nathaniel

And then we humans are experts in deciding and recommending a preferred course of action on these very forums. In many cases anyway...it's doubtful for instance that a machine could have improved the judgement of the poor fellow who flew into a bridge... And an aad will probably never unwrap a tangled parachute.... But these forums, in situations where an AAD could have or should have intervened, it seems human error is more an indication of human frailty than of insoluble physics. ie the inability of humans to 1) gather the correct sensory inputs and 2) put them together in a satisfactory way to choose when to open a parachute 3) do so. The kiss principle is very valuable, agreed...but the final cause of the kiss principle is not to eliminate complexity wherever it is found...only wherever it is not needed. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I tried to reason with a bunch of skydivers once. Won't make that mistake again. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Unfortunately there are no hard and fast rules about timing for followup. When I got my current job, it went like this: December: Submitted resume January: 1x interview (phone) February: 2x interview (phone) March: Radio silence Late April: Surprise telephone call, "still interested?" followed by an in-person interview and then an offer. We've hired since then, and I've gotten to see the internals with HR reps & staff juggling all kinds of other things ... sometimes there's just a delay of a week or so for the wheels of the system to churn. The rest of the HR department seems to function pretty smoothly...for some reason hiring is just a pain. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

http://www.parachutehistory.com/process/activation/sentinel.html The circuitry inside the cypres is smart enough that it rarely fires under controlled canopy flight. I've heard and read that the sentinel had a problem with sometimes firing after the canopy was open, and that it was thus recommended that you shut it off after your main was open. I could be remembering that wrong tho... There are a few references to astras needing reset between jumps on dz.com if you do a search...maybe it's the astra in addition or instead of the sentinel that I'm trying to put my finger on... Even though a cypres is electronic and needs to be turned off to conserve the battery etc, you often don't need to shut off, it will shut off automatically after 14 hours. IMO that's a definite human-machine interaction enhancement. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I bet... you could put a little pulley-like windup thing on the thumbstrap...make it click for every few pounds of force / millimeters of stretch. Then with your thumb you could gain an estimate of the amount of tension by counting the clicks. Kinda like a fishing reel...except you'd want it to be much smaller than a fishing reel & you don't need all that extra string. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I've flown the GS1, and I had a thought about that. There are at least two physical forces involved in arm strain. 1 -air resistance on the wing. Ie, the desirable pressure that slows you down a - pushes the arm towards your back b - pulls the arm toward the waist via tension on the arm wing 2 - arm - leg tension on the fabric between the ankle and wrist in addition to the tension caused by the wind, a jumper can put additional tension on the fabric just by pulling it as though to stretch it beyond its taut length. My subjective experience is that the first was manageable without undue arm strain, but that the second could result in significant fatigue without any benefit to the flight path. I wonder if a calibrated bungee or stretch fabric piece or a spring or something could be added to the wing between the wrist and ankle, so that a jumper could have some assistance in finding the sweet spot between the two. If there is a sweet spot at all. I wonder... would it have to be calibrated to the jumper's weight and desired fall speed...and could you use it to give feedback to the jumper on his speed.... My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Seems like a special case of the "big sky" effect, ie, the incorrect presumption that the sky is big enough for all of us and little care needs to be directed to avoiding collisions with other things. The issue is control...since the wingsuit was going much faster, the canopy pilot probably felt out of control in that situation. It's easy for me to understand why the canopy pilot was upset...especially for a jumper with a lot of experience, displeasure at the sense of an out of control situation is probably redoubled. Even if the wingsuit pilot was in full control the whole time, failure to communicate this in advance with the canopy pilot is the root of the misunderstanding, imo. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

That's the question that we should be asking then...what is the physical aspect of student, wingsuit, freefly, camera, 4 way, big way, swooper, and solo jumping, that makes it impossible or improbable for them to use the same AAD? The answer, if there is one, could be used to drive the next generation of AADs. The only answers I've seen are unsatisfactory, because they talk exclusively about current single variable / barometric models to the exclusion of other potential approaches. To me, the fact that a human is capable of deciding when to open a parachute in all those cases suggests that there is the possibility that a machine could do it better. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

