AlexV

I did not witness any of them. I said I've "heard" of at least 10. I'm not going to refer any of them, it's not my point to discuss individual cases. I'm just saying, if some people died wearing a Cypres and if others claim they saw with their own eyes Cypres activations after the skydiver bounced shouldn't Airtec at least consider the possibility of a Cypres malfunction? Airtec might be right, maybe none of the incidents were caused by a malfunction but they cannot prove it, they just assume their product is fail-safe and that riggers are lieing about what they have witnessed. piisfish, the incidents are disused in the specific section, you can find them there. Taken individually they can be considered speculations but taken as a whole they give us reasons to doubt many claims made by the manufacturer. I see this as a campaign of misinforming buyers.

This is a bit off topic. SSK Industries is the official Cypres distributor (or similar) for the USA. They own the domain www.cypres-2.com and there I found this two statements: "CYPRES has never failed to activate and cut the loop when the conditions were met" "Three times as powerful as other cutter systems" I doubt this is true. Since it's a safety device shouldn't they be more careful with this type of add? It's not like saying "guaranteed to whiten your teeth in 14 days of use". I've heard of at least 10 (ten) incidents when the Cypres failed to activate or when it has activated on the ground. This types of incidents are hard to verify but when you investigate them you should assume it can happen under certain circumstances. Airtec wants 100% proof which is hard to get when the user is dead and no data is stored by the device. What kind of tests did they perform to claim their cutter is 3 times more powerful? And comparing it with what competitor? What test setup do you use to find out which one is more powerful? The first statement should be rephrased like this: "No living person has recently brought 100% undoubtable evidence that a Cypres device had failed to fire under factory preset conditions for barometric measurements." Instead of the standard "CYPRES has never failed to activate and cut the loop when the conditions were met"

OUR GOAL: 100% RELIABILITY AND 100% SAFETY they do not claim 100% reliability and safety... they claim it is their goal.. They could have 27.5% reliabilty and 14% safety... and still have a 100% goal... Please read my post again. They do claim 100% reliability. Their website might be "clean" now after the Argus incident but it wasn't always the case. As I said, in advertisements they often skip the "our goal" part and leave it like this: "100% RELIABILITY AND 100% SAFETY". A simple google search came with this ad: http://www.precisionrigging.com.au/info/Airtec_Cypres_Electronic_Openning_Device_AAD.aspx "100% Reliability for 100% Safety, and Guaranteed for 12½ years" In the past (2 moths ago??) I've seen something similar on their website and in their emails. I think the website was cleaned after the Argus incident.

I did not say who is the manufacture of my AADs I think the 100% was on the homepage a few weeks ago but it has been removed. To answer your comment wolfriverjoe, here is the link to the advertisement: http://www.cypres.cc/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=190&Itemid=91&lang=en The "Our Goal" part of the statement does not appear in most advertisments: http://www.precisionrigging.com.au/info/Airtec_Cypres_Electronic_Openning_Device_AAD.aspx I have seen this type of add many times before on the official site and brochures. They are referring to the whole unit, not just the cutter.

The reason I ask is because I did read the manual of most AAD out there and the manual of my AAD states the same thing piisfish said: it's a backup device. But at the same time the manufacturer vigorously claims 100% reliability. For me, these are conflicting statements and for the uninformed skydivers these adds can make the difference between life and death. I hear of cases were students performed a clean cutaway and then wait for the AAD activation due to their low altitude. How can you make skydivers understand what a "backup device" really means if you keep advertising 100% reliability in huge fonts?

This is a strange thing to say coming from Airtec: "Anyway, if the unit e.g. detected a hard impact on the ground at one point it could happen that some of the latest data gets erased and therefore I cannot tell you exactly what happened." By this I understand it might or it should erase data if it detects a hard impact. Detecting a hard impact is different from suffering a hard impact. In theory, a faulty sensor could "detect" a hard impact even though the impact did not occur. So by this statement did Airtec mean the AAD is intentionally programed to erase information after a hard impact or was it a poor choice of words on their part? If they program it to erase data after it "detects" a hard impact then it could be to cover their ass.

After all this heated debate started by the Argus ban I'm beginning to wonder if any of the current AAD are 100% safe. The manufacturer of the two AADs I own claims 100% reliability but I highly doubt it. Just to be clear, by 100% reliable I mean an AAD which completely severs the closing loop IF AND ONLY IF you are falling with more then 35m/s at an altitude of 225m or similar parameter set by various manufactures for different jump types: Swoop, Speed, Standard, Expert, PRO, Student, Novice, Tandem etc. Lets ignore for now the errors in rigging (long closing loop) and errors in judgment (low pull). The current AADs on the market are: Argus, Cypres 1 and 2, Vigil 1 and 2, Astra FXC, Mars AAD and soon MARS M2. I do not have any financial interest in any of them. So what do you think, is any of the above AADs 100% reliable? (see the reliability definition above).

It's interesting to see how the Argus ban triggered so much heat in the AAD industry. I assume (maybe I'm wrong) this type of incidents concerning the Vigil and Cypres are not a novelty but they were going unnoticed until now. Nobody bothered to report all incidents. Of course, some riggers were concerned about these incidents but not the general skydiving community. I personally think most skydivers won't realize what a "backup device" means until de "100% reliability" myth is busted for good. Is there and official statement regarding these incidents form AAD, the manufacturer of Vigil?

I think we should open another topic about the moderators financial interest in this whole AAD issue. I constantly see messages against Cypres being deleted. This topic looks like the original poster is ignoring the conversation while in reality his replies are deleted by the moderators. There's not even a mention by the moderators that his messages have been deleted so all the other users asking him questions are ignored. I want to know more about this incident but I feel like half of the info is missing because it was erased. The moderators should watch the news more often, censorship only makes things worse. Posts against them will be more common if they keep erasing posts damaging their sales of Cypres AAD. This also applies to the Argus discussion.

So now we know the manufacturing cost of the Vigil 2: 200-250 Euro

Nobody knows?

Thank you for your answer. I did it before with older Barigo altis but this is newer and different. I "poped the whole unit out" but the lens is still attached and can't be removed.

Hello, I have a Barigo skydiving altimeter produced in 2006, I think. I want to replace the lens, I took out the mechanism from the metal casing by unscrewing the two screwers but now I cannot open it to take out the lens. I don't want to use excessive force so what method should I use to take out the lens? Thank you