f94sbu

Truth is a pretty strong word coming from a person who is accusing people from making wild guesses... But otoh, truth seem to mean a different thing to some marketing people so I guess you just fall in the category If Airtec was shipping AAD's without this ESD problem prior to the component change and are now shipping units with a fix that makes as resistant to ESD as it was prior to 2009-02 it seems like they have a tiny little more clue what is going on compared to an armchair expert on the internet whose sole ground for his conclusion is a marketing degree. Again, if you want to be pissed that you need to press the button to check the unit instead of just looking at the display, be my guess, but stop pretending that you have a clue whats going on. You haven't done the homework and you will (statistically of course) get people killed if you convince them that an AAD is an unsafe(er) device. Sorry, but you couldn't be more wrong. Airtec has been working on this since end of last year. How could that be if they had no idea that they had a problem a week ago? I happen to have insight info on when they started to work on this problem and how it affected other things (no new units were produced while they were looking for the problem and no units were serviced). I'm sorry, but you are making wild accusations and speculations, you are comparing oranges to apples etc. Again, can you tell us what your agenda is? If it is safety, you are not exactly making skydiving safer by convincing people that AAD's are inherently unsafe devices. Do the math. 2011, 9 skydivers died in accidents that could have been prevented by the use of an AAD. No one was killed because of a Cypres unit firing on climb out. In fact, there is no knowledge of any unit firing other than around its designated altitude. When you enter a skydiving plane, you expose yourself to a huge number of unknown factors that can kill you, yet, you have no control over them. One of them is of course the fact that an AAD can deploy a reserve while the jumper is standing in the door. However, from a statistical point of view, you will die many many times over for other reasons than that. I am not sure what your agenda is, but given that you seem to have convinced at least one reader here that the device in his wife's rigg is an unsafe device, you are not exactly improving the odds better for people to survive a skydiving incident.

As parts of his message was an attempt to prove that a Cypres could fire at any time of a jump and that Airtec has no clue whats going on, it is not hard to see that people could misinterpret that as a statement that an AAD makes your skydive more dangerous instead of safer. I don't mind him being a disappointed customer, however, the issue is taken far out of proportion. Do the math and you will see how silly this entire discussion is. (Silly as in how all of a sudden people think that their Cypres II turned into a paper weight overnight)

I hope you dont' mind me giving my thoughts on this?

THEY say it can't fire.... They also thought these units were perfectly fine - Till they were not. Simple fact is that they are making a guess based on a problem that they didn't know they created. I'd say being aware that they might also not know what else might happen is a very valid position. Blind faith is foolish. They said that the unit cannot fire because of this problem. Not that that it will be 100% error free once this has been fixed. Besides, statistically, I'd say that they are correct as we have not seen any unit fire in freefall caused by ESD even though millions of jumps being made. What is your agenda really? You do realize that there has been hundreds of saves by these 'faulty' devices and perhaps 20 deaths that could have been prevented if the person had an AAD in their rigg? The FUD you are spreading isn't exactly making skydiving safer. Statistically speaking that is.

It is a good and valid question! My argument for that is the fact that the unit is (in most riggs) less accessible when the rigg is closed compared to an open rigg. Step one in solving any ESD problem is to isolate components by distance so that the likelihood of a discharge is lower. If a discharge occurs, the impact is also lowered as the 'spark' is losing some of its energy having to travel over a longer distance. (This is all empirical knowledge after ESD protecting lots of consumer electronic products). If it is possible to expose to the unit to the same amount of ESD on a closed rigg compared to an open one, then I guess that the issue can still occur. However, we would need more data on the actual issue itself to be sure of course. For example, it is very likely the susceptibility to ESD is different depending on which part of the unit you are touching. Areas where there are cable attachments are usually more exposed. If I were Airtec, I would have tested a closed rigg and compared with an open rigg to get some more data, but I cannot speak for them of course. The display head is (according to the test document that Airtec published) tested for ESD and if the ESD takes out the display unit, the testing shows that the control unit continues to function. As I don't know the nature of this particular issue, I cannot tell if the discharges taking out the device has been done on the main unit or the display, but given Airtecs comment on closed vs open rigg, I can only assume that the main issue was the control unit. Dragging a rigg across a packing mat is probably one of the more plausible situations where you are building up static around the device. Once the rigg is packed and you put it on, the charges have either discharged, or didn't exist in the first place. If there was ever a discharge when you put your rigg on, trust me, you would notice. I have been playing enough with our ESD testing equipment to know that even low levels of charges hurt like a bitch.