How many times have all 23 people in an otter checked their cypresses simultaneously? If you asked them all nicely there would be easier ways to arrange a cacophony ... Yes, I'd say the sportscar is deficient for off roading. And the more popular that off roading became, the more deficient the car would be in general. If I couldn't find a better car, I'd fit the sportscar with a bigger suspension, different tires, etc... The analogy breaks down (surprise) because track and offroad conditions are so different that a single car could not possibly be competitive at both. Whereas with an AAD, the only thing holding them back is deficient design. Today's models use a single variable to infer characteristics about a skydive where multiple variables would be superior. The distinction between one type of jumpers and another is predicated on current designs. There's no reason it has to be that way forever. There were good reasons why some of the design was done the way it was done in 1990, but their continued validity is evaporating as science & technology advance. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

No, not an "audible" like a dytter or a protrack. An audible like a smoke detector has an unmistakable audible status indication. You press the button, it beeps if it's OK. Depending on the model, it beeps differently or not at all if it's not OK. So that the next person who asks me to check if their cypres is on in the plane doesn't have to take their rig off for me to check. Taking cover under the parameters of the device's manufacture is a dead end, and sidesteps this whole discussion about design. Like your point about quality control...it's just not relevant to the design. A well manufactured device operates according to its design. A well designed device operates according to when it's needed. My cypres is built just fine...its the design of the thing that I think could stand improvement. A glance at the list of saves shows to me that in many cases an AAD is primary. Certainly not all the time, and usually not by training or intent. Training or intent can't cure human fallability. An AAD can make up for some of the cases that slip through. The deficiency is in the design. Not the construction. As for dates...1990 till the present. The design hasn't changed at all. For me personally the dates would be all the years that I've used one. What this has to do with design is beyond me... The deficiency is in the design. /bangs drum My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

20 questions eh? ok. It's Saturday, it's cold & I'm bored... An audible signal would not make the device invisible. The deaf could still look at it. Deafness is a sensory deficit, that can be a separate consideration... Give the deaf bright LEDs instead of beepers. Hm...what about people who are deaf AND blind? There are real incidents of people forgetting all of them...that's part of why we have AADs to begin with. Although part of the joy of skydiving is in saving your own ass...so not all of those deserve adjustment. That deserves its own thread...I've put no thought to it...yet... The usage case & human factors of a tandem are so much different from a fun jump that it might be hard to find things that could be optimized effectively in a combined rig. Being uncurrent is a problem that an AAD can't solve completely. We can take some of the pain out by making AADs better, by removing the gotchas and surprises. You don't need "retraining" in airbags to drive a car after 6 months ...bad analogy I know, but it's food for thought. Depends on the cost...but I think I'd easily pay 25% more, maybe 50% more, if I could use an AAD with the confidence (not including wingsuit jumps) I use my cypres and not have to ever turn it on on off. It's hard to talk about costs comparatively right now tho, since the market is not all that competitive. your previous stuff Birds can fall faster than 80 mph on an ordinary jump, easily. Especially big boys in beginner suits, but also skinny people if we close in our wings. I'm thin, and already I can average 50 mph on a jump, if I max my suit out. Which is nothing really to brag about, but it's a problem when we talk about cypres activation speed. Birdmen often deliberately speed up for deployment...It's showed up in my neptune logs, actually. That could have been a factor too. Hard for me to say... That would expose me to inappropriate firings, like we've already beaten to death on this thread. My neptune says in my last 10 jumps I pushed 30 mph under my new canopy, and I wasn't trying to go all that fast or anything since I'm still learning it. I'm confident that I can exceed the student cypres activation speed...it's around 40mph or 45 mph, right? Skydiving is not for people without skill, learning and knowledge...but that's not always enough to stop them from dying when they least expect it. I think nobody is going to be landing a suit any time soon, but I don't know enough to say whether it will ever become commonplace. The FAA might have something to say about it...they seemed to be upset when someone landed in the WFFC without deploying his parachute...I bet they'd weigh in on birdman landings too if it became practical... That's getting into details of successive stages of design. Quality control is not all that apparent at this level of discussion...and it's rather premature since we're not proposing a complete product, just discussing aspects of the design... There's all kinds of stuff like marketing and taxes involved in selling a product...we've been ignoring all of it. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

