riggerpaul

I'm surprised that nobody caught this. The bolded phrase assumes that your take-off point and your landing point are the same altitude. Bad Ju-Ju in some cases. You have to look elsewhere to find the stuff about altitude correction. Unlike the CYPRES, altitude correction is not part of the Start Up procedures with a Vigil (or Argus, for that matter). Regardless of altitude correction, the airport ground zero reference is used for arming. After applying altitude correction, the firing altitudes have been changed, but the Ground Zero reference for arming remains. As I read what you quoted from the manual, it is saying that the Vigil MUST be turned on at the takeoff airport. This matter has confused users of AADs for some time. They are ALL required to be turned on (and altitude corrected, if needed) at the takeoff airport. While I am no fan of the Vigil, I don't think that the error you point out is really an error at all, so it doesn't need to be "caught".

You didn't know yourself (before reading other replies already now in this thread) that it could have happened well AFTER he had done his full line run-up and closed the bag - done all the line-stows perfectly AS NORMAL, but then just maybe gotten up from only needing just to close the container for instance - to get his pull-up chord, or to get himself a soda; then comes back and INADVERTENTLY in his inexperience - handled the bag such that he put it only THEN, back through a line group, that at that point CAUSED the step-through. That is also abundantly clear by your reply/post too. - BUT YOU'RE NOT GOING TO ADMIT IT! - Twit. At your experience-level you REALLY should be listening more, and posting less - unless it is yourself to maybe ASK QUESTIONS. Oh sorry, I forgot ... then again, you already clearly - are an (if not obviously THE) unquestionable quintessential AUTHORITY on absolutely everything skydiving & skydiving related. My bad. So sorry... Carry on. it is true that can happen well after he bagged his canopy.... if you had read my posts you would see that my point was that the OP should know what causes a step through.... which is taught IN A PACKING LESSON so when it happens in a situation like this he would've known what causes them even if he accidently messed up on packing FIFY - tough to follow when the reply bracketing is messed up.

I also believe it is heat. Most insects just go dormant under extreme cold conditions and become active again once the temperature rises. I have read and heard that cold, below freezing, will do it, but it will take several days at that sort of temp. Heat (in excess of 120F) will do it much quicker. Any chance of putting the rig in an oxygen-free atmosphere for a while? A pure nitrogen atmosphere should kill just about anything that breathes pretty quick. Don't know if it would kill eggs.

Regarding the 10,000 dollar fee for the rescue, does any reader out there know if the USPA third party liability insurance will cover this?

Paul, It is about as clear as mud. In reality the H/C manufacturer is supposed to inform us of the requirements, not the AAD manufacturer as they are not the TSO holder. Since the Units are not TSO'd, the only legal way to include them is by way of the H/C manufacturers including the units as "required or approved materials". They do that by writing them into their TSO paperwork. Once they do that, the H/C manufacturer takes ownership of instructions for use of their TSO equipment. So in reality, the H/C manufacturers are supposed to have any maintenance requirements in their manuals. But we seem to be not doing it in that fashion. Cheers, MEL One of the purposes of the way it is written is to take the responsibility for the AAD away from the rig manufacturer, and place it clearly in the hands of the AAD manufacturer. It doesn't matter if the gear is TSO'd or not. The notion of airworthiness is not just a legal term for the FAA. Just because the FAA has no standards of its own for airworthiness of an AAD does not mean that the manufacturer cannot have his own. If the manufacturer says it is not airworthy, the FAA has no problem with agreeing. You have already made your position very clear that the regulations include both certified and non-certified equipment. A manufacturer, inspecting a main canopy they made, already has the right to declare it non-airworthy, do they not? This is really no different.