With the risk of going way of topic... Pads on a chip (the part of the silicon where the chip is connected to the outside package via one or more bonding wires) come with an ESD protecting structure by default. It is part of the standard cell library from the silicon manufacturer. However, they usually don't provide protection in the >10kV range simply because it is impossible to build a protective structure at the same time combining that with the thin gate oxide required for modern asics. The level of protection that a pad gets is fairly random as it depends on a lot of properties around the pad and how many binding wires that are used for the interconnect. However, the manufacturer is guaranteeing a lower limit of the protection of course. If you create a design based on one revision of a chip, it is possible that another revision may be more susceptible (still within the legal limit). If you want your design to withstand higher discharge pulses, it may then be required to add additional protection outside the chip. And in this case, I would assume that there is a lot of external protection anyway simply because the level that the unit can handle is way beyond what's normally required. The unit has the CE stamp which means that it can withstand a certain level of ESD ( 4 kV contact discharge, 8 kV air discharge). That doesn't mean that you can have discharges higher than this level, it just states that it is a reasonable level to require from an electronics manufacturer. If the requirement would be to withstand >20kV pulses, we wouldn't see the smartphones and other gadgets that we have today as it is impossible to fully protect them. Hence why the CE limit is lower than what can be seen in a real world scenario. I cannot find anywhere in the Cypres manual where it states what level of ESD that it can take, so given the CE stamp all a lawyer could do is to claim that it does not fulfill those requirements. Which I am pretty sure that it does, however, I can definitely understand why Airtec wants to go beyond that. Regardless how much protection that is added nothing can be made 100% safe of course. This applies to any of the equipment that we use. If someone isn't happy about that uncertainty then I suggest that they dont skydive at all since there are a lot of other uncertainties around them that are much more likely to kill them than ESD causing their AAD to malfunction.

Seriously, what is it that you dont get? I DO have the data on ESD. Thats all I am explaining. Is the issue ESD related? Only Airtec knows, however IF what that are saying is true, then my comment is justifying why Airtec claims that the danger is minimized once the rigg is closed (ie why the issue cannot happen at a random point in time and why people do not need to worry about the issue ocuring after they have done the crude sanity check) Thats all I have been saying. People were worried that an ESD issue would be the same with the rigg is closed as when it is open. I have provided scientific evidence why it is not. In fact, the same remains for any AAD, but you didn't seem to take notice of that fact. I am not in any way defending Airtec, I am explaining why a closed rigg is less susceptible to ESD. Correct, so far we can only trust what Airtec claims the root cause to be. Maybe this is a huge coverup for something else? Maybe they all wanted an extended vacation and shut down the company for a couple of weeks. Why are we even talking about this? Do you have evidence that any of this has even occurred? (No, you dont need to reply to that part, it was rhetorical) Well well, what an convenient way for you to end this conversation? I was making a remark on the fact that there are more information from Airtec than just the bulletin. Judging from your remarks on their handling of the issue, it was apparent that you haven't read it. I was snide in my remark pointing it out to you and I guess you took it personal as it showed your ignorance. Is it a 'personal attack'? Hardly! If it was personal attack, I would be making a disparaging comment on you as a person which was unrelated to the fact. What I did was being (apparently) a little too harsh in the way I commented on the fact that you obviously haven't done your homework. It is nothing personal in that other than I pointed out that your argument was flawed.