It was pretty much always there, kinda like the two party system in the USA except (including ) how only one of the parties wants democracy at all...and they just got voted out in the last election cycle. The theocrats are back in the swing and don't look like they want to let go. The people are divided between the theocrats and the democracy types...but they pretty much just voted democracy away. Now, amongst the theocrats, there's a popularity contest to see who can be the most nationalist...a feedback loop of bizarre dictatorship one-upmanship crap like the stuff that goes on in Turkmenistan and N Korea. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

One of the things they wrote about is that it calls into question whether the net effect of coffee is upper or downer, or neither. Performance enhancer, performance reducer, etc. The subjective experience is only part of the question, since the subjective factor is unreliable....for instance a lot of drunk drivers say they feel fine even when they are demonstrably impaired. But they say the question is not answered by this research, only raised. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I've never flown at 60 mph and 200 mph simultaneously...this can be modeled and taken as a parameter to the logic. It's not wise of course to assume that freefall rate will be constant...but I rarely (never?) accelerate faster than gravity when I'm in freefall. That's where your ideas about knowing the state of the rig come in... Unless we can find tools to discriminate between these situations. Clearly what's needed is for the device to have more realistic model(s) of a skydive. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

There is a limit somewhere...I'm no expert in the subject (enthusiast, yes :) but the types of themes include * eliminating decisions that don't truly require a human's attention (or can be closely approximated by a machine). Having to switching off a sentinel after your canopy opens is an example of an unnecessary decision in an aad. Personally I think that the on switch belongs here too. Tho that might require big changes to how such a device operates. * reducing the number of important decisions to a certain frequency, so they become neither routine/tedious nor foreign, so that the human brain is better able to process them without making mistakes, and to allow for redundancy. People have an uncanny ability to make small mistakes...even when they have big consequences. IMO the cypres could stand an improvement here, since I think a lot of people have a hard time remembering how to program an offset. Although like everybody has said it would probably require extensive changes to how the thing operates * making the behavior & state of the system obvious in the situations where that information is needed. On this mark the cypres (and the vigil, from what I can tell) interface is a little clumsy. Although that's partly the function of containers where the aad window faces your back. You have to partially take your rig off to have someone check if it's on... It would be nice if it gave a happy beep to indicate that it was ok, or an unhappy beep to indicate that it was not ok. Kinda like how a smoke detector gives a special beep when it needs a new battery. The on/off switch gets a half point here, since the sequence of presses method is so foreign. But only a half point because it's a lot like riding a bike, and the frequency at which you do it compensates to a degree imo. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

In one of the cypres fires I saw, the jumper had initiated a normal deployment too low--not sure exactly how high--and the main was open already when the reserve started to inflate due to the cypres firing. Improving the decision sense and logic could potentially allow the system to put the cutoff point lower, thus making any consequential 2 out more justifiable. In the example above, he didn't need the reserve, and if the aad could have waited any longer it might not have fired. Then the difference between 750ft and that, accounting for error, is included in our potential margin of improvement. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

20 ft... hmm... What's critical is how the 20ft error is distributed across successive measurements aka jitter. Are 2 measurements taken 0.25 seconds apart going to have similar error or could they differ by 40 ft? How many measurements does a cypres take per second? I don't actually know. If the data is jittery, then taking short measurements is dangerous because the jitter could dominate...but taking longer measurements is dangerous because at 120 mph / 1500 ft you've got around 9 seconds to live, no? And your reserve takes 3-5 seconds to deploy, right? That leaves around 4 seconds to act... It seems like 20ft of error does not give us all that much tolerance after all...depending on the jitter & our ability to model it. This type of EE stuff is not my forte...what kind of algorithms can you use here? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Sorry to beat this old horse again...but you are referring to existing brands of AAD. I believe that an AAD could be designed, unlike any current model, that doesn't suffer this limitation. It would be more than just a simple barometer, and might require additional support infrastructure, like a base station, or gps, or who knows what. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