Taken from TB-252 v1.1: "NOTE: A rigger may elect to re-close, sign, and reseal only a reserve that they originally packed. " (emphasis added.) Perhaps other riggers were not excluded in v1.0, but PIA now indicates they consider it the job of only the rigger who sealed the pack job to open it for maintenance, without performing a full AIR. But they don't pretend it doesn't happen: Also from TB-252 v1.1 "NOTICE: Before opening and re-closing a container packed by another rigger, careful consideration should be given to any and all legal ramifications." My interpretation of this is quite different from yours. The way I read it, they are just specifically mentioning that we can choose to restrict ourselves to rigs where we did the most recent repack, if we like. Here's the whole answer, for reference (I also broke the paragraph into sentences so they are easier to notice.) The first 3 sentences are clear that you can open and re-close, and that you might not be the one who closed it last. Regarding the "NOTICE", they are not telling us to think hard about breaking the law before we do. They are telling us to carefully consider not using this provision of the law.

There was a time when there was no mention of any AAD in FAR 105, and I suppose that, at that time, you might play fast and loose with manufacturer's requirements. But since the revision of FAR 105 that included those items in 105.43 and 105.45, it has been absolutely clear that the manufacturer gets to tell us what must be done in order to maintain airworthiness. That's been since some time in 2001, IIRC. Now, exactly what Airtec said was required may have changed some over the years. I have no particular knowledge about that. So somebody else will have to jump in with those details.

Both 105.43 and 105.45 have language that requires an AAD to be maintained according to the manufacturer's instructions. The manufacturers that require maintenance have statements that their devices will not be considered airworthy unless the maintenance is performed at certain time. Therefore, there is a date beyond which the AAD cannot be legally used until the maintenance has been performed. An AAD in that condition must be brought into compliance or removed from service for the rig to be used legally.

Negative. The Law is the regulations on the Federal Register. The 65.111 Defined spells it out clearly that you have to be a master rigger to install lines. AC's do not trump the Regs and is the reason that a LOI will have to be issued before this can be pulished as active. The paragraphs refering to the handbooks probably will be removed is my guess from the conversations I have had. MEL But the clarification made by the AC is that certified and non-certified parachutes can be treated differently, 65.111 notwithstanding. That changes things considerably. We'll just have to wait for the final version to see what remains.

If the pilot has briefed the jumpers on tail strike avoidance, why do they need to prohibit the exit? Are you saying it CANNOT be done safely? Or just that too many of our current jumping population are unable? Any dz or pilot can easily say "not from my aircraft". Why do we need more than that? What I find interesting is that USPA is trying to slip something in here that amounts to law. To me, that is onerous. This should be a recommendation, not a prohibition. It would be totally reasonable, by the way, to limit the exit to solo jumpers. There's no question that a group exit should not be done until the aircraft is configured for a conventional jump run and exit.

Who would have thought that your limit is exactly equal to my limit?

Excellent health insurance plan? In my experience, winds that exceed 20 have a tendency to be accompanied by an increase in turbulence and that can make life for you and your passenger way too interesting. Your hanging on a piece of cloth that is shaped like a clumsy wing with a laughable aspect ratio, which only keeps its shape because of enough pressure inside the cells. If it hits a layer of air that moves towards the ground, even if it keeps it shape, it will move towards the ground with the additional speed caused by that layer of air. Did I mention that you don't have a propeller, turbine or jet? What could possibly go wrong? To the OP Tell me when you are jumping in high winds, so I can send you an email telling you when to flare. Believe it or not, we don't have a lot of wind related injuries. Jumping in higher winds is a learnable skill. Admittedly, a great deal of the knowledge is about when not to go. When the winds are bumpy as well as fast, most people stay on the ground. Personally, I don't go if the winds are over 22, bumpy or not. The direction of the strongest winds has over a mile of nearly flat land between the nearest hill and the center of the landing area. It isn't quite like the winds off the ocean hitting your dunes. I'll never tell anyone they need to jump in our winds, but it is possible to learn how to do it.

