Altitrack Problems - disappointing quality

[RichyR 0]

I had an alarming issue with my Altitrack the other day. It went to zero following deployment, then started reading minus as I descended under canopy. It then slowly increased back to zero over 10mins after I was on the ground.

No issues with climb to alti, and battery full. Following jump was fine.

How could the opening have tricked it into zeroing instantly? Any one else had anything similar happen.

Another issue - a few months ago the finger elastic broke in freefall, which rendered it unreadable unless held in place with the opposite hand. I'm now using a packing band, which seems much better.

I've emailed L&B, but don't expect to hear back soon, as the last problem I had took them 3 weeks to reply.

[radical_flyer 0]

I can't help with your question but this has slightly put me off getting an altitrack. Do you use the e-logbook features? If so how does that work/ has that aspect been good quality?

[mxk 1]

I had my share of problems with the AltiTrack as well: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4753602#4753602

L&B ended up replacing that unit. Don't rely on it as your only source of altitude information.

The logbook is probably its most useful feature. You do have to adjust the settings for it to log accurately, depending on what type of jump you're doing. For example, use the student mode to record hop-and-pops, use the slow mode for wingsuiting. Otherwise, the freefall time and deployment altitude may not be correct. The deployment altitude is going to be lower than actual anyway since it can't detect when you throw your pilot chute out. Download the user's guide if you want to learn more about its operation.

[Fall0ut 3]

Over 600 jumps with my Altitrack.. from Hop'n'Pops to wingsuit jumps and tandems on over 25 dropzones. Never had any problems.

[fanya 3]

Ya, mine does that too. It will also freeze up directly after leaving the plane keeping the needle at exit altitude and sometimes mid-skydive. Both of those require a hard reset with a needle in the back with the battery removed, which is super fun when you are turning 15-20 tandems a day. This also causes it not to log the jump. Because I'm OCD I have to get it to the right jump number which can take hours at times because it doesn't like to go below 9999, it rolls over to 19999 and then I have to watch it count down again. After many many tries it'll roll over to 9998, which then you have to be super careful not to go past your number because you have to start infuriating the 9999/19999 process back over again. I emailed them about it locked up once a long time ago and they said to do the needle reset thing. I've never emailed them back with all the further problems partly due to my own laziness and partly due to me thinking they won't care. I don't really care about not having it under canopy, just land the pattern by eye sight. Freefall with tandems is a bit more fun an problematic. Almost got caught with my pants down once or twice.