There's more to this story. Since around 600 AD when Islam came about, there've been oscillating periods of infighting and organized power in the ME. The last major power the world saw from the ME was the Ottoman Empire...which stopped being a major power around the time of the industrial revolution. So we are kinda overdue for another. Shias have led such powers in the past...the Fatimids and Safavids come to mind. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I'm not sure, I've only got reasoned suspicion right now. To start off with, the raw data from another person's neptune looks like mine. That doesn't prove much either...there could be systemic issues with the some or all neptunes... I do have another barometer now, and I'll be using it for testing in a few months. It is a satisfactory means in the cypres, sure...but I'm not convinced it's best. I know that barometric pressure fluctuates significantly with the weather and I've read extensively on this website's forums (as well as others, such as the speed skydiving website) that the location of the device and changes in body position can have significant consequences on the accuracy of the device. But most of all it's not so much barometrics as the parameterization of altitude as the basis for firing. Even though the data can be smoothed with some loss of precision & timeliness, altitude as a single variable over time is just not expressive enough to know whether I really need my reserve closing loop cut. The same thing that Lawndart and Ron et al have pointed out. That to me is something that could be overcome with an alternate design. GPS is definitely poor, agreed. But a poor source of information can sometimes still be used.... Radio beacons on the ground or in the sky actually sounds attractive to me. Perhaps even live communication between transponders & ground stations. Not necessarily to the exclusion of barometrics either...perhaps like Garmin products, as you point out, redundant with the air pressure. One of the biggest issues I think with the cypres Bill has pointed out, & it's the state of the rest of the rig. I've personally witnessed two-out situations a result of cypres fires, I suspect they are not uncommon. An optical system on the ground, combined with a radio, could potentially provide this information. You are right, it would be a lot more complex than today's devices. To me it's like medical equipment. Things like pacemakers today are drastically more complex than they were in 1990, both due to advances in medicine and in technology. An AAD that cost as much as Guidant or Medtronic's latest would not sell...but at least it doesn't have to be implanted under the skin

A breath of fresh air, thank you. To me the barometer, although it is central to current designs, is a major weakness. I recently dissected raw data that came out of my neptune, and while it's clearly not the same thing as a cypres or a vigil etc, make me realize how unreliable barometric data can be. Just trying to find the point, manually and algorithmically, at which I exited the plane and when my canopy deployed seems very problematic. I suspect that the cypres delay between 1100 feet or so at activation and 750 feet at firing has a lot to do with data smoothing. I like the ideas about sensing the rig's configuration. That also seems like the right direction to be moving in. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

As many lives as it saves, for there will always be dumb people, including dumb skydivers. There is only an empirical answer to this question. That means that the vigil isn't perfect either. It means we have more work to do. Skydiving has "caused" accidents too... All that matters is the cruel calculus of injuries and accidents. Newer, better, one or the other is irrelevant to safety except insofar as it causes accidents. Thus, if 'better' means fewer and less severe accidents, then better means safer...this is pretty much just wrestling with definitions here... My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Collecting insults, perhaps? No... I'm collecting & tossing out ideas on how to improve AADs. More or less on topic to the original post, I think. Tho it's a bit of a trying process...collectively I think we need more imagination, and more patience. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

No, mostly I'm making conjectures. Slight difference... I want to dispel as many assumptions as I can, and hold up the ones I can't. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

There's no reason that a well designed AAD needs to be 'operated' any more than a crash barrier or an airbag. To me, the measure if the cypres' deficiency is exactly that I cannot treat it like an airbag. That I must switch it on or off at all, and that people have died as a result of failing to turn it on or off correctly. All this putting aside technicalities like legal requirements for airbags and child safety seats...of course. And imo, an airbag deployment is a form of HMI...that's a terminology flap, tho. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?