The CYPRES Approach to Maintenance

There are two schools of thought when it comes to maintenance: fix something when it breaks or schedule maintenance to prevent an item from breaking. Because of the thin line between life and death when something goes wrong in our sport, we believe preventative maintenance is the correct approach and is what separates CYPRES from its competitors. As seen with routine car maintenance (preventative care), we see value in taking care of potential problems before they occur.

Maintenance ensures reliability when you need it most. At Airtec, we do not view maintenance as an inconvenience, but as a needed action to reach for 100% (not 99%) reliability*.

At Airtec, we do not view maintenance as an inconvenience, but as a needed action to reach for 100% (not 99%) reliability*.

Check our document section for more details and aspects of our maintenance system.

Revised Policy

Due to continued difficulties with customs regulations in various countries, many CYPRES owners have had difficulty sending and receiving their CYPRES units for maintenance. As a result, we have decided to change the CYPRES maintenance policy from ‘mandatory’ to ‘recommended’. To make it even more clear for our customers and to dispel any doubt, we say the maintenance is ‘voluntary’. This policy is in affect exclusively for units manufactured after January 1st 2016.

Overview Versioning

For units with DOM 12/15 and earlier the maintenance is mandatory to be performed 4 and 8 years after the original DOM. Service Life is 12.5 years.
For units made in 2016 the maintenance can be performed on a voluntary basis 4 and 8 years after original DOM. Service Life is 12.5 years.
For units with DOM 01/17 and later the maintenance can be performed on a voluntary basis 5 and 10 years after the original DOM. Service Life is 15.5 years.

What a CYPRES-2 Maintenance Includes:

The CYPRES maintenance contains much more than what you typically expect from a maintenance procedure. For instance it involves actions to adjust the units capability to deal with new or changed conditions in our sport or even with changed conditions in the evironment (e.g. increasing number of weather events with very low humidity).

Please see the following list:
• Repair of wear or tear
• Diagnostics
• Data analysis
• Disassembly
• Complete inspection
• Adjustments to altered evironmental conditions
• Adjustment to changed conditions in the sport
• Extreme temperature tests
• Temperature cycling tests
• Temperature stability check and adjustment
• Shielding check
• Cutter testing
• Battery replacement (no extra cost)
• Filter replacement
• Applicable software updates
• Improvements
• Applicable Hardware upgrades
• Artificial aging of new components
• Re-assembly
• Complete calibration and analysis
• Flight performance testing (activation/non-activation)
• Power consumption test and analysis
• Output power verification
• Waterproof testing
• Final functional testing

How to determine the date of your next recommended CYPRES Maintenance

Method 1: When accessing the CYPRES unit’s information after turn on, there is a feature that displays the next recommended maintenance date. Refer to section 4.5 of the User’s Guide for instructions on how to perform this. 

(e.g. if a CYPRES has a DOM of 08/12 and has not had its 4-year recommended maintenance, the next recommended maintenance date will display 08/16. However, with the +/- 6 month window, the recommended maintenance can be performed within the range of 02/16 thru 02/17)  

Method 2:Locate the unit’s DOM and calculate 5/10 years for units manufactures later than 01.01.2017 (4/8 years for earlier units) from the date +/- 6 months for the recommended maintenance window. The DOM can be found several different ways:

• on the processing unit (black box),
• the CYPRES 2 Test Certificate that came with your new CYPRES,
• check your reserve packing data card – some riggers record this information there,
• if you are still not sure, just email us your CYPRES 2 serial number.

* Please see the Legal Disclaimer for further Details