2.18, LCD v2.03 for example, while a later model might be v2.50, LCD v2.28.

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nigel99


It's funny because the same press release says how units that are sent in for maintenance are brought upto the 'latest' standards and yet it doesn't say that older units have the same relaxed requirement after a service.

Most will skip it.



They've been pretty sneaky about this thing, if they started building "upgraded" units since january, they have done it on the down low, without advertising them as Cypres 2+ or something, then 5 months later they pretty much said "Oh, the units you were buying, by the way, were new designs".
I think if what they say is true, i.e. that they added components to increase reliability and make the 4 years check no longer necessary, then it would be next to impossible for them to simply add those into an existing units, certainly unfeasible.
If their new components are just short for "but we still planned our monetary incomes counting on those units coming back for 4 and 8 years" then in a few years they will tell us how they "updated our units during the 4 year check". Easy as that.

Personally, while I do believe the 4 years checkup is beneficial, if it's not mandatory I would end up not sending it because I know myself, I'm a lazy piece of shit and realistically I am really bad at taking care of these things, like car maintenance, bills, cleaning the house etc so I can say "nooo, I'd send it anyway" but realistically I'd end up not doing it unless I'm forced to.
I'm standing on the edge
With a vision in my head
My body screams release me
My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.

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I have a serious problem with the way Airtec is handling this. They seem to claiming to have made some sort of unnamed technical change on the very convenient date of Jan. 1. Did they do something to make the 4 year battery become a 12 year battery? Did they just change the software with the service due warning? Why would they make a change 5 months ago and announce it now?

They are lowering their credibility level down to that of Volkswagen. This has a look of disorganization at the very least, and desperation at the worst. But we have no way of knowing.

I would not buy a CYPRES myself. If one of my customers did I certainly would not recommend they skip the service. Vigil and M2s were both designed with no service needed in mind. In addition to the self test, that I'm sure CYPRES does as well, they both have a read out of the ambient air pressure the unit is sensing. They both ask that the rigger check this reading for accuracy at repack, or at least annually. There is no way to check this on a CYPRES.

Only checking this vital parameter once every four years is already a deficiency in the CYPRES safety regime compared to the competition. Leaving it 12 years would be 3 times worse. Of all the AADs out there, I trust CYPRES the least.
Always remember the brave children who died defending your right to bear arms. Freedom is not free.

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gowlerk

Vigil and M2s were both designed with no service needed in mind. In addition to the self test, that I'm sure CYPRES does as well, they both have a read out of the ambient air pressure the unit is sensing. They both ask that the rigger check this reading for accuracy at repack, or at least annually. There is no way to check this on a CYPRES.



I suspect very few riggers actually check this. How many riggers even have a calibrated barometer available?
"It's amazing what you can learn while you're not talking." - Skydivesg

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BrianM

***Vigil and M2s were both designed with no service needed in mind. In addition to the self test, that I'm sure CYPRES does as well, they both have a read out of the ambient air pressure the unit is sensing. They both ask that the rigger check this reading for accuracy at repack, or at least annually. There is no way to check this on a CYPRES.



I suspect very few riggers actually check this. How many riggers even have a calibrated barometer available?

I check it every time. But I just check it against one or two other AADs. If in doubt, I live two miles from YWG. I can calculate it from METAR info. But if you check two AADs, and they differ by more than the allowed 10 hPa, one of them is wrong and it's time to find out which one.
Always remember the brave children who died defending your right to bear arms. Freedom is not free.

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Di0

***
It's funny because the same press release says how units that are sent in for maintenance are brought upto the 'latest' standards and yet it doesn't say that older units have the same relaxed requirement after a service.

Most will skip it.



They've been pretty sneaky about this thing, if they started building "upgraded" units since january, they have done it on the down low, without advertising them as Cypres 2+ or something, then 5 months later they pretty much said "Oh, the units you were buying, by the way, were new designs".
I think if what they say is true, i.e. that they added components to increase reliability and make the 4 years check no longer necessary, then it would be next to impossible for them to simply add those into an existing units, certainly unfeasible.
If their new components are just short for "but we still planned our monetary incomes counting on those units coming back for 4 and 8 years" then in a few years they will tell us how they "updated our units during the 4 year check". Easy as that.

