pchapman

Nice job!

Looks OK to me. Pull altitude and pack opening altitude looked legal. Quick reactions, tossed the handles when he felt it was needed. Being low of course restricts one's choice of landing area and time to look for one's jettisoned equipment. Personal choice. Don't think he was any lower than he would have been 40 years ago with a streamered ParaCommander and having to get at both Capewells and then go to the belly mount. Yes there was some 'industrial haze' and I don't know much about any Suunto lag. 35 seconds reserve slider down to landing. Any useful readings off an audible altimeter? AAD equipped? (If so it would suggest the reserve opening was high enough even by modern standards.) A useful video to show that if you take it down to the legal limits, you don't have a lot of time to screw around. A good video to show newer jumpers.

OK, I looked through the various Aviacom bulletins. (My downloads or Aussie APF site) Nov '06 cutters were the first new batch that were OK relative to the 2006 bulletin about replacing ones with the plastic insert that could fray a loop. Then the bulletins AMMO050910/2, or its /1 predecessor, both dated 5 Sept 1010 were AFTER this "newly discovered" incident if it indeed took place in August 2006. Those were the first of the 2010 bad cutter bulletins. So unless I also missed something, the jumper was using a perfectly legal cutter at the time, and it would have been so even under FAA rules. Perhaps Aviacom was given that Italian report. After all, it was dated Aug 30 and the cutter bulletin came out about a week later on Sept 5, 2010. It's just that the English speaking community on dz.com didn't know about it until now.

Interesting! So that's saying that the anvil is not set back from the cutter's closing loop hole, but essentially even with the side of the hole. It would be either right at the hole or perhaps set back slightly if there's some inner lining for the cutter hole. Any of that would tend to change the shearing action towards being a straight cut against an anvil. That assumes the loop remains or is pushed towards the center of the hole laterally, where the hole is furthest towards the end of the cutter and thus right up near the anvil. (Round cutter hole vs. flat anvil) So it still depends exactly where the anvil is relative to the hole, and whether there's any issue at all if the loop is displaced to the side.

A helpful document about cutter design is the following, for circular cutter (using shear) vs. single cutter (against an anvil): http://www.mediafire.com/file/d14p3e5axy5pxpe/ARGUS%20Cutter%20Review%20%28APF%20rigger%27s%20critique%20of%20circular%20Argus%20cutters%29.pdf It's a June 2010 report by an Australian Parachuting Federation rigger about Argus cutters. I can't find where on the web I originally downloaded it, so I uploaded it to the above file sharing site.

Yeah, anyone know where to find info on Nato stock number equipment or EU patents? Vigil states EU Patent N° EP1512626A2, NATO Stock Number (NSN) 1377-13-119-7112. They say they have a circular knife. I've heard someone claim that it is a two blade system though. But there's a possible explanation for that: Note how the main barrel of the cutter is smaller than the barrel around the closing loop hole. So it is possible that this means the Vigil's circular blade ends up away from the tubular wall, and would pressing the loop against an anvil, in effect acting as two blades. This would be rather than cutting in a shearing action, circular blade sliding past the surrounding housing, which is the case for the Argus. I would also like to learn more.

I agree with your sentiments. I always feel a little uncomfortable when there are those "secret tips" on how to pack a certain rig the proper way. It's a little different if the company emphasizes particular things in the manual -- at least the new rigger doing it by the book can pay attention to those cautions. I'm all for demonstrating my skills and taking pride in my work, using both force and finesse, but sometimes it is a bit of a contest, rigger vs. rig, man against nylon. It just seems silly to have rigs where you need "a really good rigger" to make it look right.

It is funny that he sees America becoming both atheist and radical Islamic at the same time. Although its worth a laugh and he's a right wing nutter, at least I can see his point: There's both an external threat (radical Islam) and a weakening of internal defenses at the same time (atheists, presumably liberals). If you're defending a castle against an attack you don't want part of your population opening the drawbridge in welcome because they are overly trusting. Parts of Europe are going over similar worries about radical Islam in its immigrant populations, but perhaps without quite the US style internal divisions of "Christians vs. atheists". (But the question for Newt becomes, what happened to those militant anti-Christmas etc. atheists he probably has ranted about? Are they only against HIS religion, or can their energy be harnessed in his struggle against radical Islam?)

