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Not turning on your AAD

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In another thread, someone wrote:
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I look at jumps differently without my cypres... I think about the added risk. I have also not turned my cypres on for certain jumps, where I thought the cypres was a risk...



I have heard of people jumping without an AAD because, "My reserve is so small, if it deployed when I was unconscious, it would kill me anyway. And if it didn't, I would be so broken up, I would want to be dead."

I have seen people disconnect RSL's because they were doing CRW.

I understand the thought process in each of these. But I cannot come up with any circumstance where it is safer to jump without an AAD.

I can't believe anyone would verbalize the old, "I'm an instructor and might have to chase a student down low." But are there people who think that way?

Any light would be appreciated.
Shit happens. And it usually happens because of physics.

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I'd say that a demo jump where you take off from one field and are landing at another, lower field would be a time not to turn on the Cypres, unless you can go to the landing field to turn it on.

Other than that, I can't really imagine a reason. And I periodically turn off my audible to avoid too much device dependency (I pretty much only belly fly, so the ground is generally in my field of view).

Wendy W.
There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

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I'd say that a demo jump where you take off from one field and are landing at another, lower field would be a time not to turn on the Cypres, unless you can go to the landing field to turn it on.



You can set an offset on your AAD just like you can on your altimeter. Going to the landing field and turning it on would not help. By the time you have gone back to the runway, it will probably have enough time to re-zero itself to ground level there. You really need to set the offset as described in the manual for your AAD.

I choose to turn my AAD off when doing CRW, however, I'll admit that it's a toss-up. I think that argument to support either on or off for CRW will be dependent on specific circumstances which are fairly rare.

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not following you here..

if a reserve which is aad activated is believed to kill an unconcious jumper... then wouldn't it also likely kill a concious one,,,, who simply has a situation where it's deployed at terminal.....?? are you meaning killed at opening or at landing??/

some feel a small reserve, without proper toggle control,,, might land them somewhere troublesome,, and it might hurt them when it happens,,,but it also might NOT.. hell. i'd feel it's about 50-50...
A reserve with it's toggles stowed and depending on wind speed, may have some forward speed.. but if the dz is sizable, and your angels are on the job,,, you could do just fine...B|:)

You might even " come to".. during the descent and regain control of the situation...
\for sure... without the aad, the landing WILL not be survivable...

..RSL removal for CREW, sounds right to me...:| as well as establishing and adhering to a hrad deck.. and then,,,, monitoring altitude...did you mean RSL or AAD...?
maybe i can see aad disarming, in the event something goes bad, and a spiral situation presents itself to a low altitude, at which point, those involved might better want full control of the introduction of a reserve pilot chute to the mix...[:/]:|... but i'm not a crew expert...

and there should be no instructor who is thinking he has to be chasing anyone below aad altitude.... the student would have an auto, anyway, and then the instructor gets a face full of freebag,,,B|...

if he or she is doing that.. i'd guess they might WANT to turn on their own aad. let's be sensible here....
so , no i don't think anyone still says that...

maintain it, use it, skydive like there is no such thing,,,pull a handle...

jt

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As it happens, I just finished browsing the manual for my brand new Cypres2 and I'm sure I saw something about adjusting the unit for dropzones that are situated significantly lower than the airport. :)
Edit: BTW, the manual definitely contains something about having to reset the cypres if you have to transport it in a car.

"That formation-stuff in freefall is just fun and games but with an open parachute it's starting to sound like, you know, an extreme sport."
~mom

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Valid point.

After thinking about it, swooping with an AAD that does not have a swoop mode would be another instance. Although the original poster of that statement does not list it as a favorite discipline and has nothing smaller than a Sabre2 135 listed.
Shit happens. And it usually happens because of physics.

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are you meaning killed at opening or at landing??/



The individual was worried about an unconscious landing under his reserve after an AAD fire following his incapacitation. He was jumping a cross-braced 69 and had a very small reserve. He felt he could land the reserve with his input, but did not look forward to the results of a landing with no input. Our "discussion" lasted about a case of beer. I did not and do not agree with him (I think you are right on the mark), but I understand his though process in not using it.

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..RSL removal for CREW, sounds right to me... as well as establishing and adhering to a hrad deck.. and then,,,, monitoring altitude...did you mean RSL or AAD...?



I meant RSL for CRW. I am not familiar with all of the issues involving CRW and wondered if there was something in their procedures that dictated not arming the AAD as well as not connecting the RSL.
Shit happens. And it usually happens because of physics.

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"My reserve is so small, if it deployed when I was unconscious, it would kill me anyway. And if it didn't, I would be so broken up, I would want to be dead."

Sounds like

(1) they need a bigger reserve.

