CYPRES saved my life!

did not know there was a thread police

Boca,
I hate to loose people in the sport but I imagine the S&TA at the DZ, The DZO, your instructors, and fellow skydivers who know you and exactly what happened would have much better thougths on this than us. I hate monday quarterbacking anyone. If you are bored and just want to hear other opinions have at it. But put your seatbelt on it might be a bit harsh.

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did not know there was a thread police

NWFlyer just asked why you are posting again about the same thing.

That's a question, and it invites more conversation on the thread.

But you don't seem to think she should ask that question.

Who is policing whom?

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did not know there was a thread police

Now you do.

If you are not prepared to answer questions about your mishap might be best not to start multiple threads about it.

Dude,

How did you black out? As a result of the spinning??

I think everyones curious what exactly happened. I damn cuious how you blacked out. Just glad were not reading about you in the fatality report.

Merry Christmas ...

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Bruce, you posted about this in early October:

/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3694308;page=unread#unread

Why the new thread?

maybe it't the painkillers. I was on some hard opiates after a really bad motorcycle accident and my memory from that whole three months is wrecked. lol

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Bruce, you posted about this in early October:

/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3694308;page=unread#unread

Why the new thread?

maybe it't the painkillers. I was on some hard opiates after a really bad motorcycle accident and my memory from that whole three months is wrecked. lol

got some left over you want to get rid off!? not that it would hinder my memory..

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...is there something specific you're looking for from this community in posting about the incident multiple times?

My amateur analysis is that he's afraid to jump because he may screw up again and die. But he wants to be considered a "Skydiver", so he keeps posting about his incident so that "Skydivers" will talk to him and about him on the internet. As long as this is going on, he can call himself a "Skydiver", which is something he really wants to do. Actually, all he did was to demonstrate how the AAD has short-circuited the Darwinian process that used to exist in our sport. I guess he's made his mark, though. If he had died, there would have been only one thread.

Look Bruce, we're talking about you. We only talk about Skydivers here, so you must be one. Now knock this shit off and go pick out a nice Bowling shirt.

Kevin K.

Dummy raises hand.....and put on lid and cod piece and flame jacket.

Why doesn't Cypress fire at a higher altitude? Say 3k ft? Can it be adjusted for beginners and n00bs? So as to fire at higher altitudes and thus prevent us from offing ourselves early so that maybe one day we can look cool as the rest of you?

Thank you.

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Dummy raises hand.....and put on lid and cod piece and flame jacket.

Why doesn't Cypress fire at a higher altitude? Say 3k ft? Can it be adjusted for beginners and n00bs? So as to fire at higher altitudes and thus prevent us from offing ourselves early so that maybe one day we can look cool as the rest of you?

Thank you.

If for no other reason, deployment at 3000 feet might allow a lot of time for someone to make a decision even more stupid than the one that allowed the AAD to fire in the first place. An AAD fire can maybe save a life, but in most situtations an AAD fire indicates a poor decision prior to the activation.

AAD's are adjustable for student, tandem, and expert modes. As you gain more experience, you'll be shown how to adjust an AAD's modes (assuming you jump with one).

Yeah but the higher you pull the safer right?
Say you are unstable an the Cypres pulls for you at 3kft that give you more time to figure out what the heck is going on then having the thing go off at 900ft?
Right? Maybe?

Cypres is last ditch effort device to save your life because for some reason youve been incapable of doing it. Why have it fire upo at an altitude where you can still be working on fixing the problem and getting shit out. If your scared of it firing low then fix the problem of being in freefall earlier. If you cant then it just saves your life be grateful and either sell your gear and quit, or figure out what went wrong and get back in the air.

OK.....but this guy, the OP, stated he had some serious instability issues and had "blacked out". I'm asking....thank god for this flame suit and high end sponge bob helmet...if the Cypres had fired at 3k ft would he have had time to land safely?

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OK.....but this guy, the OP, stated he had some serious instability issues and had "blacked out". I'm asking....thank god for this flame suit and high end sponge bob helmet...if the Cypres had fired at 3k ft would he have had time to land safely?

A cypres is there for when things go seriously wrong. 3 000 feet is a safe EXIT altitude. As the altitude that the Cypres triggers at is increased the chances that it will fire while a main is deploying or being deployed rise - this risks a main/reserve entanglement. Reserves open pretty quickly (I believe but am not certain there is a spec of 300 foot) so it is logical that the Cypres is configured to fire as late as possible - ensuring that the human operator has done everything possible and that that the electronic actions do not interfere with a persons ability to make decisions.

Listen to what you are saying......