First solo freefall? Stick with what's easiest so far with you. Plus the hanging exit makes freefall stability easier to achieve when it is new to you. (Not quite sure of your situation, given that you list 20 jumps, 12ish static lines, AFF instructor supervising. In any case, sounds like a big step forward.) Later when you have a jump where the freefall part is less of a big step, then add to the challenge by refining the other exit. Most Cessna jumps end up being from the step anyway.

The couple I've worked at in southern Ontario don't have staff rates, and I haven't heard of it otherwise used locally. If a person is a particularly valuable member of a team (Chief manifester, Tandem team Captain, full time weekday guy, whatever), then they can get paid more. But jump rates are the same. One DZO had tried it years ago, but the old issue was that someone could get all the benefits of being "on the team" but then only take up a few students all year. This is particularly true at DZ's relying on a lot of part time staff who have a greater choice whether to fun jump or instruct any given day. Pay people decently for the work they do at the DZ in the first place, and then there's a decent chance they'll spend it on more jumps anyway... (Edit: One could also get into the tax implications of pay vs. costs, or benefits that might be considered taxable, and what's obvious to authorities or not.)

Whether one likes or dislikes the 'dead when you leave the airplane' style phrases, there is a difference: When we leave the airplane, we don't pull right away. We do other stuff. Keep doing that, and you die. In a car, you are actually steering and watching the road more or less most of the time. (And trying to avoid stopping doing either for more than a few seconds at a time.) You wouldn't make it onto the highway if you weren't already steering the car. In a car we don't look back and get involved in a game of chess with a guy in the back seat, and then suddenly realize that over 50 seconds have passed and it's time to check whether we're drifting off towards the obstacles beside the road. In a car, you get distracted, you can die. In a skydive, you have to get distracted from the skydive or else you will die. (Exceptions for AAD's that actually cut loops.) Edit: Sure, the bit about 'being dead when you leave the plane' can be overused in a macho way. I do point out to people that you can be just as dead from mundane things like driving. But the phrase is still useful when used to emphasize particular points about the nature of skydiving. "I'd rather burn in at 200 mph than die in some senseless traffic accident." - Truman Sparks, more or less

How were pull tests?? (Which gets at the issue of the mold degrading the nylon vs. just being on it.)

That's why there are engineers. Because not everything works the obvious way. The various Argus related reports show how a cylindrical cutter can have issues because it has a narrower blade that is susceptible to chipping or bending if the hardness isn't just right, why it relies on shearing the loop between cutter and side wall, and why a loop that's not under tension (including when the other side of the cylinder already cut the loop) tends to cut less cleanly. Some of this can be simulated by just playing with closing loops and a pair of scissors, varying the tension. As somebody else said, cutting a still ripcord cable is in some ways easier.

Thanks for the whois to provide the evidence, Brian.

Just partial info: Niagara Skydive has the hard runway, which can help in early april. They've done PFF quite a while. Parachute School of Toronto does tandem progression, a few tandems then 1:1 PFF. Skydive Toronto does PFF and is open but it's a grass strip. Shuttling from another airport is a pain so the few of us teaching PFF there might wait a few more weeks before doing any. SWOOP near Hamilton has a well established PFF program but I think they wait until May to start taking students, leaving April to get things running for the regulars first. Grand Bend Sport Parachute Centre -- small, PFF specialists, hard runway. Not sure when the open though. Worth a call.