(2) maybe they are just too cool.:|

I can see turning it off if you're a hard core swooper and don't have a swoop mode. I've just seen too many people killed that would have been saved by an AAD. Many of the arguments against AAD's remind me of arguments against seatbelts. Not many hold water.

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It's scary to think of where you might land if an AAD fires and you are not conscious, but your odds of living are still greater. You could land in a field. You might land on top of an antennae, impaling yourself, but the odds of that happening are about as low as an asteroid striking your house. That's what mainly has always bothered me about ever having to use one, thinking I might land on something pretty horrible. :ph34r: But look at the alternative. You know you're going to go splat. There's just no survivability to hitting the ground while tumbling.

Personally, I don't have one (mine expired) and yes the "I don't have the money" excuse is a very valid one in my case. :P

Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033
Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

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The individual was worried about an unconscious landing under his reserve after an AAD fire following his incapacitation. He was jumping a cross-braced 69 and had a very small reserve. He felt he could land the reserve with his input, but did not look forward to the results of a landing with no input.



If he's at the pearly gates he might feel pretty stupid if he learned that he was only going to be knocked out for 15 seconds. I borrowed a canopy once Sabre2-170. It slammed me so hard I could only see black for a few seconds and it took a few minutes before I could move my legs.

AADs are programmed to fire at pretty much the last second where you'd be dead otherwise. If you're 5 seconds from regaining consciousness when the AAD fires then by omitting the AAD you just threw your life away.

-Michael

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I'd say that a demo jump where you take off from one field and are landing at another, lower field would be a time not to turn on the Cypres, unless you can go to the landing field to turn it on.



Or you have the time before the demo to read the instruction manual which talks about adjusting it for higher and lower landing area elevations.

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>>I can't believe anyone would verbalize the old, "I'm an instructor and might have to chase a student down low." But are there people who think that way?
Modern AADs on both students and Instructors have made it a moot point. Although world wide it still happens from time to time and there was a recent thread about an Instructor who died chasing a student. But even prior to reliable AADs this debate still occurred. Even today if I hear a long time Instructor express the idea I can understand what they mean because I understand where they're coming from. Newer jumpers will consider it out of hand and nuts.

If you began jumping after the advent of the Cypres you may look at these devices a bit differently then someone who remembers a time without them. Especially if you were an Instructor at the time. When I began jumping and all our initial student jumps were solos no experienced jumper in the sport used an AAD. Well, maybe a very few who had some sort of physical or medical issue.

There were basically two models of AADs available in those early days. There was a Russian one called the KAP 3 and it was used on military and civilian jumps to activate the main parachute. It was a rather bulky mechanical thing that you wound up with a skate key like an old grandfather clock. If your student was doing a 10-second delay you'd set it for fifteen seconds. It was reliable enough but one problem with it is if your student hesitated after it was activated they would be eating into the clock. It could be shut off and reactivated by the JM, but if the student was out of reach like out on the strut you had to get them off before the "bomb" went off. And while it wasn't often you did see these KAP 3s in the States once in a while.

The prevalent AAD of the time was the American made Sentinel. BTW, originally these devices were called AODs for "Automatic Opening Device" until we became sue happy and a malfunctioned reserve having nothing to do with the AOD could land the manufacturer in court because the device failed to "open" the canopy. So they changed "opening" to "activation" in the 1980s for legal reasons. And I'm a bit surprised these days there aren't called, Just Might Save Your Life Devices, for the same reasons. There was a third American made AAD called the FXE and it was probably the most reliable of the bunch but I didn’t see any of those to years later.

I had my first AOD malfunction on my 9th jump or so. And whenever these devices go wonky that's what I still call it, a malfunction. We tend to now call it a premature firing or an inadvertent activation, as those are slightly more comforting terms that denote more an annoyance than a life threatening situation. I was sitting in a Marine Corps helicopter minding my own business on the way up and since I was going to be first out at about 5000-feet I was sitting close to the open ramp with only my Jumpmaster between me and the void. All of sudden the pilot banked hard to avoid something possible a cloud or another aircraft and the "G" force of the turn fired the Sentinel on my chest mounted reserve. My reserve pilot chute flew across the cabin and bounced off the startled jumper sitting across from me. I was startled too. Sentinels weren't mechanical they were gas operated. And you'd never get through airport security with one them today. They actually used a 22. Caliber blank cartridge to blow the ripcord handle out of the reserve container. And it could be rather loud in a confined space and just like a gun going off.

We were, of course, taught to sit with our hands over the reserve to protect the ripcord handle. But you kind of did it loosely and there was no way I could have been fast enough catch the pilot chute. So after hitting the other jumper it was now on the deck, and because the forward crew chief's upper door was open the wind blowing through the cabin is making it skid toward the open ramp. My JM/Instructor, a grizzled old Marine Master Sergeant, just reached out with his leg and stomped on it.