Personally, while I do believe the 4 years checkup is beneficial, if it's not mandatory I would end up not sending it because I know myself, I'm a lazy piece of shit and realistically I am really bad at taking care of these things, like car maintenance, bills, cleaning the house etc so I can say "nooo, I'd send it anyway" but realistically I'd end up not doing it unless I'm forced to.

One of my biggest criticism of Airtec is you pay for a service where they claim to upgrade everything to the 'latest' including hardware. However there is no transparency, you don't know what was done. If this is true then I can't see how a Jan model is different to a model sent in for its 4 year service.

The cynic in me, thinks this is driven by the realisation that people are happy with competitors lower cost of ownership and they are losing market share.
Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.

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From Airtec press release

Quote

When a CYPRES gets back to the owner it has the latest features and is technically like new.



Nice to write down but reality is that its not technically like new.

Bring in a 8.5 year old cypres and after service its still an 8.5 year old Cypres with latest software on and that has been tested. If it was like new it would be just like a new one with a 12.5 year lifespan.

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Give 'em a little slack; it could be the translation that is imperfect -- Airtec would mean that in terms of the technical configuration, technologically, it is like a new Cypres would be. They obviously aren't giving you another 12.5 years every maintenance.

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Perhaps its a translation like a "That is absolute reliability. Something many people believe is impossible. ".

Except for the misfires due to radio interference on Cypres 1 or the misfires due to exceeding the parameters resulting in updates or Speed model or perhaps the sensors that caused the units to become inactive but give the appearance that it was functioning.

Suddenly units made in Jan are ok but those made in Dec are not - did they physically change components or hardware during that time that made this servicing optional.

I'm not writing the press release, but I'm not making claims of perfection which are clearly being economical with the truth.

The units are OK, just like vigil or M2's. They are not perfection and all have had issues.

Using customs and shipping as an argument is rather disingenuous - they haven't cared for 27 years and probably wouldn't if their sales hadn't taken a dip due to competition.

How about an honest - "we have reevaluated the servicing requirements based based upon data from servicing and market competition" I would believe that.

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skytribe


Using customs and shipping as an argument is rather disingenuous - they haven't cared for 27 years and probably wouldn't if their sales hadn't taken a dip due to competition.

How about an honest - "we have reevaluated the servicing requirements based based upon data from servicing and market competition" I would believe that.



No argument there.
English translation issues aside, even if their actions and intentions are reasonable, they seem to be masters at sounding just slightly weaselly about everything.

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bodypilot90

new civilian CYPRES and those manufactured
since January 1, 2016* from “mandatory“ to “highly recommended“.

what will you do? I think most will skip it.



Without getting into the rest of the discussion, to answer the question from the OP, for me and my customers: They will be sent in on the published schedule.

JW
Always remember that some clouds are harder than others...

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airtec press release:

Quote

* From January 2016 we have done technical changes the permit this decision.



I'm also very curious what these might be; and if pre-2016 models get the same mysterious upgrades at their next factory service check — thereby allowing owners of pre-2016 models doing four-year checks to choose to skip their eight-year check?

Given the scant information provided to date, and their rather suspect reasons for justifying the change, I imagine I'm not alone in concluding the only thing to really change at airtec this year was management's eagerness to slow the erosion of their market share to competition which doesn't require scheduled maintenance.

It'd have been great to hear them say they've decided to make 4 and 8 year tests optional because they've concluded that __% (say, >99%) of all units returned for four-year tests and __ % (say, >98.5%) of all units returned for eight-year tests passed all of airtec's qualifications on the first try, and required no factory maintenance at all to remain airworthy...

But then they'd have to admit how long they've been seeing such results, and people might be upset they didn't make this decision sooner. On the other hand, if they DON'T see such high levels of success with returned units, how can they possibly justify no longer requiring factory service?

Which leads to other questions .... what percentage of units returned are actually failing their tests? Does this mean they might not have worked as designed, if needed? Is this something we (as cypres owners and users) should be concerned about?

Have to admit, I'm on the fence. I'll be needing a new AAD next year, as my current cypres II is close to its EOL. (I also hope to purchase a complete 2nd rig this fall, so I might actually be needing two.)

If I buy a new cypres, will I send the new one back for maintenance if it isn't required? Probably not!