Hi Rhys & MJO, That graphics & marketing company with the www.aviacom.com domain name seems to have nothing to do with the Aviacom SA that has the argus-aad.com page and makes the Argus. Unless there's something in the background I don't know about. Yes, Rhys does tend to see conspiracies but there's lots of useful stuff in his posts too. It may be uncertain that Cypres related criticisms have ever disappeared from this site (as he alleged in the "Letter from Argus" thread). But still it is reasonable to be concerned about an incident he says Airtec glossed over, and the serious allegation about Airtec using faulty sensors -- an allegation that didn't originate with him. (More later in this post.) Where did Argus (or Aviacom, whatever one wants to use) ever have 11 service bulletins? The Australian Parachuting Federation site shows only 5, and one relates to another companies' products -- bad Cypres disks. (Sure, a million other companies and countries have banned Argus' with bulletins at one time or other, but that's different.) Three deal with their cutter woes (nothing for the Texas incident yet other than the letter that effectively shutts down their site), and one recalling 40 units of a batch in 2006 shortly after shipping, due to a software error. And on their site they used to have information about a fight they had with a Dutch rigger or rigging group, but it wasn't an SB. So there's no paper trail for us about their deciding not to use the "bad" pressure sensors, because that would be a decision made before building units with them. Cypres had their Cypres 2 bad sensor recall in 2008. I don't recall Argus ever saying anything in public about bad sensors. (That was something you heard in conversation with someone at Argus, Rhys? Can you confirm whether it was Argus or Vigil? Sorry, I don't see that particular post at the moment.) It was Vigil who claimed Cypres waited until there were problems in 2008 to recall the sensors, while Vigil immediately sent the bad sensors back in 2006. (This was in their "Open letter to our dealers and customers" during their 2008 fight with Mr. Fradet and the French Federation.) Just trying to sort out what's really happening.

This is a little side conversation about the incident Rhys brought up about a Cypres fire to a tandem under canopy. Clearly their response was poor. Looking at their 2008 Cypres 2 recall due to faulty sensors, I see they mentioned two Australian activations that caused them to look into the issue. So I don't personally know if that included your case, but it sounds like it may have been. So (IF true) at least they took decisive action overall, even if their communications with a particular customer was terribly unresponsive.

I found this little nugget in something written by Cliff Schmucker (cypres-usa) sixteen years ago in 1995: (http://www.cypres-usa.com/cyp13.htm) So it isn't just luck that the Cypres happened to end up with the cutter it did.

There's no law against being rough on your knees and ankles. If you can manage the landings without hurting yourself, OK. But they will get worse in the heat of summer. And a lot of people will hassle you about the old canopy. There's technically nothing wrong with jumping it, but if you can move to just about anything ZP it would be a big step forward. Advice to you will also depend on how many jumps are on the canopy and your wing loading. Each line set is unique to the canopy design & size. (You're new at this!) Flaring smaller F-111: Lower and faster would be better. There's "less flare available" so you can't start early. It has to be more precisely timed, with less time between initiation and touchdown. Which makes it tougher for the less experienced. I'm saying this as someone who LIKES F-111 and isn't biased against it. I sometimes jump an older F-111 canopy at just 0.9 wing loading and the landings are still a little hard on the ankles in low wind unless I hook it really low and hard (not for you!). So it wouldn't be fun day in and out. EDIT: Like Wendy says, it really depends in the end on whether YOU can land YOUR particular canopy OK. And she's quite light weight, so keep that in mind when she talks about her 150.

That sort of thing deserves its own separate thread! Even if a thread fades away, it would be nice if you would put everything you wrote about it in a place of its own, Rhys. We have to keep bugging the companies no matter which ones they are. Vigil tends to respond with showing the output graphs of the unit, even if their explanation is usually just a useless "it worked like it was supposed to".

Meow?

I just looked at the Aviacom / Argus website, and holy crap, they're screwed up. All I see is Karel's letter. There's no link to the rest of the site, no buttons, nothing. They've essentially taken their whole site offline. So I can't even look up some other Argus related information, unrelated to the cutter issue. (Yes there will be cached versions around, and other organizations will have copies of their bulletins, and who knows, maybe direct links to sub-pages might still work. But that's not the point.)