No, and I never made such a claim. How come you keep challenging my statements on ESD issues? The laws of physics don't change depending on which company you work for, therefore, I can make such claims as: 1: Air discharge can be approximated with around 1mm per kV 2: A Cypres unit inside a packed rigg is approximately 5 cm away from any outside object. 3: The ability for nylon to conduct current is lower than air. Conclusion: A Cypres unit in a packed rigg is a lot better protected than a unit in an open rigg on a packing mat. If the issue is ESD and that the data so far indicate that the issue has only been provoked on open riggs in environments where static buildup is common, you can be fairly certain that once the unit is protected inside the rigg, it will not randomly fail after it has been verified to function. Of course, there is a minimal chance that the issue is really something else, but so far, we have only been discussing the validity of Airtec's claim that a packed rigg can be considered 'safe' with a very high confidence. If you still wish to debate whether this is an excuse or not, please remember that the same logic can be applied to any AAD. Any AAD is safer from ESD inside a rigg compared to outside. Still think I am making excuses for Airtec? That might have helped you from making claims without data... Well, since the data that I refer to has nothing to do with Airtec or Cypres units, I am not sure what you mean. As an engineer, the whole decision making process is built around acquiring data, analyzing data, applying theory and then back to step one. Why exactly would I follow a different path here? OK, for fun.... They take anyone that bought a unit in the last year and give them a new unit in exchange for the old unit. They take the old units and fix them and then give them to the people who have a two year old unit, then continue that till they have exchanged the 4 year old questionable units with fixed 3 year old units. Each customer gets a 'free' year added to their AAD and they can take the year 4 AAD's and give them to sponsored athletes or sell them at a discount. Ok, so you clearly have been sitting under a rock this whole time. Check the FAQ. They are already working on a more permanent solution. Whatever it may be, we don't know, but your claim that they are doing the wrong thing is just ridiculous. But perhaps you think that they should have waited to communicate anything before a final solution was in place? NB: A service bulletin is intended to keep the user of a device as safe as possible, it may not necessarily address how affected units will eventually be replaced.

That's what you *think*. You don't know, they don't *know*. Based on my experience of the subject I call tell this with some level of certainty which can never be 100% of course. If I wasn't sure that this certainty is pretty darn close to 100%, I wouldn't say anything, however, if you choose to doubt this, I suggest that you chose to doubt pretty much everything else around you too as no one can ever be 100% sure of everything. Everything is relative and in this case, I am relatively more experienced than you Yeah, you are.... You are saying they are doing a great job and you are *guessing* they have it all figured out. I am sorry, but you must be mistaking me for someone else. I have never made _any_ excuses for their way of handling this. I have questioned your objection to the ESD issue and tried to explain how this works. You can chose to not listen to me, but for the last time, please stop making claims about a subject that you have absolutely no clue about. My degree is in marketing, and I work directly with customers on very technical issues everyday as my job at a Fortune 500 company. So I have a good bit if experience with customer service, and think I am more than qualified to say their actions on this issue is crap. Great! You happen to know a few engineers and now you are an expert on ESD? Gee, I guess I should have gone to business school instead of earning a double major in electrical engineering and physics engineering For the last time, if you want to discuss the way Airtec chose to communicate, please do so with someone else. However, stay away from trying to explain ESD issues as you are clearly not qualified to make any comments on it. Besides, I know for a fact that the way Airtec is communicating is just an interim solution but honestly, I very much prefer the way that they have chosen to communicate instead of them being silent until the final solution can be presented. With this fact in mind, why don't you pretend you are them and explain to the rest of us how you think that they should have communicated the issue?

Uh, there already was a fire in Sebastian on a packing mat of one of these units. That's my point. It fires when the ESD happen, once it has happened, the unit is essentially dead. The outcome of the ESD is that the unit locks up, but if the ESD pulse triggers the fire, of course the unit fires. I don't see many packers kicking and screaming in pain... But one unit has already fired on the packing mat. When the unit is on the packing mat, you have more or less direct access to it, hence the discharge needed is a lot lower than when the unit is protected inside the rigg. To reach the surface of the unit on the packing mat, around 1-4 kV is needed, when it is in the plane, >50kV is needed. Since people were bringing up all sorts of claims about props and fuel causing static electricity, I just wanted to point out that we would have a ton of other problems before the charges would build a level where it would even be physically possible to reach the Cypres unit. I understand that you are making excuses... But you really need to learn some of the facts that have already been communicated and discovered before you accuse others of over reacting. I am not making any excuses. If you want to be unhappy about their way of handling this, please be so, I wont mind. However, you are making claims about the underlying issue that are simply not true. You ARE overreacting to the discussion about ESD simply because you have no idea what you are talking about. Companies pay me money to solve their ESD issues so I have a fairly reasonable amount of experience of it. They do not pay me for their customer service, so I am not making any comments about Airtecs way of communicating this, although, as a layman, I would probably say that the way that Airtec communicated allowed the internet experts to shred their message to pieces when they tried to explain in layman's word what the issue is. Not sure if there is a way to explain this given all the arm chair experts out there.