Well...they at least follow this thread :)...webpage already has been changed. Fortunatly aviacom has dz.com to keep them apprised of needed updates on manuals and webpages If "by design" the battery life was 1 year, it would seem that they somehow fell short since the current requirements are to replace some batteries at significantly less than the "by design" life. If this rule change is a CYA move, then say so. If not, are the people with a 1 year repack in jeopardy? One or the other. I really cannot be both.

Building on pchapman's comments - In high winds, you don't need to worry so much about killing groundspeed. Flare enough to result in a comfortable descent rate for your touchdown. So, flare at generally the same height, but watch that you don't flare so deeply that you start to go backwards. Backwards landing are uncomfortable/unpleasant for many jumpers. Now, what are high winds? At Bay Area Skydiving, Byron, CA, we often have to deal with winds that others might find absurdly high. 20+ is not unusual, and we consider calling the tandems down when we hit about 30 or more. (Within just a fe miles of the dz, there are something like 3500 windmills in the Altamont Pass area. They don't put all those windmills there because the winds are calm.) Here's a caveat. I have noticed that at the very high end of the scale, perhaps 25+, there can be a pronounced drop in the last 5 to 10 feet. I have attributed this to turbulence caused by the texture of the ground. If this happens, you need to be ready to flare much more deeply than you might otherwise expect. In addition, be prepared to PLF if your descent rate is still uncomfortable. But if "high winds" means 15 to 20, then this is not likely to be a consideration for you.

At some level, we are the claim that adding rules will help account for sloppy rigging.You yourself argue that the riggers who skip battery replacements don't deserve the certificate. Aviacom's stated purpose for the battery rule change is to make it less likely that they will see improperly maintained equipment. Do you think they will achieve this goal by changing the rule?At some level, we are discussing the possible existence of factors not revealed by the manufacturer.The seemingly arbitrary nature of the change, where some have to have batteries replaced more often than others, makes the whole thing smell fishy.So, it isn't just about the dollars. But even if you only want to discuss the dollars, it can be a lot more than 1 extra set a year. Rigs may need repacks for a variety of reasons that have no bearing on the condition of the AAD. Is it right to require new batteries when the need for the repack had nothing to do with the AAD? I do a repack today, tomorrow the owner has a "normal" reserve ride with no AAD involvement. The new rule says he gets new batteries, even though the batteries he has are brand new. That just doesn't make sense. And finally, if the rules made by the AAD manufacturer seem to make no sense, how can we not begin to question other things about them? Is their engineering also fraught with apparently senseless choices? So many of the choices we make depend on our confidence in the manufacturer. When the manufacturer starts doing things that shake that confidence, how are we supposed to react?

Or maybe some people will say this change makes sense, since they actually favor other AADs, and have no problem with a change that makes the Argus less attractive.

Actually, they didn't say is was NEEDED, since they didn't tell the people with a 1 year cycle to change batteries any more often. If the jumpers with annual repacks aren't in jeopardy because their batteries are 1 year old, neither would we be. What they said is that, since some riggers don't seem to care, all jumpers with a less-than-annual repack should be forced to buy batteries that they likely don't actually need.

Don't put words in my mouth. And don't try to shift the discussion out of the already established context. I never said that what was found was irrelevant. I said that finding old batteries at service time was irrelevant to the discussion of replacing the battery at every possible opportunity. If you didn't get that from what I wrote, I gladly apologize. I will try harder to be more clear. Aviacom tells us that if the unit powers on and passes self-test, the batteries are good for the rest of the day. I must assume that people aren't jumping the rigs with "BAT LOW" in the display. So the fact that they found old batteries when the units came in for service is not sufficient reason to make us change the batteries even more often than before. If annual battery replacement is acceptable for the folks with an annual repack, annual battery replacement should be acceptable for the folks who have a 180 day repack. That's the discussion. Let's try to stick to that. Changing the rule is not going to make poor riggers do better. What should be done is to get owners to be sure to understand what their equipment requires, and for the owners to insist that riggers meet the established standards. Either that, or take the whole thing out of the hands of the riggers and owners, the way Airtec has made a power supply that will last the entire maintenance cycle. If you cannot trust the riggers, and you cannot educate the riggers, then take the responsibility out of the hands of those riggers. If telling them to change the batteries on the proper schedule is not going to get the job done, telling them to change the batteries even more often will not get the job done any better.