It's true that FXC's aren't as cheap as they appear! But in the old days plenty of DZ's did use FXC's and managed to stay open. A used FXC can probably be had for about zero dollars (you know, sort of like an Argus), but when the mandatory factory maintenance every two years is $200 (plus shipping), the lifetime costs are significant. Not so far off electronic AAD's depending on how you look at the carrying cost of the big initial investment, plus mandatory maintenance in some cases. Plus there's the work tossing each rig into a large altitude chamber box every six months to check their parameters. For all the scary stories of FXC's going off at the wrong time, they have acutally behaved pretty well at the DZ. (Perhaps because they actually send them in for maintenance, which I bet some places didn't.) I recall a couple being out of spec in the altitude chamber. And there was one reserve FXC that popped a couple times under canopy giving a two out. Not good. Edit: Their firing specs are supposed to be within +/- 300'. The 1500' sometimes heard is about not opening the main any closer to the set reserve altitude, as there is an increased risk of opening shock setting them off if close to their firing parameters.

I'll explain the system at Skydive Toronto since I instruct there. Yes it is weird and forces certain compromises, but the DZO has his reasons. The static line gear has just the reserve AAD. And there's a bottom of container dummy handle pocket to do PRCP's. The freefall gear has a reserve AAD, still an FXC. It also has an FXC for the main, and so has to use a ripcord and spring loaded PC. Until last year, the ripcord was mounted above the hip junction - not a BOC but at least away from the chest. Last year a PFF (Canadian AFF) program was introduced, so the rigs were modified to have a ripcord with golf ball handle secured in the BOC location with tuck tabs. That got the handle away from where instructors might have to grab students. (We riggers had considered a Sigma tandem style attached Spectra ripcord with a bungee, but the DZO preferred the lesser snag hazard of a traditional ripcord.) When flying main side PFF, one does have to watch out for a metal ripcord across the face or camera lens! And the charge to the student for dropping a ripcord might be low compared to the rigger time & cost to build. But leaving aside those rig details, why did the DZO choose to engineer this system? If he didn't believe in it, he wouldn't have added all that complexity to his rigs. He doesn't like the idea of students being saved within just a few seconds of death by a reserve AAD. Even if rare, he doesn't want the situation to go that far. Over the many years he has run a DZ, it was maybe once every 5 or 7 years that someone was saved by an AAD. (These were usually mechanical AAD's, so not the reliability of electronic ones, but even then we've seen that having a cut loop doesn't always get a reserve out before impact.) The last time it happened, a student on their first 15 second delay started to spin and totally lost track of time instead of just pulling. So the idea was to add an extra level of safety by deploying a parachute at a reasonable altitude if the student didn't, and not to wait until the last moment. It does add some training complications as one can't have students going for the main too early, because one wants the main AAD to fire before they get to the stage of plan B going to the reserve. So there is a quite legitimate concern over possible deployments of main and reserve at the same time. I can't be sure, but I can't recall any such cases in the 9 or so years since such rigs were first used. A student typically would be aiming to pull at 3500' with the main FXC set for 3000' (on traditional progression; PFF opening altitudes differ). Having the main AAD pull for a student is seen as just as much of a failure for the student, as if they were at another DZ and smoked it lower than briefed pull altitude. I don't see that the DZ is any less rigorous than elsewhere about training students to maintain altitude awareness. The students know no other way, so they don't feel "the DZ doesn't trust them". But the FXC's in effect do keep a close eye on student altitude discipline, hell, probably better than the average junior freefall coach would do. Having students convert to more regular skydiving rigs later on also adds a level of complexity that some don't like, but we're always moving on to new things during our skydiving progression. Compared to what most DZ's do it is all a bit bizarre, but there are some reasons behind it. (The FXC's on mains don't need inspections and calibrations after firing. They have the rubber bumpers that prevent shock loading damage from regular use. It is common enough for the main AAD's to go off during the deployment sequence, shortly after the student pulled but not fully under canopy.)

I must admit, now I'm curious what his opinions are on 9/11, the Kennedy assassination, and alien abductions.