You dont need to explain what ASIC means to me, I know it pretty well since I design those things. Furthermore, I have 10+ years of experience designing ESD-resistent products. Airtec said that their vendor changed the part, not that themselves changed it. For the volume that Airtec has, redesigning an asic would never cut any costs. Furthermore, Airtec said that the original component was not available any longer, how would that happen if the chip was done specifically for Airtec? Since you have no clue what the real issue is, you are not doing anybody a favor by your clueless speculations.

As the issue is ESD related, once the unit has locked up, it will not fire some time later. That is why they are saying that it wont fire in the plane or mid air. When the rigg is closed, the unit is much better protected from ESD. It would require a discharge of over 50 kV for the discharge to reach the Cypres. You will be kicking and screaming in pain long before that happens. I understand that you are frustrated that you cannot always get what you want but you really need to learn some of the basics around this issue before you claim that your world is crushing down due to this.

What dharma1976 probably meant was that instead of just letting go of the dive loops when you are done with your turn, you gradually let your hands up so that you end up in full flight. I have often seen people just release the dive loops with their fingers, thus keeping the canopy in quarter breaks (or so) and wondering why their canopy is auto pitching. Having video of the landing is key to tell if this is whats happening or if it is the inevitable auto pitch that is en effect here.

WTF are you doing swooping if you don't know the answer to this question? WTF are you doing on the internet if you cannot read a simple question without reading things into it that may not have been on purpose?

7 seconds is A LOT LONGER THAN YOU THINK He rips it off in less then 1 second. lol How often do you think a PC bridle or a reserve PC bridle will be pealing of the camera? The only reason why he was able to rip it off was as he was bending the adhesive. If you pull straight up, you have no chance of pulling it off like that. If your plan is to reach for your camera and peal it off once you feel the force dragging on it, you may find yourself with a broken neck already.

Thank you, Sir!

Tell me something I don't know

I jump a comp 90 loaded at 2.5 and a comp 79 at 2.85 and it is hard for me to say that I know exactly the difference. If you are fairly dialed in on your 90, you would probably be a lot better of with that compared to get an 84 which is known to fly and feel quite different to your 90. (I have no personal experience with that though). However, I can say that my 90 and 79 may feel the same initially, the more I fly them the more I notice the subtle differences. Long story short: It is impossible to give this kind of advice over the internet, but I guess it is always safe to say that you are probably better of keeping the money you would loose by selling the 90 and buy an 84 and spend it on some quality coaching :)

You dont get it. The price of the components were not much higher 20 years ago compared to what they are today, you are not paying for the square inches of silicon. Besides, that Ericsson P200 still works pretty well but my shiny new smart phone keeps dropping calls and loosing connection to the network. I guess that you just appreciate different things today. But with an AAD, I want exactly the same reliability today as I wanted 20 years ago. _Thats_ what we are paying for and not the components inside.

How do you guarantee that your N3 has unlimited lifetime? An obvious way you can tell if it isn't working is if the display doesn't match what your eyes tell you. Do you think that it would give you an error code and ask for the unit to be sent in for repair? I guess you are ok with the N3 failing every once in a while because you will manually notice it. However, would you be ok with your AAD randomly failing on you and you have no other way to find out than that you died after a no pull and the AAD had been malfunctioning for some time, but you were not able to notice? On top of that, how often do you recharge your N3 and how often do you swap the battery in your AAD? Does your N3 have a cutter that is custom made? The list goes on and you seem to have no idea what you are talking about. (FWIW, I work in the electronics manufacturing industry so I have a fair amount of knowledge of electronics etc.)

Ian, you are not the ones I worry about, I worry about the people who scare me in their first ZA competitions. (Due to the angle of attach that they think they need to have to touch the water) The fact that you feel safe doesn't interest me unless you can provide sustainable evidence that the rule changes wont make it more dangerous to the newcomers. How safe _you_ feel is irrelevant. If the VE gates didn't make a difference, perhaps you could have thought about moving them further down the course? Forcing people to touch water doesn't stop them from using the same approach to the gate as today. It is perfectly possible to use a steep approach, slam a foot in the water through the gate and then climb as today. It is not safe, and it will probably result in a lot of zeros, but once you nail it, you would be going as far as with the old rules. Then what did you achieve? I suppose you dont mind the new rules as you can have people video your every landing, practice on a pond whenever you want, but keep in mind that this is not the case for most swoopers. Up until this change, it was still possible to practice 2 out of 3 events without a pond, but the changes makes that impossible. Do you really need that edge over the rest of the swoopers rgds, Stefan

How can it feel safer when you have reduced your margin of error from 1.5 m to less than 0.5m? I am afraid to see what is going to happen when people are starting to push the limits with those conditions. I am not too worried about those who now consider distance as an accuracy event, however, there is no guarantee that everyone will do that.