He handed it to me and sent me forward with a glare that said I was in a bucket of shit. The fact if I'd been dragged out I probably would have went into the sea and been drowned wasn't as scary as what was now waiting for me on the ground. In the Marine Corps there is no such thing as "shit happens" everything that goes wrong is somebody's fault. And I'd be it . . .

My punishment later on was putting away all the club gear and packing all the mains well into the night. In the meantime everyone else is drinking beer with steaks sizzling on the grill. And every once in a while some drunken killer would come by and give me a swift and hard kick in the ass. God, with all the problems we have I sometimes wish we still taught parachuting that way now. These days whenever I'm "correcting" a problem student I'm polite and use all the accepted modern methods. But in the back of my mind I can't help but think, man, this guy needs a good boot in the ass . . .

One the big perks of finally getting off student status in the 1970s was being able to ditch the AOD. It was akin to removing the training wheels from your bike when you were a kid. And in my case it was certainly one less thing to worry about. A few weeks later I saw my first AOD save when a student Army jumper's Sentinel fired at 1000-feet and he later said he was totally confused and surely would have went in without it. So while I saw the value in AODs, in my mind, that value laid only in student use. When an experienced jumper died nobody thought to say, "If he'd only had an AOD," it was more simply you became the honored dead and your photo went up in the club wall.

Now back to the original question. Why do some Instructors chase students into the ground? And how does that idea still linger today? It's hard to understand now, but I've no doubt the JM/Instructor I had, the same one who opened the can a whup ass on me, would have given his life to save mine without a second thought. Because in his simple military mind my failure was his failure. And this wasn't purely a Marine Corps thing. Even in the civilian world most Instructors understood they weren't getting the three dollars a head to teach skydiving as much as they were being paid too keep their students alive. There was a trust factor between Instructors and students. And there was no imaginary line in the sky were the deal was off.

But then all though the 1980s the main excuse from experienced jumpers against AADs was they just weren't reliable enough. Then in the early 1990s the Cypres changed all that. They were reliable enough, not perfect, but reliable enough that we were running out of excuses. And slowly at first, than like a land slide, experienced jumpers began to embrace the technology. I resisted it until the late nineties. It wasn't wholly based on any "deal" I made in my mind with my students even though, yes, it was there, it was just a big collision between the old ways and the new ways and I was caught in the middle. And a lot of jumpers went through the same dilemma.

Then a few things happened that changed my mind completely. I was lucky in that in many years of jumping and teaching I'd never gotten a scratch on me. And of course I chalked that up to my superior ability. And while I always played it strictly by the book with students in my personal jumping I was up for anything. Night bandit skydives, B.A.S.E. jumps, fun Al Frisbee loads not being totally sober along with everyone else on the load, all that stuff. But then, and all of sudden, I started to get hurt. The first time was on my 80th B.A.S.E. jump when I had a bad opening and broke both my legs. But that I thought was an anomaly as in a lifetime of jumping where some amount of plaster is to be expected. And the year I spent laid up was a relief in a way as I was sure nothing like it would ever happen again.

Then I found myself with a young woman on an AFF jump who went unstable, got below me, and was now spinning badly. I'd learned long ago to avoid getting knocked out you approached these students from above or below and I was dropping down on her back when at about 6000-feet she reached in and pulled her reserve handle. I never forget what rig she was using it was student Racer number nine because the pop top had a big number 9 on it. And just like intentioned with Racers that reserve pilot chute launched like a shot, caught air, and then hit me square in the head. I woke up in a plowed field with my main out and lying next to me. I have no other explanation for what happened except somewhere in the twilight zone of being unconscious I deployed my main pilot chute or it got knocked out somehow. The student, BTW, landed fine.

But still I thought that was just a weird occurrence, part of the game, what you get paid for. Then some months later I experienced what I now call strike three. Another AFF jump with a so far switched on student doing a later level. He'd just finished his planned for tracking, which like most students was a little crooked and wobbly, and I set up in front of him waiting for his wave off and pull. And I didn’t give him a check altimeter signal because I saw him dutifully look at it. But instead of waving off he turned 180 degrees and started tracking again. I spent a second thinking, "Were the hell is he going?" And then went after him.

I don’t jump snively gear so I don’t have an issue taking it down low. And my generation came up believing it was better to go low looking for clean air rather that panic dump in some big RW formation that funneled late and sloppy. But somehow this student pulled a stellar tracking position out of his ass and being he was a smaller and lighter then me the harder I tried to go after him the lower I was getting on him. But I knew by now he didn’t have a clue about his altitude. So I got bigger and popped up enough to make a one last ten-man speed star swoop on him and it worked. I got myself into his burble and was falling down onto his back when his AAD fired.