When I read the Argus manual, I see that the battery test "Will check if the battery will to be able to handle at least 14 more hours of operation. If not, an error message will be displayed and/or the Argus will switch off. " If this is a true statement, then wouldn't there have to be some sort of load test on the battery, as opposed to just a float voltage check? Or are you saying that the self-test really doesn't do much for us at all? To be clear, I have always been in favor of regular maintenance for AADs. I have enough experience in electrical engineering to know that components age and fail, especially in the sorts of environments where an AAD lives. So, presuming that the maintenance has been done according to the schedule, and all was found in nominal condition, what is the overall value of the self-test that all the AADs go through?

Please, Bill, don't lower yourself to such an argument - "If you don't care...". You are better than that. This isn't about fixing problems found in service. This is about a weak explanation for a significant change in their policy. Rules don't make good riggers. More rules don't make bad riggers any better. Let's see if I get any answer from Aviacom to the question of if these rigs came from places that had a 1 year repack, and therefore, already have the requirement to replace the battery at every repack (or nearly so). If you'd like to discuss something else about the new rule, let's go there while we wait. As written now "every repack" means that a swoop rig that goes into the pond the day after its repack gets a new battery. (Presuming, of course, that such a rig gets dried properly in the first place.) Is that really necessary?

Aviacom, please tell us. Did any of the units with very old batteries come from countries where the repack cycle was already 1 year? If so, didn't those riggers already have a requirement to replace the batteries at every repack? If the "every repack" rule didn't stop them there, why do you expect it will stop anyone else?

That my be your hypothesis, but I have received at least one new Argus that came direct from Aviacom, that had mixed batteries. Regardless of the source of the mixed battery or black battery situation, don't you think that the unit was passing self-test with that battery configuration? Regardless of battery age and rigger conscientiousness, wouldn't the owner be looking at the self-test results when he turned it on? If it passed self-test, then we have all been told that sufficient battery remains for the entire day. So, all this talk of what has been found in service is irrelevant, isn't it? The more discussion I hear about it, the more I wonder if there isn't something fishy going in in Denmark, as the saying goes. Please be aware, I am not one of the people wishing to bash Argus. I have had an Argus for 4 years now. I have helped to sell many many Argus AADs to people in NorCal. My worries have not come lightly. I would love for my worries to be baseless. But until I hear something that makes some sense, my fears and suspicions cannot help but grow.

Were the rigger conscientious, then he would have changed the battery when there was no evidence that the battery was not over the 1 year limit. Continued failure to replace the battery is not the mark of a conscientious rigger. Much of Europe has a 1 year repack now, and that would already carry with it the requirement to replace the batteries at each repack. As Aviacom is reporting that they are finding units with 3 year old batteries in for service, I must conclude that at least some of these units came from countries that already had a 1 year cycle, and therefore already had a requirement to replace the batteries at each repack. With this in mind, why would you expect this new rule to make anything better? Riggers who were careful were already careful. Riggers who are not will continue to not be careful. All it does is increase the cost for people who had good riggers in the first place. Oh yes, in that it also increases the handling, it also increases the risk of damage to the unit.

Okay, thanks for the information. If the battery rule had been "every repack" back when this unit was manufactured, do you think that the story would have been any different? If a rigger actually saw this unit in a rig, he did not care to change the batteries, even though they were due. If the owner was pencil-packing the rig, he would not change the batteries. In either case, do you think that the new rule will change anything? Again, the only people this will affect are the people who are already doing it right. It isn't going to change the people who don't care about the rules in the first place. So what is the REAL point of the rule change now?

Can you tell that these jumps were after the batteries were overdue?