Thanks for taking the time to read through the report. A lot can be learned from it. However, your translation contains several factual errors (no offense, you admitted that you don't know Swedish. I just don't want these errors to stick in this thread.) * The report does not talk about a spiraling turn causing a line twist. It describes how the jumper flies his canopy actively (several radical turns) but then stops turning and files the canopy in deep breaks. This is corroborated by the graphs that indicate that the decent rate suddenly decreases. This is also corroborated by eye-witnesses that confirm that the jumper had a habit of spinning for a while and then fly his canopy in deep breaks. What happens after the flight in deep breaks is unknown, but the report puts forward a theory that the jumper induces a stall/stall-turn when he is flying in deep breaks which causes the canopy to spin up. At this point, it is likely that the risers, or something else gets caught around his GoPro. * The report never talks about the slider the way you describe. The report only talks about the collapsed slider as a sign that the jumper was flying his canopy actively. Had he had a malfunction from his initial opening, there would be no reason for him to collapse his slider and bring it down behind his neck. THAT is the only mentioning of the slider, nowhere does the report indicate that the slider got caught in the GoPro, that is your theory. Nowhere does report present any theory that the slider probably disoriented the jumper. * You missed the important fact that the jumper had injuries in his face that were not caused by the impact. During the cutaway (probably) something hit the jumpers face hard from below. He also had serious injuries in his neck where his head had been torn upwards and to the side. The MD that did the investigation states that it might have incapacitated him temporarily. This is why I made the note about the GoPro mount acting as a very efficient hook. Something that older camera mounts usually tries to avoid. As you pointed out yourself, that the jumper did everything correctly (not exactly as he would be alive if he did) and met all the recommendations, what do you think should be done to prevent accidents such as this? Do you see that putting a jump number limit is a way of ensuring that the jumpers have deposited as much experience in their bank account as possible for when they need it? Jump numbers is a very blunt way of ensuring that, but it is simply not possible to set up guidelines for every single stupidity someone can come up with. When people complain to me that "It is going to take me forever to get 200 jumps so that I can jump with a camera", I tell them: "Making 200 skydives doesn't take very long if you are serious about it. Make 200 jumps where you each jump think about things that might be useful to know for the day that you put on a camera." People usually come back to thank me after 200 jumps. regards, Stefan (S&TA Skydive Stockholm)

The report is in swedish, so it is understandably that it didn't get much attention here. The report is available from http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50053191/Rapport%20dnr0919%20kompr%20format.pdf but it is in Swedish so you'll have to translate it yourself. The jumper had 362 jumps. In this case, we will never know, but you asked for a fatality involving a small format camera and I gave you one. So, whats your suggestion? Ask people to show that they can walk and chew gum before we allow them to jump? Personally, I think that DSE's thread is a clear sign that a camera adds distraction that a low jump number person is still not capable of handling. They endanger themselves _and_ other people in the process and I dont think it is reasonable to ignore that simply because some people can keep their heads cooler than others. regards, Stefan

I am sorry, but you are wrong. Last year in Sweden we had an accident where a skydiver (probably) stalled his canopy at around 600m and when the canopy recovered, something got stuck around his GoPro. Eventually, he cut away but as he cutaway, the GoPro was ripped away from his helmet (it was never found) and it probably knocked him unconscious as he never pulled his reserve. His AAD activated a little below 200m (when he reached 35m/s) but his reserve never had time to inflate. Have you ever seen those knobs they have on boats that are designed to make it easy to attach ropes to them? Now, look at the average GoPro mount. Dont tell me that you dont see the similarities! There is a thread for you, it is called "Small Format Camera "Incident" list" http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3894693;search_string=small%20camera%20incident;#3894693 The fatality will be added there once I have had a chance to do a proper translation of the Swedish incident report. regards, Stefan