I was about 20-feet above him and I watched his container open and the pilot chute start dancing around on his back. "Holy shit," I thought, "I'm in the kill zone."

I rolled right as hard and fast as I could and avoided his pilot chute and deployment bag but as he got pulled up I knew I was going to hit him. So I stuck my right hand out to protect my myself and some part of his leg hit my hand and shattered it. I managed to still use it to throw out my main. But that was it. I'm ignorant about a lot of things, but I'm not stupid.

And I could read the writing on the wall so I got myself a Cypres. The first few jumps with it were nervous ones. Sitting in the aircraft I could almost swear I was hearing it ticking but that was just my imagination I suppose. Then soon enough I became used to it and now it's not a "thing" anymore.

The first time I heard the Student/Instructor "new" deal was as an evaluator in one of Rick Horn's AFF courses in Monterey, California years ago. Basically he said below the hard deck it was every man for himself. And we then started to teach new Instructors the last ditch move was, "If you pull the student will pull."

And yes, that made sense to me, as long as you were in the student's sight line. But I was having a hard time reconciling what Rick was saying with what I knew. Not all students are this way, but some are. And I've been with enough of them in aircraft who were shaking with fear. They'd cling to my jumpsuit, even after I told them on the ground not to be grabby in the airplane. What made these people jump, I always wondered? That very morning they'd never met any us and now here they were hanging on by the last bit of guts they could muster. The only reason I could come up with is they did it because they trusted me. I can't speak for the rest of you guys, but that's a hard thing to turn you back on.

I can still see both sides of the argument because I lived both sides of it. And even though it's not politically correct to say, I've come to take some amount of comfort from the fact there's an AAD in my reserve container. And yes, anyway you cut it that is being device dependent. And it may not keep me from chasing a student below the hard deck again. But it will give me a boot in the ass before my lights go out . . .

NickD :)

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Modern AADs on both students and Instructors have made it a moot point........

NickD :)



I enjoy a lot of your posts man. Write a book or something. Seriously. You seem to have a lot of time in this sport and have seen a lot of things. I like reading about them. B|
Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033
Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

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In another thread, someone wrote:

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I look at jumps differently without my cypres... I think about the added risk. I have also not turned my cypres on for certain jumps, where I thought the cypres was a risk...



I understand the thought process in each of these. But I cannot come up with any circumstance where it is safer to jump without an AAD.




Since you quoted me.

My dedicated wingsuit rig freepacks a flik 182 base canopy, so I have the option of using no dbag, tail pocket and mesh slider making it an equivlent of a 'base' rig....

Hypothetically lets say I was to fly my wingsuit down past cypres firing altitudes. While I tend to fly much slower than the cypres firing threshold I feel that turning it off is a prudent choice in these situations.

_justin

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I'd say that a demo jump where you take off from one field and are landing at another, lower field would be a time not to turn on the Cypres, unless you can go to the landing field to turn it on.



I know that it has already been mentioned, but please read your owners manual, know both field elevations, and set the offset as described in the manual. Electronic AADs and Altimeters do re-zero them selves. If they did not, they would not be able to adjust for changes in the weather during the day.

Turning on an AAD at the jump location and driving across town to another field elevation to board the plane is NOT SAFE

Another situation I have wittnessed: Taking off at the DZ, being diverted to land at another airfield for a fast building thunder storm near the DZ, spending a hour at the other airfield before taking off again and jumping back into the original DZ. Leaving your AAD on the whole time does not mean that it is still set to the original field elevation. Read the owners manual.

Wendy, I replied to your post and your comment, but my intent is not to be blunt to you, their are many many skydivers out there that do not understand this.


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Wendy, I replied to your post and your comment, but my intent is not to be blunt to you

Blunt is good. I was ignorant. As it happens, I got my gear used and never got a Cypres manual; all I ever do is turn it on (and occasionally off) and forget about it. When it's in for service (just finished the 8-year) I jump anyway; the majority of my jumps are still without them.

And, well, if I were doing a jump at a different altitude field, I'd just leave it off. I wouldn't want to mess with learning how to change the altitude just before a higher-stress situation like a demo.

Wendy W.
There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

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I will admit to turning off my Cypres on one particular jump. Let's just say that the projected exit altitude was lower than traditional.

I think swooping, intentional low pulls, and aircraft descents with student mode AADs are the only reasons I can think of to turn it off.

- Dan G

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> But I cannot come up with any circumstance where it is safer to jump without an AAD.




I typically pull high, no lower than 4k, and I had my AAD set at 1080 feet. I didn't turn mine on for a balloon jump the other day because I jumped out at 3000 feet...... I ended up throwing at about 2200 feet and under goo canopy at 1300-1400 feet. Just something I thought would be safer, was I wrong?

I guess what I need to do is set the Vigil back to factory ;)

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