A-I doubt he truly went unconscious. With a student AAD he had plenty of time to land anyway.
B-By 12 jumps, he should be able to be stable.
C-If you're having to have a device deploy for you, it's a last chance and the CYPRES has a potential for killing you as much as it does saving you. Once your reserve is out, you can't do a whole lot more, not with the knowledge a student has.
D-Deploying a reserve that high affords the student (who has little knowledge) a lot more time to think, and more time to second guess.
E-If AAD's fired much higher, we'd have a lot more AAD fires due to complacency, and probably kill more people than are saved due to two-out, etc.
F-What about H n' P's? Do we then need to disable AAD's for those? Then students can't do H n' P's.

This line of thinking is akin to the thought that we should wear three canopies instead of two.
Skydiving is dangerous. It can kill you. If you're looking for more proactive safety devices vs gaining an understanding of how to be responsible for yourself and save your own life, it's likely not the right activity for you.

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A cypres is there for when things go seriously wrong. 3 000 feet is a safe EXIT altitude. As the altitude that the Cypres triggers at is increased the chances that it will fire while a main is deploying or being deployed rise - this risks a main/reserve entanglement. Reserves open pretty quickly (I believe but am not certain there is a spec of 300 foot) so it is logical that the Cypres is configured to fire as late as possible - ensuring that the human operator has done everything possible and that that the electronic actions do not interfere with a persons ability to make decisions.

AH OK I get it! Cool! Thanks!

If you're relying on your AAD to fire in time for you to work out your reserve, you're IMO really not thinking about an AAD the right way. It's there to stop you hitting the ground at terminal in the event you can't deal with whatever has happened in free fall. Normally that means you're unconscious or otherwise unable to perform your number 1 job on any skydive which is to pull. If you can't get your main, you should be deploying your reserve before a machine does.

Aside from that, many people have just broken off from a formation & are tracking away at 3k, why would I want my reserve out at that point?

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Aside from that, many people have just broken off from a formation & are tracking away at 3k, why would I want my reserve out at that point?

Look guys, your all high number members. I'm talking students. Like me. Guys who are new to the sport. Maybe setting it to go off at 3k wouldn't be a bad thing?

But i agree our number one job is to pull! And I can see how having the cypress going off can cause issues.

I wouldn't call myself high jump numbers, I'm really still a noob in the scheme of things.

Having said that, how does having a safety net set well into the normal altitude of a completely safe skydive help new jumpers learn how to save their own lives?

It's not meant to be an attractive option, your AAD means you either physically couldn't or didn't do your job i.e. you failed and would be dead if not for a device which is known not to be perfect.

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OK.....but this guy, the OP, stated he had some serious instability issues and had "blacked out". I'm asking....thank god for this flame suit and high end sponge bob helmet...if the Cypres had fired at 3k ft would he have had time to land safely?

If the Cypres had fired at 3000 feet, and the OP had regained consciousness much earlier, probably he would have had time to unstow brakes, steer, and flare. Hopefully that would have helped him land safely.

However, that's not the point. Think about what happens in a skydive. Most of us pull between 2000 and 4000 feet. So if you assume that it takes 500 feet for us to slow past the AAD firing speed, the AAD can't be set to fire anywhere between 1500 to 3500. If it were, we'd have two out all the time.

So say we set the AAD to 750 feet less than our pull altitutde. Now imagine that we have some high-speed malfunction (or even a slow snivel), such that, even after pulling the main, we are still at speeds high enough to activate the AAD. So, while dealing with a high speed malfunction, suddenly our reserve fires. Perhaps into a malfunctioning main that we haven't cut away yet, and we now have no functioning parachutes and we die.

Not a good result.

The other thing to understand is that the AAD does not know if you have a malfunctioning main, if you are unconscious, or what. All it knows is how fast you're falling at a certain speed at a certain altitude.

So the AAD is set to fire at the lowest altitude possible where it's still likely to be useful. The point is to give you every chance to slow yourself down, because you are smarter than the AAD, and you can generally make a better decision as to whether firing the reserve is better than not firing the reserve. But the reason we have a Cypres which will fire at 750 feet no matter what is that, in general, if you are still falling at 78 mph or above at 750 feet, you are probably in a situation where you are incapable of making the decision or getting the reserve out, and so Cypres does it for you.

OK I think I get it.
But I think as a n00b who pulls at 5k ft i'll ask to set mine a little higher.

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Guys who are new to the sport. Maybe setting it to go off at 3k wouldn't be a bad thing?

Students aren't required to have "student" AADs, just an AAD. Often many DZs will rent the same gear students use out to experienced skydivers and so they'll have expert AADs in them. Some AADs like Vigils can be toggled between modes, others like Cypres can't.

How AADs work is hugely complex. That and they can and do and will continue to kill people who otherwise would've lived if they weren't flying with an AAD. So AAD makers tend to be very conservative and program the units to be an absolute last minute "you're gonna die if I don't do something" backup and spend a lot of time making sure the units work in a way that won't interfere with a skydiver's EPs and normal jump routines.

Also, part of that design is to be idiot proof, because skydivers are human and make moron mistakes. Hence the preset, well tested, non-user defined firing altitudes that they come available in.