But ... will I even consider buying a new cypres without further explanation of why they've dropped the requirement? Definitely not. Either they've discovered that the regular maintenance wasn't necessary — meaning, they've found ZERO faults at the factory effecting a unit's ability to function as designed that weren't first detected by the unit's own start-up self test; or they've indeed made significant hardware and/or software changes they probably should disclose; or they've just cynically concluded the risk of liability incurred from no longer requiring maintenance they still believe to be technically necessary is outweighed by the continued erosion of their market share to competition which doesn't require scheduled factory maintenance. :-\

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I asked about the battery and If a unit coming in for a 4 year would be required to do a 8 year and here was the answer.....


" Any unit manufacture prior to 01/16 still requires the 4 and 8yr checks, regardless of when the last service was completed.

The battery is not field-replaceable but shouldn’t be an issue over the lifetime of the new units."

from SSK......

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bodypilot90

I asked about the battery and If a unit coming in for a 4 year would be required to do a 8 year and here was the answer.....


" Any unit manufacture prior to 01/16 still requires the 4 and 8yr checks, regardless of when the last service was completed.

The battery is not field-replaceable but shouldn’t be an issue over the lifetime of the new units."

from SSK......



Thanks!

I'm a cypres fan and I'm impressed they appear to expect their battery to last 12.5 years but man, if these things start conking out at 11 years or so due to a need for a new battery and therefore require RTB for a battery change and service they could at that stage become an instant economic write off (and completely unpredictability so at that).

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Which leads to other questions .... what percentage of units returned are actually failing their tests? Does this mean they might not have worked as designed, if needed? Is this something we (as cypres owners and users) should be concerned about?



It is reasonable to think that some or many of the failures that occur during the 4/8 year check ought to be related to things that aren't possible to be tested during the power on self test. My memory is they test at extremes of temp (and vibration?). Those extremes subject electronics to conditions where less than perfect solder joints, etc. are uncovered. Such extremes aren't really a part of a normal skydive. Even if you jump in the winter or summer, your rig would take a long time exposed to the extreme condition before the inside of the cypres would get close to that temp. Testing at those extremes is valuable because it uncovers less than perfect connections and gets components that would die an early death (infant mortality) to die during testing instead of with the customer.

Someone mentioned that a Vigil can tell you what pressure it is measuring on the ground and that it is useful to compare it to the actual barometric pressure you can get from weather sources. I think this measurement is mostly meaningless because it is only change in pressure that matters. However, if you know your AAD is a certain amount off of actual at a certain time, and then months later it shows a drift away from that offset, that could be useful as an indication something might be wrong with the sensor, but even that could be expected of these types of sensors.
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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dpreguy

It is pretty clear that the decision to send, or not send a "post 2016" unit in won't have to be made until 2020. Kinda rushing it to put it as a poll question now?



That's true. It really should be a discussion of how much credibility Airtec has left. This very poorly handled change has damaged it significantly. People making purchasing decisions today need to keep 2020 in mind.
Always remember the brave children who died defending your right to bear arms. Freedom is not free.

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gowlerk

It really should be a discussion of how much credibility Airtec has left.



I don't remember you being this out spoken last year when AAD slipped in a mandatory 4 year factory return on the Vigil 2+ while still claiming they have no service cycle.
Both of these companies are making changes that very few people can claim to know. I would like to see greater transparency from both, but lets face it, that is never going to happen.

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ChrisHoward

***It really should be a discussion of how much credibility Airtec has left.



I don't remember you being this out spoken last year when AAD slipped in a mandatory 4 year factory return on the Vigil 2+ while still claiming they have no service cycle.
Both of these companies are making changes that very few people can claim to know. I would like to see greater transparency from both, but lets face it, that is never going to happen.


You may want to review your knowledge of AAD maintenance requirements. The Vigil 2+ needs to be sent in after ten years for a battery replacement. All Vigils require a new battery after ten years. Models older than he 2+ are field replaceable.

They did not slip in any such requirement as you state.

AAD is a somewhat more open company. And they clearly made changes at the time of introducing a new model. They did not just make a vague announcement.

I did note at the time that the change to only factory battery change would be an inconvenience and is a negative. I will admit to being somewhat outspoken about Airtec. This is because I feel they are arrogant, boastful, condesending, and out of touch with their customer base. This latest error on their part is just one factor.


I would like to add that these feelings do not extend to SSK, who services the CYPRES in North America. SSK has always been a first class and responsive company when I have dealt with them.
Always remember the brave children who died defending your right to bear arms. Freedom is not free.

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